The Sophist of Plato: A Translation and Commentary

In this mature dialogue Plato takes great pains to nail down what a sophist really is, since he finds the sophist a dangerous individual. But is the sophist so for us? The term has fallen into disuse as if obsolete. We might find in Plato's attempt neither urgency nor even interest, unless...

... unless we ask ourselves how we have become inured to living in a world devoted to a cult of images, counterfeits, and appearances, starting even with ourselves? A world where money has become the criterion for all other values and misrepresenting merchandise is the pinnacle of commercial astuteness?

Where we are no longer shocked by the commodification of culture, where expressing opinions has become synonymous with liberty, where all dialogue becomes debate and all debate a spectacle for its own sake? What is worst is that all this is leading us fundamentally to mistrust language and to deny it any possibility of being true. But in the Sophist it is no less than language and its truth that Plato sets out to save, by anchoring it in being; and thereby he becomes able to deal with the most redoubtable of difficulties.

For these reasons the Sophist is without doubt the most radical and the most thrilling of all the Dialogues of Plato.