JILL GORDONtheir search lies in the diffi culty they face if they claim that the sophist
deals with false discourse or creates false images. Image-making, when
done according to the true proportions of the thing imitated, is simply
called “likeness-making” (eijkastikhvn), and the Stranger and Theaete-
tus accept this kind of image-making as, at the very least, neutral (235d).
But there is another category of image-making which produces appear-
ances, not likenesses, which is called “fantastic art” (fantastikhvn) and
contains an element of falsehood (236c), and this type of image-making
concerns the sophist. (Note that the discussion of the possibility of false
language is rooted fi rst in the possibility of false images. This under-
mines contemporary treatments of this dialogue that cast the problem
of not-being exclusively in terms of language, in terms of how false propo-
sitions can or cannot correspond to the world. Clearly it is not necessarily
or exclusively a problem of language that Plato is concerned with here,
since false images initiate the investigation.)^16
They therefore embark together on a mission the Stranger sets
for himself: “I shall have to... contend forcibly that after a fashion
not-being is and on the other hand in a sense being is not” (241d). The
larger aim here is to establish that discourse of all kinds—speech, opin-
ion, conceptualization, and image-making—participates both in being
and not-being. That is, discourse exists (participation in being) and yet
there is such a thing as negative and false discourse (participation in
not-being) which is distinguishable from positive or true assertion of
being. Without that, discourse, at least meaningful discourse, is impos-
sible. So the very existence of philosophical or any other type of mean-
ingful discourse depends on the mixture of being and not-being, and it
depends on the distinction between truth and falsity and the distinction
that parallels it between true likenesses and fantastic appearances.
In establishing that discourse is necessarily a mingling of being
and not being, the Stranger and Theaetetus now allow for the possibil-
ity of falsehood. So the position of the Stranger in the Sophist is consis-
tent with that espoused by Diotima in the Symposium, which places phi-
losophy in the position of medium between two worlds. In the former
case philosophy lies between being and not-being, and in the latter case
between the fullness of divine reality and the poverty of human want.
The possibility of falsehood that comes with the mingling of being and
not-being, while it certainly brings with it the promise of philosophical
discourse, carries with it signifi cant consequences.
Our object was to establish discourse [to;n lovgon] as one of our classes
of being. For if we were deprived of this, we should be deprived of
philosophy, which would be the greatest calamity; moreover, we must