HOMERIC Mevqodo~ IN PLATO’S SOCRATIC DIALOGUESthem to believe that the gods, as well as being always good, are constant
and always the same.^16 But at the beginning of the Sophist Socrates uses
this same passage, where it functions both as his introductory, playful
challenge to Theodorus and to the Eleatic Stranger, and as his bridge
to the central philosophical issue that will drive the dialogue. When
Theodorus and the Stranger, who is “a companion of the people around
Parmenides and Zeno” (216a3), arrive for their appointment, Socrates
asks Theodorus whether he realizes that he has brought some god (tina
qeo;n): “Beside the other gods the god of strangers especially becomes
a companion to those men who participate in just reverence,” and he
“looks down on both outrages and lawful conduct” (216b1– 2).
The ironic play consists of Socrates’ denigrating his own skill in
lovgo~ without having heard a word from the Stranger. Here the pre-
viously banned passage is readmitted as a philosophical provocation,
a stimulant to the activity of lovgo~ and the determination of its mea-
sure. Theodorus’ answer, that the Stranger is not a god (qeo;~) but god-
like (qeio~) as all philosophers are, meets with Socrates’ approval. The genuine uJpovnoia of the poetic image, however, is the matter of the self- concealment of the true being of a human being, in this case the ap- pearance of the philosopher and of the sophist in the city. In the case of the philosopher in the city, his or her true being appears in three guises, stated a bit differently on two early occasions: statesman, sophist, and madman; statesman, sophist, and philosopher. Thus, just as one must take great care not to abuse a god who might be appearing in a transformed human shape lest one be the ob- ject of divine retribution, one must also be most mindful if one wishes to distinguish a genuine philosopher from one of the misleading ap- pearances of philosophy in the city and in order to protect one’s soul from bad rearing. Since “philosopher” is one of the appearances, but there are also “artifi cial [plastw~]... philosophers” (216c6) ( just as
there are madmen who are entirely non-philosophical), the task of dis-
tinguishing “being” from “appearance” can be a daunting one.
This paper clearly does not call for an extended interpretation of
the Sophist. My opinion is that despite many epochal insights, many blind
alleys, and many suggestive pathways that deserve further exploration
on their own, the effort to distinguish the philosopher from the soph-
ist fails ultimately because the silence of Socrates after the dialogue’s
opening leaves the Stranger and young Theaetetus not as “two going
together” so that two minds are better than one, as the Homeric image
sings. Rather, the terms dictated by the Stranger—either an uninter-
rupted long speech or, best of all, a conversation with someone “unir-
ritating and compliant” (a;luvpw~ te kai; eujhnivw~), rest r ict t he outcome