Sophist

Introduction

A stranger from Elea leads this conversation while Socrates listens. To define the sophist, the stranger divides one class after another, until he runs into a great difficulty: to speak falsely is to say what is not, and how can what is not be said at all? To solve it he must commit 'parricide' against his intellectual father Parmenides, showing that not-being in some sense is, and setting out the doctrine of the greatest kinds. The Sophist is at the heart of Plato's late thinking about being.