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The Sophist

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Translated by Thomas Taylor.

In Plato’s time, as today, there were many who offered – for a price – clever theories and systems which purported to be deep insights into reality: the men who did so were known as ‘the wise’ – sophists. In the whirl of theorising which was especially the mark of classical Athens, it was easy to see Socrates, Plato’s teacher, as just another sophist. This dialogue examines more carefully this misconception, and asks important questions – how can false opinions exist? What is the nature of images? Can there be degrees of reality? What exactly do sophists do? What is the difference between ‘the wise’ and ‘those who love wisdom’ (in other words between clever sophists and truth-honouring philosophers)? Such questions are as relevant today as they were two and half thousand years ago.

Plato’s Sophist is a dialogue which is key to the understanding of Platonic metaphysics and dialectics: its traditional subtitle is ‘On Being.’ Thomas Taylor's translation was first published in 1804 as part of his Works of Plato, the first ever complete translation of Plato into English.

This Students’ Edition volume has extensive notes to help those coming anew to the Sophist to grasp some of the important concepts which stand behind the dialogue. Also added is an extract from Proclus "On Forms, Reasons and Dialectic" (from his Commentary on the Parmenides); a dissertation, On Ideas, by Thomas Taylor; and two modern essays which hopefully will further the understanding of the newcomer to Plato and his tradition.

176 pages. Paperback.

ISBN 9781898910930.

  • About the Series

    The Prometheus Trust’s Students’ Edition Series offers to the newcomer to the Platonic tradition a number of introductory works. The Series is aimed at introducing philosophy within the framework of its original purpose – which was nothing less than the unfolding of the soul’s powers, the conjoining of the inner and outer life, and the restoration of the soul herself to her divine source. Philosophy as practised by its founders was a yoga of enlightenment, and constituted a most beautiful and well-ordered path towards the very highest goal of human existence – friendship with divinity.

    The Series is produced because that original yoga is still the most sure and direct path to human happiness – both in terms of the individual and for human society as a whole. As Thomas Taylor writes at the beginning of his General Introduction to the Philosophy of Plato,

    “It may be compared to a luminous pyramid, terminating in Deity, and having for its basis the rational soul of man and its spontaneous undistorted conceptions, - of this philosophy, august, magnificent, and divine, Plato may be justly called the primary leader and hierophant, through whom, like the mystic light in the inmost recesses of some sacred temple, it first shone forth with hidden and venerable splendour.”

    The tradition has nourished men and women through the ages as they pursued the ways of wisdom and they, in their turn, added to that tradition, adapting its immutable truths to the needs of their own times. In that spirit, the Prometheus Trust offers this Series, not as a final answer to our quest, but as another small light on a long and arduous path which constitutes the life of soul as she plays her part in the divine cosmos.

    See all Students' Editions