文档介绍:SOPHIST
SOPHIST
By Plato
Translated by Benjamin Jowett
1
SOPHIST
INTRODUCTION AND
ANALYSIS.
The dramatic power of the dialogues of Plato appears to diminish as
the metaphysical interest of them increases (compare Introd. to the
Philebus). There are no descriptions of time, place or persons, in the
Sophist and Statesman, but we are plunged at once into philosophical
discussions; the poetical charm has disappeared, and those who have no
taste for abstruse metaphysics will greatly prefer the earlier dialogues to
the later ones. Plato is conscious of the change, and in the Statesman
expressly accuses himself of a tediousness in the two dialogues, which he
ascribes to his desire of developing the dialectical method. On the other
hand, the kindred spirit of Hegel seemed to find in the Sophist the crown
and summit of the Platonic philosophy--here is the place at which Plato
most nearly approaches to the Hegelian identity of Being and Not-being.
Nor will the great importance of the two dialogues be doubted by any one
who forms a conception of the state of mind and opinion which they are
intended to meet. The sophisms of the day were undermining philosophy;
the denial of the existence of Not-being, and of the connexion of ideas,
was making truth and falsehood equally impossible. It has been said that
Plato would have written differently, if he had been acquainted with the
Organon of Aristotle. But could anon of Aristotle ever have been
written unless the Sophist and Statesman had preceded? The swarm of
fallacies which arose in the infancy of mental science, and which was born
and bred in the decay of the pre-Socratic philosophies, was not dispelled
by Aristotle, but by Socrates and Plato. The summa genera of thought,
the nature of the proposition, of definition, of generalization, of synthesis
and analysis, of division and cross-division, are clearly described, and the
processes of induction and deduction are constantly employed in the