The discussion depicted in Plato’s Sophist takes place the day after the that of the Theaetetus. Socrates meets with Theodorus the mathematician from Cyrene and his young student Theaetetus, the speakers of the previous dialogue (Plato ch. 21*). Theodorus also brings a Visitor from Elea, the hometown of Parmenides and Zeno, the main figures of the Eleatic school. This unnamed visitor will be the questioner-in-chief of the dialogue. He will bring the authority of the Eleatic school to the discussion, and presumably supply what Socrates cannot—an answer to the still-unanswered question, What is knowledge? So the Sophist is officially presented as the sequel to the Theaetetus.
On meeting the Visitor, Socrates announces that he would like him to enlighten Socrates and his friends about how the Visitor and his associates, presumably the Eleatics, think about the professions of sophist, statesman, and philosopher. The Visitor replies that he does regard the professions as distinct, though it would be no easy matter to distinguish them properly. Socrates recalls the encounter he had with Parmenides when he was young and Parmenides asked questions about philosophical topics. Here, Plato makes the present discussion a more distant sequel to the dialogue Parmenides and the problems it raised for the Theory of Forms (Plato ch. 20*).
At this point the informed reader may worry that the present dialogue will be another tiresome diatribe against sophists, Plato’s favorite whipping-boys as intellectual pretenders. There certainly will be some of that, but Plato will use his criticisms of his rivals to seriously rethink some of the foundational principles of his philosophy. The Sophist will prove to be much more than a denunciation of mercenary wise men. It will be the occasion for modifying Plato’s theories of reality and knowledge.
The Visitor takes the floor and becomes the moderator or master of ceremonies for the discussion. He immediately seeks a definition of the sophist—or rather pursues a series of definitions, all of which are meant to bring out different facets of sophistic practice. He begins with general characterizations and then narrows each one down. He ends up with six definitions in all.[1] First, a sophist is a hunter of ambitious young men. Second, he is a wholesale purveyor of knowledge concerning excellence. Third, a sophist is concerned with making money from retail sale of the means of verbal combat. Fourth, he sells his own knowledge. Fifth, he is one who shows off his ability as a contentious argument. Finally, there is a respectable kind of sophistry in which the questioner helps the answerer to recognize his ignorance, and to purge himself from it.
This last version of sophistry is remarkable. Plato carefully explains it as a method of refuting someone who is ignorant by getting him to contradict himself. If it is done right, the person being examined realizes he did not know what he was talking about. The person then abandons the false beliefs he had held unreflectively, and becomes teachable. This process is a kind of cleansing or purging (katharsis) that is genuinely beneficial to the soul.[2]
The process Plato has just explained happens to be the Socratic method that we find Socrates himself practicing in Plato’s Socratic dialogues.[3] Socrates is a good sophist who genuinely helped the people he talked with, practicing a kind of intellectual therapy. While Plato endorses the Socratic method, here he seems to regard it as offering only a preliminary stage in the path to education. For Socrates, to eliminate false beliefs was to free the individual to embrace the true principles which he or she already knew. Unfortunately, the individual was likely to pick up false beliefs about right and wrong from other people, such as coming to believe that might makes right or that it is just to harm other people. Holding false beliefs caused the person to have inner contradictions that blocked the application of knowledge. Plato, however, does not seem to accept Socrates’ model of soul. He thinks that what is needed is not just a consistent set of true beliefs, but a direct insight into the reality that comes only from acquaintance with the transcendent Forms. Eliminating false beliefs enables you to progress toward understanding reality, but it is not sufficient by itself to ensure that you make the right judgments.
Here Plato seems to be relegating Socratic method to a valuable but subordinate position in philosophical education. First, we must rid the mind of false beliefs and at the same time the soul of delusions of wisdom. Then we must apply some other method, not yet explained, for leading the soul to philosophical knowledge and upright moral character. Plato seems to agree with Socrates that the ultimate goal is moral goodness. But the path to the goal will be longer than that envisaged by Socrates. Here, as presented in the drama, Socrates will be the listener—the learner, not the mentor. Socrates has brought us to the threshold of knowledge, but a stranger from Elea will lead us to the promised land.
[1] Plato Sophist details the definitions at 232c-e, reviewing the discussion starting at 221c. That there are six distinct definitions is unclear before the Visitor sums them up.
[2] Plato Sophist 230a-e.
[3] Plato reviews and analyzes the method in one early dialogue, the Gorgias: see Socrates ch. 31*.