The Sophistes Of Plato

Plato's later dialogue, the Sophist, is deemed one of the greatest works in the history of philosophy, but scholars have been shy of confronting the central problem of the dialogue. For Plato, defining the sophist is the basic philosophical problem: any inquirer must face the 'sophist within us' in order to secure the very possibility of dialogue, and of philosophy, against sophistic counterattack. Examining the connection between the large and difficult philosophical issues discussed in the Sophist (appearance, image, falsehood, and 'what is not') in relation to the basic problem of defining the sophist, Dr Notomi shows how Plato struggles with and solves all these problems in a single line of inquiry. His interpretation of the whole dialogue finally reveals how the philosopher should differ from the sophist.

This volume reconstructs Martin Heidegger's lecture course at the University of Marburg in the winter semester of 1924-25, which was devoted to an interpretation of Plato and Aristotle. Published for the first time in German in 1992 as volume 19 of Heidegger's Collected Works, it is a major text not only because of its intrinsic importance as an interpretation of the Greek thinkers, but also because of its close, complementary relationship to Being and Time, composed in the same period. In Plato's Sophist, Heidegger approaches Plato through Aristotle, devoting the first part of the lectures to an extended commentary on Book VI of the Nichomachean Ethics. In a line-by-line interpretation of Plato's later dialogue, the Sophist, Heidegger then takes up the relation of Being and non-being, the ontological problematic that forms the essential link between Greek philosophy and Heidegger's thought.

Theaetetus, the Sophist, and the Statesman are a trilogy of Platonic dialogues that show Socrates formulating his conception of philosophy as he prepares the defense for his trial. Originally published together as The Being of the Beautiful, these translations can be read separately or as a trilogy. Each includes an introduction, extensive notes, and comprehensive commentary that examines the trilogy's motifs and relationships. "Seth Benardete is one of the very few contemporary classicists who combine the highest philological competence with a subtlety and taste that approximate that of the ancients. At the same time, he as set himself the entirely modern hermeneutical task of uncovering what the ancients preferred to keep veiled, of making explicit what they indicated, and hence...of showing the naked ugliness of artificial beauty."—Stanley Rose, Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal Seth Benardete (1930-2001) was professor of classics at New York University. He was the author or translator of many books, most recently The Argument of the Action, Plato's "Laws," and Plato's "Symposium," all published by the University of Chicago Press.

The Sophist sets out to explain what the sophist does by defining his art. But the sophist has no art. Plato lays out a challenging puzzle in metaphysics, the nature of philosophy, and the limitation of philosophy that is unraveled in this new and unconventional interpretation. The Sophist is presented now not as an artefact of the intellectual past or precursor of late 20th century philosophical theories, but as living philosophy. In a new translation and interpretation, this late dialogue is shown to be a defense of not a departure from Plato's metaphysics. The book is intended to provide a complete interpretation of Plato's Sophist as a whole. Central to the methodology adopted is the assumption that all elements of the dialogue to be understood must be understood in the context of the dialogue as a whole and in its relation to other works in the Platonic corpus.

Heidegger’s philosophy has an extraordinarily complex relationship to Plato. Heidegger sees Plato as the founder of that Western metaphysics which he claims should be overcome. However, his interpretation of Plato, upon which his reconstruction of the history of philosophy rests, is anything but incontestable from a philological point of view, and has generated much criticism. This criticism, however, has been hampered by the fact that the only example in Heidegger’s work of a detailed analysis of a Platonic dialogue, namely the Lectures on Plato’s Sophist held in Marburg in 1924–25, remained unpublished until 1992. Thus, only in the last twenty years have scholars been able to develop a more nuanced understanding of Heidegger’s interpretation of Plato. Even then, however, the focus has been primarily on the importance of the lectures for Heidegger’s own thought. The possible impact of Heidegger’s interpretation on the study of Platonic philosophy itself has been neglected. This volume, therefore, offers a critical re-evaluation of Heidegger as an interpreter of Plato.