Dialogo Tra Essere E Nulla

DIALOGUE BETWEEN BEING AND NOTHINGNESS

"Part One" outlines the ontological reflection in Plato's dialogue *The Sophist*. Contrasting with the sophists, Plato defends dialectics as superior to rhetoric. The text focuses on the pursuit of universal and stable knowledge, criticizing sophistic relativism and Heraclitean becoming. Plato also transcends Parmenidean theories of being and non-being, seeking a synthesis between opposites such as unity and multiplicity. The aim is to establish a concept of being that transcends dichotomies. The text analyzes the underlying intentions in Plato's dialogue, proposing a new vision of being.
2023

Review by Beatrice

Review by Beatrice

**FIRST PART** Philosophy has always dealt with ontology, that is, the essential aspects of being. *The Sophist*, a dialogue representing one of the pivotal points in the development of Platonic thought, seeks to examine whether there exists a knowledge that is superior, different, and distinct from mere opinions. It is from this need that the necessity emerges to construct a philosophical and even political program, in opposition to the sophists—masters of opinion, rhetoric, and disenchantment—by advocating for dialectics as a presumed and superior capacity to reason and engage the spirit in dialogue. This dialogue is certainly among Plato's later writings and can be precisely situated between *Theaetetus*, of which it is a continuation, and *The Statesman*, with which it is closely connected in both time and content. Plato’s effort is to combat the presumed sophistic indifference to the content of thought, which favors moral and political subjectivism and cognitive relativism, leading to the overestimation of rhetoric at the expense of dialectics. From the process of ascending from the many to the one, from the sensible to the intelligible, outlined in *The Republic* through the myth of the cave, the diairetic method of *The Sophist* emphasizes the reverse process: the descending journey from the one to the many through distinctions and classifications. Thus, we may choose the single path of the process, which unfolds on two levels: - An ascending path that leads to the synoptic vision of being, of the whole; - A descending path, where thought, confident in the unity it has achieved, can then return to justify the premises that led to the vision of the whole. This entire journey constitutes the path of dialectics. *Parmenides*, *Theaetetus*, *The Sophist*, and *The Statesman* are dialogues that revisit a challenging dialectical re-examination. *The Sophist* is a complex dialogue, filled with tension arising from the convergence of fundamental lines of Platonic speculation and all preceding Greek thought: - Parmenidean, static, and idealistic on one side, - Heraclitean, dynamic, and materialistic on the other. By revisiting the sophists’ relativistic subjectivism and Heraclitus's concept of becoming, Plato concludes that such approaches fail to rise above individual utility, to achieve a universal moral character, or to reach a stable form of knowledge. However, Plato does not stop there and surprisingly also critiques Parmenides’ theories of being (what is) and non-being (what is not), which imply the denial of the becoming of things. At this point, one may ask about Plato's intentions, which we will explore through the examination of the text. Delving into it, it will be fascinating to seek the underlying purpose of the Platonic dialogue. In preview, one might say that “the new being will neither be Parmenides’ absolute being nor Heraclitus’s becoming. It will transcend these two dogmatic positions and present itself, as it logically must after the discussion in *Parmenides*, as a being that is correlative between the two opposing positions: unity and multiplicity, stasis and motion, sameness and otherness...” (E. Paci, *The Significance of Parmenides in Plato's Philosophy*, Milan, Bompiani, 1988).

17-Jul-2023 by Beatrice