Sophist – Plato
STRANGER: A thing of which I have already spo-THEAETETUS: Why so?
ken;—letting alone these puzzles as involving no difficulty, he should be able to follow and criticize STRANGER: The attempt at universal separation in detail every argument, and when a man says is the final annihilation of all reasoning; for only that the same is in a manner other, or that other is by the union of conceptions with one another do the same, to understand and refute him from his we attain to discourse of reason.
own point of view, and in the same respect in which he asserts either of these affections. But to show THEAETETUS: True.
that somehow and in some sense the same is other, or the other same, or the great small, or the like STRANGER: And, observe that we were only just unlike; and to delight in always bringing forward in time in making a resistance to such separat-such contradictions, is no real refutation, but is ists, and compelling them to admit that one thing clearly the new-born babe of some one who is only mingles with another.
beginning to approach the problem of being.
THEAETETUS: Why so?
THEAETETUS: To be sure.
STRANGER: Why, that we might be able to as-STRANGER: For certainly, my friend, the attempt sert discourse to be a kind of being; for if we to separate all existences from one another is a could not, the worst of all consequences would barbarism and utterly unworthy of an educated follow; we should have no philosophy. Moreover, or philosophical mind.
the necessity for determining the nature of dis-155
Sophist – Plato
course presses upon us at this moment; if utterly whether not-being mingles with opinion and lan-deprived of it, we could no more hold discourse; guage.
and deprived of it we should be if we admitted that there was no admixture of natures at all.
THEAETETUS: How so?
THEAETETUS: Very true. But I do not understand STRANGER: If not-being has no part in the propo-why at this moment we must determine the sition, then all things must be true; but if not-nature of discourse.
being has a part, then false opinion and false speech are possible, for to think or to say what STRANGER: Perhaps you will see more clearly is not—is falsehood, which thus arises in the re-by the help of the following explanation.
gion of thought and in speech.
THEAETETUS: What explanation?
THEAETETUS: That is quite true.
STRANGER: Not-being has been acknowledged STRANGER: And where there is falsehood surely by us to be one among many classes diffused there must be deceit.
over all being.
THEAETETUS: Yes.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And if there is deceit, then all things STRANGER: And thence arises the question, must be full of idols and images and fancies.