The Sophist of Plato

The Greek notion of the “sophist” might seem antiquated or meaningless, until we look at the world we are living in: a world of images, counterfeits, and false appearances, starting even with our own, a world where money has become the criterion for all other values and deceptive advertisement the pinnacle of commercial astuteness, where expressing opinions has become tantamount to liberty, where all dialogue becomes debate, while debate is reduced to a mere spectator sport. Living in such a world is leading us to mistrust language and to deny its potential for truth. Plato’s Sophist is nothing less than an attempt to save language and its truth, by anchoring it in being. This recent translation and commentary by Monique Dixsaut of the Sorbonne, newly translated from the French by Kenneth Quandt, aims to show how Plato’s bold project makes his Sophist the most radical and most exciting of all the dialogues, and how it remains relevant today.