3 - How the sophist appears

Summary

Defining the sophist

I have shown in the first two chapters that the basic philosophical problem in the Sophist is how to distinguish the sophist from the philosopher. Now let us begin to discuss how the Sophist investigates the basic problem.

The Eleatic visitor sets out to define the sophist by pointing out an indeterminacy in our understanding of the sophist. The dialogue starts the inquiry with an agreement that people share a common name:

[Passage 2: 218c1–5]

The Eleatic visitor: At present, what you and I possess in common concerning this (sc. sophist) is the name (onoma) alone, but each of us may perhaps understand privately the thing (or the activity, ergon)to which we give the name. Yet it is always necessary concerning everything to come to an agreement on the thing itself by means of definitions (or statements, dia logōn), rather than about names alone without definition.

In order to understand the meaning and the procedure of defining the sophist, we should look, to begin with, at the three methods employed in the dialogue: definition, use of models, and division.

The aim of definition is stated in Passage 2: that a definition (logos) should fix our understanding of an object to which a certain name (onoma) refers. Let us consider what role the three elements, that is, name (or word), object, and definition, play when we inquire into a definition of something.