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3 PLATO’S SOPHISTS A dialogue is a production, and more sharply stated, an image of images. Whereas some of the subordinate images may be of pure forms, the same is not the case with the comprehensive image.As an image of images, the dialogue represents a determinate perspective from which Plato understands the whole. But is it an accurate image (an icon) or an inaccurate fantasm? Stanley Rosen, Plato’s Sophist There are several ways in which we could set out the debate between Plato and the Sophists—over the right ways to educate the young; over the conflicting epistemologies of the last chapter; even over the very identity of Sophists and philosophers, since these terms were still in the process of being formulated and the categories populated. But in many respects, the most telling feature of the debate is the question of how best to reason about the world and the place of humans in it. Or to phrase this differently, how best to express such reasoning in discourse: how to talk about things. Like Socrates, it must be recognized, the Sophists were purveyors of logos; they proposed to teach people how to speak, how to defend themselves in reasoned speech and so persuade others.Thus insofar as they are interested in‘reality,’ it is the reality they construct in discourse.Words, as Gorgias spells out in his Helen, have an agency; they do things. The Sophists seem most interested in speech about things, not in things themselves and knowing them. Hence there is an expressed skepticism about the way things actually are rather than how they are experienced. It is human experience that is the measure of all things, of what is and what is not.We can no more know things in themselves than we can know the gods.The nature of the subject matters, as well as the shortness of life, put these topics beyond our reach. PLATONIC AND SOPHISTIC ARGUMENT AND THE “SOPHIST DIALOGUES” In this respect—the interest in discourse and how to talk about things— Socrates seems close to the Sophists. He is most revealed to us through a Plato’s Sophists 31 speech in which he defends himself, and in the dialogues that exhibit his practice , he examines statements and engages them, remaining skeptical about what is.Just as for Gorgias’s Helen words do things,so for Socrates’interlocutors , words move around, do not stay still, and trip them up. Euthyphro is caught in a labyrinth of words from which he seems ill-equipped to escape. He accuses Socrates of creating these moving statements that trap him, only to find himself brought back each time to the same “place” in the discourse. Interestingly the very question that the Sophists avoided—how to talk about “actual” reality—was Plato’s primary problem. He struggled to find a discourse that could capture the reality of things, resorting to a range of metaphoric devices such as analogies and similes. How to bring the reality of the Forms into the flux of language haunts the epistemological inquiries of the dialogues. The search is for a speech that is universal, that is contexttransferable .It is no surprise,then,that he should write in a letter that no serious philosopher will attempt to put the truth into words.The nature of the medium, the subject, and the audience all render such an effort pointless. The question of what we can do with speech and how to use it is then a fitting one with which to engage the debate with the Sophists as Plato portrays them in what we may call the ‘Sophist Dialogues.’1 He parades them before us as figures of respect and accomplishment (even the brothers of the Euthydemus are applauded by the audience, including Socrates), records their claims and activities, and, it is important to note, demonstrates (sometimes through admirable mimicry) their modes and manners of arguing. At the same time, as we saw in chapter 1, he rejects both their arguments and their manner of arguing. PUBLIC AND PRIVATE ARGUMENT The common feature that runs through the Sophist Dialogues is an opposition between the public and the private. Plato’s Sophists are exponents of public argument, as indeed they would seem to have been in real life. Hence their interests are focused in this direction. Socrates, on the other hand, prefers private argument, fostering the Platonic interest in internal reflection—a different motivation and a different end.This may...

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