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| 1642 | We must fight fiercely for knowledge, understanding and intelligence |
| Full Idea: We need to use every argument we can to fight against anyone who does away with knowledge, understanding, and intelligence, but at the same time asserts anything at all about anything. | |||
| From: Plato (The Sophist [c.358 BCE], 249c) | |||
| A reaction: Thus showing that reason is only central if you want to put a high value on it? |
| 1645 | The desire to split everything into its parts is unpleasant and unphilosophical |
| Full Idea: To try to set apart everything from everything is not only especially jangling, but it is the mark of someone altogether unmusical and unphilosophic. | |||
| From: Plato (The Sophist [c.358 BCE], 259e) |
| 1644 | Dialectic should only be taught to those who already philosophise well |
| Full Idea: The dialectical capacity - you won't give it to anyone else, I suspect, except to whoever philosophises purely and justly. | |||
| From: Plato (The Sophist [c.358 BCE], 253e) |
| 20478 | In discussion a person's opinions are shown to be in conflict, leading to calm self-criticism |
| Full Idea: They collect someone's opinions together during the discussion, put them side by side, and show that they conflict with each other at the same time on the same subjects.... The person sees this, gets angry at themselves, and calmer towards others. | |||
| From: Plato (The Sophist [c.358 BCE], 230b) | |||
| A reaction: He goes on to say that the process is like a doctor purging a patient of internal harms. If anyone talks for long enough (even a good philosopher), their opinions will probably be seen to be in conflict. But which opinions do you abandon? |
| 24280 | Changing things and change itself are part of being, since it has life and mind |
| Full Idea: Are we saying that [being] has intelligence, life, and soul, but that it's at rest and completely changeless even though it's alive? -That seems unreasonable - Then both that which changes and also change have to be admitted as being. | |||
| From: Plato (The Sophist [c.358 BCE], 249b) | |||
| A reaction: This is evidently a major change in later Plato, who earlier thought that only the eternal and unchanging Forms had true being. My own suspicion is that the young Aristotle knocked sense into him. Aristotle has potentiality as part of being. |
| 11278 | What does 'that which is not' refer to? |
| Full Idea: What should the name 'that which is not' be applied to? | |||
| From: Plato (The Sophist [c.358 BCE], 237c) | |||
| A reaction: This leads into a discussion of the problem, in The Sophist. It became a large issue when modern logic was being developed by Frege and Russell. |
| 1643 | If statements about non-existence are logically puzzling, so are statements about existence |
| Full Idea: When the question was put to us as to the name of 'that which is not', to whatever one must apply it, we got stuck in every kind of perplexity. Are we now in any less perplexity about 'that which is'? | |||
| From: Plato (The Sophist [c.358 BCE], 250d) | |||
| A reaction: Nice. This precapitulates the whole story of modern philosophy of language. What started as a nagging doubt about reference to non-existents ends as bewilderment about everything we say. |
| 7022 | To be is to have a capacity, to act on other things, or to receive actions |
| Full Idea: A thing really is if it has any capacity, either by nature to do something to something else or to have even the smallest thing done to it by the most trivial thing, even if it only happens once. I'll define those which are as nothing other than capacity. | |||
| From: Plato (The Sophist [c.358 BCE], 247e) | |||
| A reaction: If philosophy is footnotes to Plato, this should be the foundational remark in all discussions of existence (though Parmenides might claim priority). It seems to say 'to be is to have a causal role (active or passive)'. It also seems essentialist. |
| 1641 | Some alarming thinkers think that only things which you can touch exist |
| Full Idea: One group drags everything down to earth, insisting that only what offers tangible contact is, since they define being as the same as body, despising anyone who says that something without a body is. These are frightening men. | |||
| From: Plato (The Sophist [c.358 BCE], 246b) | |||
| A reaction: Intellectually speaking, Plato seems to have been rather timid. Dualism, and its world of ideas, seemed obvious to him, but physicalism is clearly more plausible in the age of neuroscience (even if it is still rejected). |
| 10784 | Whenever there's speech it has to be about something |
| Full Idea: Whenever there's speech it has to be about something. It's impossible for it not to be about something. | |||
| From: Plato (The Sophist [c.358 BCE], 262e) | |||
| A reaction: [Quoted by Marcus about ontological commitment] The interesting test case would be speech about the existence of circular squares. |
| 24281 | We divide things into kinds by expert dialectic |
| Full Idea: It takes expertise in dialectic to divide things by kinds and not to think that the same form is a different one or that a different form is the same. | |||
| From: Plato (The Sophist [c.358 BCE], 253d) | |||
| A reaction: That is, we don't invent the kinds and classifications, but decide them after a rigorous and critical search for the truth. |
| 16122 | Good thinkers spot forms spread through things, or included within some larger form |
| Full Idea: It takes dialectic to divide things by kinds...such a person can discriminate a single form spread through a lot of separate things…and forms included in a single outside form…or a form connected as a unit through many wholes. | |||
| From: Plato (The Sophist [c.358 BCE], 253d) | |||
| A reaction: [compressed] This is very helpful in indicating the complex structure of the Forms that Plato envisages. If you talk of the meanings of words (other than names), though, it comes to the same thing. Wise people fully understand their language. |
| 10422 | The not-beautiful is part of the beautiful, though opposed to it, and is just as real |
| Full Idea: So 'the not beautiful' turns out to be ..both marked off within one kind of those that are, and also set over against one of those that are, ..and the beautiful is no more a being than the not beautiful. | |||
| From: Plato (The Sophist [c.358 BCE], 257d) | |||
| A reaction: [dialogue eliminated] This is a highly significant passage, for two reasons. It suggests that the Form of the beautiful can have parts, and also that the negations of Forms are Forms themselves (both of which come as a surprise). |
| 15855 | If we see everything as separate, we can then give no account of it |
| Full Idea: To dissociate each thing from everything else is to destroy totally everything there is to say. The weaving together of forms is what makes speech [logos] possible for us. | |||
| From: Plato (The Sophist [c.358 BCE], 259e) | |||
| A reaction: This I take to be the lynchpin of metaphysics. We are forced to see the world in a way which enables us to give some sort of account of it. Our metaphysics is 'inference to the best logos'. |
| 1637 | A soul without understanding is ugly |
| Full Idea: The soul that lacks understanding must be set down as ugly. | |||
| From: Plato (The Sophist [c.358 BCE], 228d) | |||
| A reaction: The teleological view of things understands their nature in things of their perfection. and the essence of beauty is perfection. It is the mind's nature to know. Failing to know is as ugly as allowing your crops to die. |
| 1636 | Wickedness is an illness of the soul |
| Full Idea: Wickedness is a sedition and illness of the soul. | |||
| From: Plato (The Sophist [c.358 BCE], 228b) |
| 1638 | Didactic education is hard work and achieves little |
| Full Idea: With a lot of effort the admonitory species of education accomplishes little. | |||
| From: Plato (The Sophist [c.358 BCE], 230a) |