Sophist

The day after the Theaetetus, a visitor from Elea, a follower of Parmenides, sets out with the young Theaetetus to define the sophist, the paid teacher of argument, by a method of division, splitting kinds into smaller and smaller kinds. The search leads to a deep problem: how is it possible to say what is false, to speak of what is not? To solve it, the stranger must commit a kind of 'parricide' against Parmenides and show that what is not, in some sense, is.

Written in Plato's later years, the dialogue is one of his most difficult and influential works on language and being. This is Benjamin Jowett's Victorian translation. Read Theaetetus, Statesman and Parmenides.

Plato (c. 428–348 BC) was born into an aristocratic family in Athens and became the devoted student of Socrates. After his teacher's trial and execution in 399 BC, he travelled, returned to Athens and founded the Academy, a school that lasted for centuries and counted Aristotle among its students.

Almost all his writings are dialogues in which Socrates questions his fellow citizens about justice, love, knowledge and the soul, from the Apology to the Symposium and the Republic. Known to Arab philosophers as Aflatun, he was read closely by al-Farabi and Ibn Rushd, and Western philosophy has been called a series of footnotes to him.