Sophist – Plato
STRANGER: And has not this, as you were say-and shown him more than he forbad us to inves-ing, as real an existence as any other class? May tigate.
I not say with confidence that not-being has an assured existence, and a nature of its own? Just THEAETETUS: How is that?
as the great was found to be great and the beautiful beautiful, and the not-great not-great, and STRANGER: Why, because he says—
the not-beautiful not-beautiful, in the same manner not-being has been found to be and is not-
‘Not-being never is, and do thou keep thy being, and is to be reckoned one among the many thoughts from this way of enquiry. ’
classes of being. Do you, Theaetetus, still feel any doubt of this?
THEAETETUS: Yes, he says so.
THEAETETUS: None whatever.
STRANGER: Whereas, we have not only proved that things which are not are, but we have shown STRANGER: Do you observe that our scepticism what form of being not-being is; for we have has carried us beyond the range of Parmenides’
shown that the nature of the other is, and is dis-prohibition?
tributed over all things in their relations to one another, and whatever part of the other is con-THEAETETUS: In what?
trasted with being, this is precisely what we have ventured to call not-being.
STRANGER: We have advanced to a further point, 153
Sophist – Plato
THEAETETUS: And surely, Stranger, we were maining classes, and being other than all of quite right.
them, is not each one of them, and is not all the rest, so that undoubtedly there are thousands STRANGER: Let not any one say, then, that while upon thousands of cases in which being is not, affirming the opposition of not-being to being, and all other things, whether regarded individu-we still assert the being of not-being; for as to ally or collectively, in many respects are, and in whether there is an opposite of being, to that many respects are not.
enquiry we have long said good-bye—it may or may not be, and may or may not be capable of THEAETETUS: True.
definition. But as touching our present account of not-being, let a man either convince us of er-STRANGER: And he who is sceptical of this con-ror, or, so long as he cannot, he too must say, as tradiction, must think how he can find something we are saying, that there is a communion of better to say; or if he sees a puzzle, and his plea-classes, and that being, and difference or other, sure is to drag words this way and that, the argu-traverse all things and mutually interpenetrate, ment will prove to him, that he is not making a so that the other partakes of being, and by rea-worthy use of his faculties; for there is no charm son of this participation is, and yet is not that of in such puzzles, and there is no difficulty in detect-which it partakes, but other, and being other than ing them; but we can tell him of something else being, it is clearly a necessity that not-being the pursuit of which is noble and also difficult.
should be. And again, being, through partaking of the other, becomes a class other than the re-THEAETETUS: What is it?