Being and the Philosopher’s Object in Plato’s Sophist

Abstract

In the Sophist, Plato claims that the philosopher is always engaged through reasonings with the idea tou ontos (254a4–b1). I argue that, contrary to appearances and to what various commentators believe, this phrase does not refer to the Kind Being singled out in the Sophist as one of the so-called ‘greatest’ or ‘most important’ Kinds, but to the whole intelligible realm. The proposed reading better accounts for Plato’s exact wording at Sophist 254a4–b1 and preserves the consistency of Plato’s view on the object of philosophical knowledge. I conclude with some broader considerations on the relationship between this passage, Platonic dialectic and Aristotle’s conception of a science of being qua being.