One of the many fascinating ideas explored in Plato’s Sophist is the Stranger’s explanation of being relative-to through his account of the kinds being and difference in conjunction with the notions of capacity and combination, as well as what he invokes as the “forms” “itself by virtue of itself” and “relative to.” The discussion is remarkable in its clever use of an array of characters including Parmenides, the Pluralists, the Earthborn materialists, the Friends of the Forms, and the Late-learners to sort through a variety of challenging philosophical concerns, retaining what works while leaving behind what does not. The Stranger understands being as an intrinsic functional and structural dimension of all beings that makes them beings. Being just is capacity and the concurrent active “realizing” of capacity in “combinings” of forms with themselves and perceptibles. In lieu of an ontology of relations, there is an ontology of realizations of capacity relative to something. I show how this innovative account of a dynamic constellation of interwoven kinds and forms, where being and difference “go through all and each other,” provides a foundation for meaning, truth, and falsehood.

This chapter investigates the underappreciated influence of the Sophist on Plutarch’s cosmology. By analyzing various Plutarchean works (including De animae procreatione in Timaeo, De Iside et Osiride, De defectu oraculorum, and Adversus Colotem), it argues that Plutarch describes the ontological structure of the World-Soul in the Timaeus as an ‘imitation’ of the structure of intelligible being constituted by the Greatest Kinds in the Sophist. This reading positions the Sophist as a key text for understanding Plutarch’s Platonic metaphysics of the soul and, more broadly, some of the basic assumptions of Plutarch’s Platonism.

This chapter analyzes Plotinus’ connection of dialectic to grasping Intellect’s holistic unity. It examines how Ennead III 7 links the dialectical method to the unity of the Greatest Kinds, and how Ennead VI 7 redefines the roles of Sameness and Otherness within Intellect’s life. Plotinus presents Intellect as self-same yet generating internal otherness through division, offering an ‘inverted’ interpretation of the Sophist’s interweaving (συμπλοκή) of kinds.

This chapter argues for the Sophist’s background role in the genesis of the Stoic lekton. It shows the Stoics engaged critically with the ‘gigantomachy’, siding with the Giants by making bodies the sole beings, while introducing ‘something’ (τι) as a supreme genus. The chapter then explores how the Sophist’s question about sentence signification (261d–262e) likely prompted the Stoic reply that a sentence signifies an incorporeal axiōma, a proposition that subsists but may not hold.

This chapter analyzes Aristotle’s criticism of dichotomous division, focusing especially on the first Book of the De partibus animalium. It argues that Speusippus, not Plato, is the direct target of this criticism, but that Aristotle also indirectly addresses a Platonic norm of division, explicitly argued in the Statesman and plausibly applied in the Sophist. The chapter contends that Aristotle and the Academics shared a common agenda on cross-cutting divisions and establishing norms for discovering essences, even while fundamentally disagreeing on method.

By analysing surviving testimonies on the existence of a possible Commentary on the Sophist and some passages from Damascius’ Commentary on the Parmenides and Problems and Solutions, this chapter explores Damascius’ reading of the Sophist on not-being. It argues that Damascius, drawing on the Sophist, distinguishes not just two types of non-being but two types of nothingness. This nuanced interpretation, grounded in a close reading of the text, allows Damascius to offer a fresh interpretation of the ‘parricide’ of Parmenides, advancing the Neoplatonic discussion on nothingness.

The introduction provides some material data on the reception of the Sophist (including an overview of all the skopoi it was assigned and all the ancient commentaries on the dialogue the sources give us notice of), and a bird’s-eye view of some of the main themes and arguments featured in the dialogue, with the prospect of highlighting the main threads of its ancient fortune and providing a synopsis of the fourteen chapters constituting the volume

This chapter argues that the Sophist prompted the reflection of the Early Academics on at least two main fronts: (1) the elaboration of binary divisions of entities (Xenocrates, Hermodorus, divisiones aristoteleae, Aristotle’s On the Good); and (2) the critical reaction to Eleatic monism, as it emerges especially from Aristotle’s Metaphysics N 2. In doing so, the chapter also brings out ways in which this can shed light on aspects of the background of Aristotle’s ontology and theory of predication. It also discusses the problem, recently brought to scholarly attention, of the Early Academic composition of a textual canon functional to a work of systematization of Platonism.

This chapter shows that Aristotle’s discussion of being as truth and not-being as falsehood in Metaphysics Δ, E, and Θ is a sustained reflection on the Sophist’s account of falsehood and its analysis of categorial sentences; and that the Metaphysics responds to the Sophist on whether Motion-Itself and Knowledge-Itself exist among separate intelligibles, a point on which Plotinus would later defend the Platonic position against Aristotle.

Plotinus’ treatise 6.2 offers a metaphysical interpretation of the five greatest genera of Plato’s Sophist – being, motion, rest, sameness, and otherness – as fundamental constituents of the intelligible realm. This chapter connects Plotinus’ arguments to ancient debates on division. Plotinus holds that the greatest genera are both genera and causative principles within Intellect, while higher and lower levels of reality are homonymous and cannot be subsumed under a common genus. This view explains his focus on the Sophist, a dialogue concerned with both the division of beings (as in the Philebus) and the status of Forms as living beings (as in the Timaeus). The chapter further argues that Plotinus’ discussion likely influenced Porphyry’s lost commentary on the Sophist. Passages from the Isagoge and other works suggest that Porphyry adopted Plotinus’ idea of the genera as both genera and principles but extended it to higher and lower levels of the hierarchy. Thus, the greatest genera become principles not only of partial Forms but also of lower entities, a view later echoed by Simplicius in In Phys. 405.10–17.

