Ex Nihilo

Abstract

In this paper, I analyze the connections between Plato’s Sophist and Gorgias’ On Not-Being or On Nature. I argue that the Sophist is best construed as a reaction to Gorgias’ oration, based on the dramatic context of the dialogue, hints in other dialogues, and the two works’ parallel argumentative concerns and structures. I further argue that this interpretation undermines some traditional claims about the Sophist, including the thesis that the Sophist marks a major revision or even abandonment of Plato’s earlier views. I then offer my own view that the dialogue is an exercise in intellectual purification, supporting this view with the dramatic elements of the Sophist. This view coheres well with my claim that Plato wrote the dialogue as a refutation of Gorgias and further supports my claims about developmental interpretations of the Sophist. Like many other Platonic dialogues, the Sophist displays a manifest concern for the question of what it means to be a philosopher. The Sophist is unique, however, in containing Plato’s longest sustained inquiry into what the philosopher is not—namely, a sophist. Plato’s portrayal of sophistry is, of course, more than a mere literary device for making the portrait of the philosopher clearer. Plato’s discussion of sophistry throughout the dialogues is intimately connected with the historical phenomenon of sophistry and its intellectual forefathers— particularly Gorgias. In fact, Plato polemically targets Gorgias and his teachings in twelve different dialogues. Given this conspicuous interest in Gorgias’ teachings, it is reasonable to assume that Plato read Gorgias’ widely known attack on Parmenidean philosophy, On Not-Being or On Nature. Therefore, in interpreting the Sophist, which deals extensively with Parmenides’ arguments, it would be prudent to investigate the connections between the philosophical content of the dialogue and Gorgias’ oration. In the following paper, I argue that one of Plato’s chief concerns in the Sophist is the refutation of the arguments found in Gorgias’ On Not-Being. I will first cite evidence in favor of this view, drawing from other dialogues as well as the dramatic elements in the Sophist itself. I will then show how the specific arguments in On Not-Being are both appropriated and addressed in the Sophist. Afterwards, I will show how my view informs 1 An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Steven Humphrey Student Philosophy Colloquium at University of Louisville on November 12, 2010, under the title “Plato contra Gorgias: Gorgias’ On Not-Being and the Philosophical Context of the Sophist.” Another early draft was presented under its current title at the SUNY Oneonta 16 Annual Undergraduate Philosophy Conference, which occurred April 28-30, 2011. 2 For a list of these occurrences, see Scott Consigny, Gorgias: Sophist and Artist (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2001), 37, and especially 217n. 5. Note that not all of these occurrences explicitly mention Gorgias by name. 3 For a discussion of the popularity of Gorgias’ tract, see Steve Hays, “On the Skeptical Influence of Gorgias’s On Non-Being,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 28 (1990): 327-337 (especially pp. 329-331 and 333-335). Hays points to Isocrates’ casual (but highly critical) allusions to On Not-Being and Aristophanes’ parody of On Not-Being in his Thesmophoriazuse (discussed below) as evidence that it could function as a paradigmatic example of philosophical and skeptical excesses. Hays argues that many Athenians were familiar with even the details of Gorgias’ arguments, to the point that “it seems virtually certain that Plato encountered people... who challenged his views with skeptical arguments learned from [On Not-Being]” (ibid., 335).