8. Resumption Of the Final Division (264c-268d)
The final division, as it is now recalled and completed, takes the form shown in Figure 9.
No longer is the initial distinction an opposition between speaking about and producing all things, as it was prior to the digression. Now, as in the preliminary divisions, it is between acquisitive and productive arts. It is no longer even conceivable that the division might fall within the form of acquisitiveness. In addition, the reference to selling has been removed, so all question of selfish motivation is now eliminated. Why should Plato have taken so much trouble to establish the sophist as acquisitive in all the preliminary divisions, only to end up looking for him in the form of productive arts? The stranger explains:
Figure 9
STRANGER : Did we not begin by dividing the productive and acquisitive arts from each other?
THEAETETUS : Yes.
STRANGER : And under acquisitive art the sophist showed himself to us in the arts of hunting, competition, commerce, and other such forms.
THEAETETUS : Absolutely.
STRANGER: But now, since the mimetic art has encompassed him, it is dear that we must first of all divide the productive art itself in two. (265a)
This is not sufficient grounds for removing the sophist from the acquisitive form, since division B (the commercial sophist) showed us that the productive art can reemerge within the acquisitive arts (step 5a) when the production is ultimately for the sake of gain, as it was for the sophists. If the sophist makes his products not because he sees such creativity as an intrinsic good, but rather because they are instrumental to profit,[50] then he belongs in the acquisitive class. He becomes an example of the sophist as a merchant who sells his own products (224d-e). There is thus no immediately clear reason why the stranger shifts the inquiry out of the sector within which all the preliminary divisions led us to believe the sophist is to be found. It is not a question we would need to worry about if the ensuing division led to a satisfactory definition of the sophist; but it doés not. The sophist is defined as (1) the maker of semblances rather than likenesses (step 4, 266d-e), (2) operating on the basis of opinion rather than knowledge of his subject (step 6, 267b-e), and (3) making his claims with irony (step 7, 268a). This definition gives rise to a number of serious questions.
Since the chief burden of the dialogue is to distinguish the sophist from the philosopher, how successfully can we differentiate them in terms of the above definition? If we look to the first of those three distinctions, the difference will be that the models (images) used by the philosopher will always be accurate (likenesses), and those Of the sophist inaccurate (semblances). But the difference between philosophy and sophistry is not that the former is always true and the latter always false. In that case a philosopher whose conceptions were not perfectly accurate would be nothing but a sophist; and a sophist who happened to give an accurate description of some state of affairs, when it suited his
[50] In the Republic Socrates shows that Thrasymachus's unjust person is unjust not by virtue of his knowledge of the principles of ruling, but because he uses that knowledge in the service of moneymaking (345c-346e).
purpose, would be a philosopher, however manipulative his intentions might be. The stranger's point would be more defensible if he meant that for the purposes of a sophist semblances are adequate , whereas for the purposes of a philosopher likenesses are necessary. But to introduce the notion of purpose, whether explicitly or implicitly, is to show that what really distinguishes the philosopher and the sophist are their values and goals, to which their "products" (likenesses or semblances) are only a means. In this way too the present definition misses what is essential. We shall return to this point.
If we try the second distinction, between knowledge and opinion, there will be an analogous distortion. The philosopher always knows what he is talking about, while the sophist has only an opinion. In that case, once again, there could be no such thing as a mistaken or even partially ignorant philosopher; he would be a sophist by definition. The Socrates of the aporetic dialogues, who frequently professes his ignorance (as he does again in the Theaetetus ) and even the Socrates of the Republic , who claims to have only opinion rather than knowledge of the good (506b-e), would be a sophist by definition. And any sophist who happened to have attained knowledge about his subject matter would be a philosopher, regardless of the use to which he put that knowledge. Neither of these criteria, whether taken singly or jointly, provides an adequate account of the essential difference between philosophy and sophistry.
