Non-being is not the Difference, but Appearance
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14409/topicos.2024.46.e0081Keywords:
Not-being, Appearance, Phantasma, SophistAbstract
In this paper I would like to show that Plato wrote the Sophist in order to thematise a crucial issue, which in such a dialogue is problematised for the first time: being, the reality of things, does not present itself to us directly and clearly. In order to understand the reality of things, which seems evident, and instead escapes, it is necessary to chase it as one chases a prey that hides. If it is necessary to search for the being in order to catch it, it is because most of the time what we catch is not being, but appearance. The core of the Sophist - the section on the image - is devoted to the definition of the status of appearance. My point is that one cannot explain the nature of non-being without linking the discourse on non-being to the discourse on image. In the section on image the contradictory nature of the eidolon is presented. Here the Visitor acts as a spokesman for the sophist, who plays the role of questioner. In this section the sophist leads Theaetetus to admit that the image is not only not an entity but is the opposite of an entity (Sph. 240B5-6). When, in Sph. 257b3-4, the Stranger says that "when we say 'not being', we do not call something contrary to what is, but only different from being", he refers - by correcting him - to what the Sophist said in the aporetic section on the image. I believe that 'what is different from being' is precisely that appearance whose aporetic status was outlined in the section on the image. My thesis is that non-being is the phantasma, the fact that being gives itself to human perception not directly, not clearly, not truthfully, but in false guise.
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