SOPHIST by Plato - Complete text

Page 63

Str. What then shall we call it?

Theaet. Clearly, not - being; and this is the very nature for which the Sophist compelled us to search.

Str. And has not this, as you were saying, as real an existence as any other class? May I not say with confidence that not - being has an assured existence, and a nature of its own? just as the great was found to be great and the beautiful beautiful, and the not - great not - great, and the not - beautiful not - beautiful, in the same manner not - being has been found to be and is not - being, and is to be reckoned one among the many classes of being. Do you, Theaetetus, still feel any doubt of this?

Theaet. None whatever.

Str. Do you observe that our scepticism has carried us beyond the range of Parmenides' prohibition?

Theaet. In what?

Str. We have advanced to a further point, and shown him more than he for bad us to investigate.

Theaet. How is that?

Str. Why, because he says - -

Not - being never is, and do thou keep thy thoughts from this way of enquiry. -

Theaet. Yes, he says so.

Str. Whereas, we have not only proved that things which are not are, but we have shown what form of being not - being is; for we have shown that the nature of the other is, and is distributed over all things in their relations to one another, and whatever part of the other is contrasted with being, this is precisely what we have ventured to call not - being.

Theaet. And surely, Stranger, we were quite right.

Str. Let not any one say, then, that while affirming the opposition of not - being to being, we still assert the being of not - being; for as to whether there is an opposite of being, to that enquiry we have long said good - bye - it may or may not be, and may or may not be capable of definition. But as touching our present account of not - being, let a man either convince us of error, or, so long as he cannot, he too must say, as we are saying, that there is a communion of classes, and that being, and difference or other, traverse all things and mutually interpenetrate, so that the other partakes of being, and by reason of this participation is, and yet is not that of which it partakes, but other, and being other than being, it is clearly a necessity that not - being should be. again, being, through partaking of the other, becomes a class other than the remaining classes, and being other than all of them, is not each one of them, and is not all the rest, so that undoubtedly there are thousands upon thousands of cases in which being is not, and all other things, whether regarded individually or collectively, in many respects are, and in many respects are not.

Theaet. True.

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