Note 136 — Chapter XXIX · SOPHISTES — POLITIKUS. (continued 2)

Socher, p. 266; Schleiermacher, Einleitung zum Sophistes, p. 134; Cousin, Œuvres de Platon, vol. xi. 517, notes.

Schleiermacher gives this as little more than a conjecture; and distinctly admits that any man may easily suppose the doctrine ascribed to these Friends of Forms to be Plato’s own doctrine — “Nicht zu verwundern wäre es, wenn Mancher auf den Gedanken käme, Platon meinte hier sich selbst und seine eigene Lehre,” &c.

But most of the subsequent critics have taken up Schleiermacher’s conjecture (that the Megarici are intended), as if it were something proved and indubitable.

It is curious that while Schleiermacher thinks that the opinions of the Megaric philosophers are impugned and refuted in the Sophistês, Socher fancies that the dialogue was composed by a Megaric philosopher, not by Plato. Ueberweg (Aechtheit der Platon. Schr. pp. 275-277) points out as explicitly as Socher, the discrepancy between the Sophistês and several other Platonic dialogues, in respect to what is said about Forms or Ideas. But he draws a different inference: he infers from it a great change in Plato’s own opinion, and he considers that the Sophistês is later in its date of composition than those other dialogues which it contradicts. I think this opinion about the late composition of the Sophistês, is not improbable; but the premisses are not sufficient to prove it.

My view of the Platonic Sophistês differs from the elaborate criticism on it given by Steinhart (Einleitung zum Soph. p. 417 seq.) Moreover, there is one assertion in that Einleitung which I read with great surprise. Steinhart not only holds it for certain that the Sophistes was composed after the Parmenidês, but also affirms that it solves the difficulties propounded in the Parmenidês — discusses the points of difficulty “in the best possible way” (“in der wünschenwerthesten Weise” (pp. 470-471).

I confess I cannot find that the difficulties started in the Parmenidês are even noticed, much less solved, in the Sophistês. And Steinhart himself tells that the Parmenidês places us in a circle both of persons and doctrines entirely different from those of the Sophistês (p. 472). It is plain also that the other Platonic commentators do not agree with Steinhart in finding the Sophistês a key to the Parmenidês: for most of them (Ast, Hermann, Zeller, Stallbaum, Brandis, &c.) consider the Parmenidês to have been composed at a later date than the Sophistês (as Steinhart himself intimates; compare his Einleitung zum Parmenides, p. 312 seq.). Ueberweg, the most recent enquirer (posterior to Steinhart), regards the Parmenidês as the latest of all Plato’s compositions — if indeed it be genuine, of which he rather doubts. (Aechtheit der Platon. Schrift. pp. 182-183.)

M. Mallet (Histoire de l’École de Megare, Introd. pp. xl.-lviii., Paris, 1845) differs from all the three opinions of Schleiermacher, Ritter, and Socher. He thinks that the philosophers, designated as Friends of Forms, are intended for the Pythagoreans. His reasons do not satisfy me.