The third distinction, in terms of irony, sounds more promising. To say that the sophist is ironic may seem to suggest that he is insincere and disguises his true intentions, in which case he might be using argument as a means to mercenary or political ends. But it turns out that this is not what the stranger means at all, for those who are characterized by irony are said to "have a great suspicion and fear that they are ignorant of the things that they give themselves the appearance of knowing in front of others." Their irony is thus a kind of modesty, remarkably like Socratic irony. The species with which they are contrasted, the counterpart of irony, is the simplicity (
tween them is whether they suspect and worry about this shortcoming or not. It is rather surprising that Plato places the sophists in the class of those who do have this suspicion and worry. For throughout the dialogues Plato portrays the sophists not only as makers of semblances, but as pleased with their calling, and as denying any ultimate distinction between knowledge and opinion—or, by extension, between likeness and semblance.[51] They are never depicted as suspecting, much less fearing, that they have only opinions when they ought to have knowledge. By endowing them with what is, in effect, Socratic irony (which in this case may be represented by the Socratic awareness of "knowing only that one does not know"), Plato prevents the present dichotomy, like the other two, from distinguishing between the sophist and Socrates, or any philosophers who are aware of their own limitations.[52]
However we interpret this species of irony, it must ultimately be the home of the philosopher as well as the sophist. At 268b the stranger asks whether the type of person that is isolated at step 8b is the wise man (
[51] Cf. 264a, where semblance is the product of opinion.
[54] Only in the Republic is it even hypothesized that philosophers might finally reach their goal of wisdom—and that hypothesis is always subservient to the attempt to envision the (perhaps unrealizable) perfectly just city, which by definition would have to have wise rulers.
tween the wise man and the philosopher in step 6, or collapse the distinction between the philosopher and the sophist in step 7. The only alternative would be to relegate the philosopher to those who are "simpleminded, believing that they know things about which they only have opinion."
The goal of the dialogue was to distinguish the sophist from the philosopher and the statesman (cf. 217a), but the final division has not succeeded in doing so. The definition of the sophist is too broad, because sometimes philosophers, too, (a) are forced to rely on opinion, (b) are then destined to produce semblances, and (c) because of this they will sometimes feel "a great suspicion and fear that they are ignorant of the things that they give themselves the appearance of knowing in front of others." The definition is also too narrow, because it is conceivable that sometimes sophists will (a) have knowledge of their subject, and (b) create a likeness of it; and (c) because of this, when they do produce semblances (which is most of the time) they will sometimes think they "know things about which they only have opinion." At most, the definition provides an initial basis for a distinction between the sophist and the philosopher, to the extent that it implies that for the sophist semblances are adequate, whereas the philosopher must strive for likenesses. But we can understand this difference in their "instruments" only if we understand the difference in their values and goals: only their end can explain their means. As I previously mentioned in section 4, in the Statesman (303b-c) the stranger will collapse the distinction between likeness and semblance, and describe as "sophists of sophists" all those who produce images of the uncodifiable "science of the mean." Since this does not distinguish between images as semblances and images as likenesses, even the philosopher, as defined above in terms of likeness making, would fit that description and be classed with the sophists. We will have to wait for the Statesman to hear the stranger's final word on the distinctions among sophistry, philosophy, and wisdom.
Although the sophist is never successfully distinguished from the philosopher, he is distinguished at least in a perfunctory way from the statesman. Theaetetus agrees that the person located under step 8a (making speeches) is a demagogue rather than a statesman, and that the sophist differs from the demagogue by employing the art of contradiction rather than extended speeches (268b-c). The distinction between the sophist and statesman is therefore only indirect, since they are not distinguished from each other but mutually from the demagogue; and indeed the distinction between the statesman and the demagogue is only
nominal, since Theaetetus does not explain in what way they differ from each other. The philosopher , on the other hand, is never even mentioned in the final division. The failure to differentiate the sophist not only from the statesman and the wise man, but also from the philosopher, is a serious shortcoming, and not only for reasons of definition. The difficulty of distinguishing between the philosopher and the sophist was a major factor in Socrates' conviction and execution (which was alluded to at the end of the Theaetetus , hence implicitly at the beginning of the Sophist , 216a); and this difficulty has been kept before our eyes throughout the dialogue. For example, (1) the philosopher, like the sophist in this dialogue, shows himself in a multitude of forms—one of which is that of the sophist (217c). (2) Both the philosopher (218d) and the sophist (221d) are depicted as hunters. (3) When the sophist (who makes inaccurate images, or semblances) is said to hide in an impenetrable place (236d, 238c), we find that the philosopher (who makes accurate images, or likenesses) is there with him. As we saw, the impenetrability is due to the nature of images in general (239d-240c, 241e, 264c), not of semblances in particular, and in one place they are referred to only as likenesses (240b). (4) The sophist resembles the Socratic philosopher as the wolf resembles the dog (231a). (5) Like the philosopher (cf. Theaetetus 146c-d), the sophist rejects strings of examples in place of definition (239d-240a).
