ABSTRACT
In the Sophist Plato sorts out, once and for all, the problems about falsehood that still lingered in the Theaetetus. His strategy is one of unite and conquer. What has made falsehood so problematic hitherto is, he suggests, the fact that it has been treated in isolation. We have thought that not being was uniquely difficult to understand, not realising how wrong we are to think that we understand being (243 b 7 - c 5, 245 e 8 - 246 a 2). Once however we realise that both being and not being should by rights be found equally difficult, we will be able co make progress (250 e 5 - 251 a 3). Plato thus examines all the many and diverse questions and answers about being that were bequeathed hirn by his philosophical predecessors. How many things are there? Just one? Just two? Or more? What sorts of things are there? Only changing and tangible things? Only changeless and intangible ones? Or are there things of both sorts? If we are to speak and think at all, argues Plato, we must acknowledge the existence of many things, both tangible and intangible. Above all, we must acknowledge the existence of the five Greatest Kinds: Change, Rest, Being, Same and Other. By the end of Sophist 255 those kinds have been isolated and distinguished from one another. Plato thereupon puts them to work. He starts co explore some of the connections between them, and in so doing solves the problem of how we can speak of that which is not.
