A two-worlds, two-semantics interpretation of Plato’s Sophist

The avowed purpose of Plato’s Sophist is to characterize the sophist. In the first part of his book, Plato employs the method of divisions to obtain this characterization, and eventually arrives at the conclusion that the sophist is an imitator and that “there is an art, concerned with speeches, by which it is possible to beguile the young” (234c). From here it is short shrift to arrive at the problem of falsity. This problem is, I claim, the philosophical leitmotiv that drives the discussions in the second part of Plato’s Sophist (after 236d). One should be clear about what exactly this problem consists of. In the Sophist, Plato is not concerned with the problem of the meaningfulness of false statements concerning some high-minded realm of objects (e.g., forms) quite to the contrary (see the epilogue). Plato is concerned with falsity in ordinary statements. This is worth emphasizing: Plato’s main problem in the Sophist is to account for the meaningfulness of such simple and prosaic (false) statements as ‘Theaetetus is flying’ (263a). It is perplexing for the modern hears that ordinary statements like ‘Theaetetus is flying’ should pose a problem by the sole virtue of being false. Indeed, there must be something deeply wrong and misguided with doctrines that preclude the possibility of falsehoods in ordinary speech. Such doctrines were, however, common currency in Plato’s Athens among the sophists, and they can be traced to the stage influence of Parmenides. I call this influence the Parmenidean misconception. It turns out that it was not an easy task for Plato to break away from this misconception, as Plato himself was acutely aware. In fact, one of the two main characters of the Sophist, the Eleatic Stranger