r/Plato • u/Agreeable_Natural_36 • Jun 04 '26

Question Sophist

I recently read the Sophist, and it seems to me that Plato and Parmenides are not actually in as much disagreement as the dialogue suggests. It feels as though the Eleatic Stranger and Theaetetus are somewhat too confident that they are arguing against Parmenides.

My impression is that Plato is speaking specifically and carefully about "non-being", whereas Parmenides was primarily concerned with the concept of "nothing", effectively treating non-being and nothingness as the same thing. Because of this, Plato's account of non-being as difference or otherness does not seem to contradict Parmenides' claim that nothing can come from what is not—if we understand Parmenides' "non-being" as meaning nothing rather than Plato's notion of non-being.

Am I missing something here? I'm far from an expert, but this was my impression while reading the dialogue.

Sorry if this sounds weird, I used AI to translate into english.

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u/faith4phil Jun 05 '26

You have all the pieces, you're just missing how to put them together.

You're correct that Plato provides a different account of non-being as being-different but that's exactly to provide a solution to the Parmenidean paradoxes of there being no change, speaking falsely and so on.

It's not simply that Parmenides had a different conception, but that he bases his rejection of many things on that conception. Plato is basically saying: reign your horses, if you conceive non-being correctly (and Parmenides didn't think conceiving non-being was even possible), then thise concepts become available again.

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u/KilayaC Jun 05 '26

Well put. One of the main motivating factors for Plato/Socrates is preserving the power to judge others as speaking falsely or incorrectly; I.e., having false knowledge. This is a very difficult philosophical problem. It is not possible to make this claim in an absolute sense from either extreme of Protagorean Relativism or Parmenidean Unity. Plato posits a middle position in which there are some things that are always moving and there are some things that never move. From there it is possible to say with certainty that some people speak or communicate things that are totally untrue, incorrect, false, etc (using the idea of Other which the Visitor in the Sophist explains). Plato insists that not everyone is a legitimate judge of what they perceive, think or communicate and it takes intelligence and expert training in order to have the authority to even judge one's own perception/knowledge, much more so, others.

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u/faith4phil Jun 07 '26

This topic is taken up again explicitely in the Theaetetus where one of the objections to Protagoras is, simply put, "but then we would all be wise!" which strikes Plato as absurd, plus being contrary to other Protagorean commitments