However, not only does the final division never completely define the sophist in a wily that makes explicit how he differs from the philosopher; it is the only division in the dialogue in which we cannot even implicitly locate the distinction between the sophist and the Socratic philosopher. In division A's depiction of the sophist as a hunter of youths, step 10 distinguished the lover who hunts youths in order to give them something, from the person who hunts them in order to take something from them. If we divided 10a ("as a gift") along the same lines as 10b ("for remuneration"), the Socratic philosopher would be visible as one who teaches virtue as a gift rather than for financial reward. In division B the sophist is once more identified as a teacher of virtue (9b) for the sake of marketing (4b) rather than as a gift (4a). The Socratic philosopher could therefore be found by means of a parallel division within 4a, that is, as one who teaches virtue freely. In division C (step 9) the sophist is a verbal warrior engaged in eristic:
STRANGER : That which, within an art, argues both about justice itself and injustice and about all the others generally, are we not accustomed to call this eristic?
THEAETETUS : Of course.
STRANGER : Of eristic, one kind actually wastes money, and the other makes money.
THEAETETUS : Absolutely.
STRANGER : I suppose that the one that, through the pleasure of this pursuit, causes someone to neglect his affairs, and the style of which gives no pleasure to most of his listeners, is, in my opinion, called nothing other than loquacity.
THEAETETUS : That's more or less what it is said to be.
STRANGER : The opposite of this, which makes money from private eristic [is the sophist]. (225c-e)
As is often observed, the first of these subdivisions sounds very much like a satiric description of Socrates,[55] so here again the differentia between sophistry and Socratic philosophy would be the subordination of the former to personal gain. Division D distinguishes the two negatively, by showing that if we confine our attention to reason without reference to the acquisitive parts of the soul, only the philosopher and not the sophist will be found.
Not only is the sophist excluded from division D, but for another reason so is the Eleatic stranger's method, and noticing the reason for this will help us understand why, in the course of the employment of that method, the dialogue moves gradually from its Republic- like beginnings to its sterile conclusion.
It is worth noticing, in passing, that even if the final division is not successful in answering the original question of this dialogue (that of the fundamental difference between the sophist and the philosopher), it is successful in offering a plausible answer to the Theaetetus's question about the nature of knowledge—although it does so only implicitly. Since the difference between likeness and semblance is that the first is an accurate image of reality while the second is only specious, it is possible to define knowledge as the ability to produce likenesses of reality.[56] Those who have knowledge can infallibly distinguish between a likeness and a semblance, whereas those who are guided only by opinion cannot. The final division is also successful in giving a plausible answer to
[56] This does not mean that those with knowledge will always want to create a likeness, but only that they are able to do so.
the related question on which the Theaetetus finally foundered: the nature of epistemic logos. Such a logos would be a likeness in words (cf. subdivision vi), and the Sophist abounds with examples of this kind. I do not mean to suggest by this that the aporiae of the Theaetetus have thus been definitively resolved; I do not think that Plato regarded such questions as fully answerable. Consider, for example, the question of whether logos makes knowledge possible or knowledge makes logos possible—a question that haunts the dialogues from the Meno to the Theaetetus , and is in between laid to rest only provisionally by metaphors like "recollection." If logos makes knowledge possible, then we must be able to formulate a logos of something before we know that thing, which seems impossible. If, on the other hand, knowledge makes logos possible, then we must have knowledge before we can formulate a logos of that thing, in which case philosophical inquiry no longer seems possible. But even though the Sophist provides no definitive resolutions of such perplexities, and provides us with no model of knowledge that confronts the problem addressed by the doctrine of recollection (as the Statesman will do in the "method of paradigms," 277d-278e), our understanding of what is involved in the questions is raised to a higher level by virtue of the dialogue's focus on kinds rather than individuals.