Plotinus’ interpretation of Plato’s Sophist centers on the “greatest kinds”: Being, Motion, Rest, Identity, and Difference. Within his metaphysics of Intellect and intelligible Being, these kinds play a privileged role in expressing the unity of subject and object characteristic of the second hypostasis. This chapter examines Plotinus’ exegesis of the greatest kinds in On the Genera of Being (Enneads VI 1–3), focusing especially on VI 2, where the Platonic kinds are established as intelligible genera. Yet the entire tripartite treatise may be read as an interpretation of the ontological section of the Sophist. The critiques of Aristotelian and Stoic categories in VI 1 develop Plato’s rejection of pluralists and monists, while the principle that Being is both one and many reflects Plato’s search for an ontology avoiding both extremes. Plotinus’ derivation of the genera from the life and thought of Intellect, and his view of them as structural moments of self-thinking activity, rests on the claim that ‘Being in the full sense’ must possess life and thought. This principle underlies both Plotinus’ reading of the Sophist and his broader interpretation of Platonic metaphysics.

This chapter examines how Plutarch, in the De E apud Delphos, integrates the Sophist’s ontological distinction between true being and appearances with the Timaeus’ cosmology. It argues Plutarch that uses the Timaeus to answer the Sophist’s unresolved question about the ontological status of images, identifying the Sophist’s ‘that which perfectly is’ with the Demiurge. Thus, the dialogues are mutually illuminating and a genuine Platonic doctrine of the causes must take into account both.

Several aspects of Aristotle’s distinction of four types of opposites remain unclear, despite the familiarity of the distinction itself. This chapter sketches a story about some of those aspects as the result of Aristotle’s implicit but systematic engagement with Plato’s Sophist. The first section focuses on a passage from Metaph. XIV.2, which seems to refer to the Sophist and the way in which Plato discusses non-being there. I suggest, among other things, that the Sophist was read by Aristotle as embedding the ‘archaic’ mindset that eventually misled people into thinking of the opposition between being and non-being as a sort of categorial distinction between term-like items. The second section turns to illustrating how a series of remarks Aristotle drops at different places about negation, otherness, and the different types of opposites can be read as reactions to some of the things Plato writes in the Sophist. While the first section illustrates Aristotle’s take on the Sophist with respect to some basic metaphysical questions, the second section shows that points of detail in Aristotle’s account of the opposites can be taken as responses to the Sophist.

This chapter contrasts Porphyry’s and Iamblichus’ interpretations of the Sophist. Despite shared exegetical principles, they reached conflicting conclusions. Porphyry read the dialogue primarily logically, understanding division within that framework. Iamblichus offered a metaphysical reading, interpreting division as an imitation of procession from the One. Their disagreement over the statue-making example (φάντασμα) further reflects their divergent views on theurgy.

This chapter reassesses the evidence for connecting Xenocrates’ account of the World-Soul with the Greatest Kinds of the Sophist. It argues there are no solid grounds to attribute this exegetical strategy to Xenocrates, countering a tradition initiated by Plutarch. The findings support the view that the Early Academy primarily employed the Sophist for debates on classification, division, and genus–species relations, not in other contexts, including cosmological.

This chapter investigates whether Proclus employs a distinction akin to the Fregean subsumption/subordination distinction to cast light on puzzling claims in the Sophist, such as ‘Motion is at rest’. It argues that Proclus distinguishes predicates true of a Form’s nature from those true by participation to avoid contradiction. The chapter concludes that Proclus’ account, while ingenious, suffers from logical and ontological flaws, cautioning against its adoption for interpreting Plato.

This chapter examines Plato's treatment of technē through an important arc of late dialogues: Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman. This chapter advances the argument that philosophy is expected to be a technē in this series, but in fact multiple forms of it emerge: the technē of the Socratic elenchus and the technē of the method of division (which is termed Platonic/Eleatic dialectic). Midwifery, sophistry, and statesmanship are analyzed as examples that throw light on what it means for philosophy to be a technē. This chapter includes substantial discussions of second-order technai; good-directedness; and specialization.

This chapter evaluates the Life of Aesop as a fictional biography that traces Aesop’s rise from mute slave to celebrated orator, dramatizing a subversive educational trajectory. Through contests with slaveowners and sophists, Aesop acquires the rhetorical authority associated with elite paideia—yet weaponizes elementary techniques like gnome, chreia, and fable to challenge the prestige of rhetorical schooling. Special focus is given to Aesop’s divine acquisition of speech, his parody of the Platonic Phaedrus, and his schooling under the philosopher Xanthus. The chapter argues that the Life inverts the structure of the rhetorical curriculum: whereas fables were taught as preliminary exercises, Aesop reserves them for the height of his intellectual ascent, delivering animal tales before public assemblies as political counsel. In this way, the Life not only reclaims muthos as a legitimate form of public speech but also reimagines "fiction competence" as the true test of education.

The sophist Heliconius composed a chronological history that summarised events from Adam until Theodosius I. Although Heliconius was a Christian, extant fragments signal secular interests.