
the philosophy of plato
59
contradiction-making, descended from an insincere kind of conceited mimicry, of
the semblance-making breed, derived from image-making, distinguished as a por-
tion, not divine but human, of production, that presents a shadow-play of words’.
This is, of course, a joke. The serious business of the dialogue is carried out on
the way. One line of thought runs as follows. Sophistry is bound up with false-
hood; but how is it possible to talk about falsehood without falling foul of the
revered Parmenides? To say what is false is to say what is not: does that mean that
it is tantamount to uttering Unbeing? That would be nonsense, for the reasons
Parmenides gave. Shall we be more careful, then, and maintain that to say what is
false is to say that what is, is not, or that what is not, is? Will this avoid Parmenides’
strictures?
We have to disarm Parmenides by forcing him to agree that what is not, in
some respect is, and what is, in a manner is not. Motion, for instance, is not rest;
but that does not mean that motion is not anything at all. There are many things
which even Being is not: for instance, Being is not motion and Being is not rest.
When we speak of what is not, we are not talking of Unbeing, the contrary of
Being; we are speaking simply of something which is different from one of the
things there are. The non-beautiful differs from the beautiful, and the unjust
differs from the just; but the non-beautiful and the unjust are no less real than the
beautiful and the just. If we lump together all the things which are non-something,
or unsomething, then we get the category of non-being, and this is just as real as
the category of Being. So we have blown open the prison into which Parmenides
had confined us.
We are now in a position to give an account of falsehood in thought and
speech. The problem was that it was not possible to think or say what was not,
because Unbeing was nonsense. But now that we have found that non-being is
perfectly real, we can use this to explain false thoughts and false sentences.
A typical sentence consists of a noun and a verb, and it says something about
something. ‘Theaetetus is sitting’ and ‘Theaetetus is flying’ are both sentences
about Theaetetus, but one of them is true and one false. They say different things
about Theaetetus, and the true one says a thing about him which is among the
things that he is, while the false one says a thing about him which is among the
things that he is not. Flying is not Unbeing, it is a thing that is – there is quite a
lot of it about – but it is a thing that is different from the things that Theaetetus
is, the things that can be truly said of Theaetetus.
This account of the falsehood of a false sentence can be adapted to fit false
thought and judgement also; for thinking is the silent inward utterance of the
mind, and judgement is the mental equivalent of assertion and denial. When we
speak of ‘seeming’ and ‘appearance’ we are referring to judgement which is caused
by the operation of the senses, and the same treatment is appropriate here too.
The line of thought we have followed is just one strand in a dense web of
argument in which the stranger seeks to trap the monists of his native city Elea.
AIBC03 22/03/2006, 10:38 AM59