Note 24 — Chapter XXIX · SOPHISTES — POLITIKUS.

Compare Politikus, p. 266 D; Parmenidês, p. 130 E.

We see that Plato has thus both anticipated and replied to the objection of Socher (Ueber Platon’s Schriften, pp. 260-262), who is displeased with the minuteness of this classification, and with the vulgar objects to which it is applied. Socher contends that this is unworthy of Plato, and that it was peculiar to the subtle Megaric philosophers.

I think, on the contrary, that the purpose of illustrating the process of classification was not unworthy of Plato; that it was not unnatural to do this by allusion to vulgar trades or handicraft, at a time when no scientific survey of physical facts had been attempted; that the allusion to such vulgar trades is quite in the manner of Plato, and of Sokrates before him.

Stallbaum, in his elaborate Prolegomena both to the Sophistês and to the Politikus, rejects the conclusion of Socher, and maintains that both dialogues are the work of Plato. Yet he agrees to a certain extent in Socher’s premisses. He thinks that minuteness and over-refinement in classification were peculiarities of the Megaric philosophers, and that Plato intentionally pushes the classification into an extreme subtlety and minuteness, in order to parody their proceedings and turn them into ridicule. (Proleg. ad Sophist. pp. 32-36, ad Politic. pp. 54-55.)

But how do Socher and Stallbaum know that this extreme minuteness of subdivision into classes was a characteristic of the Megaric philosophers? Neither of them produce any proof of it. Indeed Stallbaum himself says, most truly (Proleg. ad Politic. p. 55) “Quæ de Megaricorum arte dialecticâ accepimus, sane quam sunt paucissima”. He might have added, that the little which we do hear about their dialectic, is rather adverse to this supposed minuteness of positive classification, than consonant with it. What we hear is, that they were extremely acute and subtle in contentious disputations — able assailants of the position of a logical opponent. But this talent has nothing to do with minuteness of positive classification: and is even indicative of a different turn of mind. Moreover, we hear about Eukleides, the chief of the Megaric school, that he enlarged the signification of the Summum Genus of Parmenides — the Ἓν καὶ Πᾶν. Eukleides called it Unum, Bonum, Simile et Idem Semper, Deus, &c. But we do not hear that Eukleides acknowledged a series of subordinate Genera or Species, expanding by logical procession below this primary Unum. As far as we can judge, this seems to have been wanting in his philosophy. Yet it is exactly these subordinate Genera or Species, which the Platonic Sophistês and Politikus supply in abundance, and even excess, conformably to the precept laid down by Plato in the Philêbus (p. 14). The words of the Sophistês (p. 216 D) rather indicate that the Eleatic Stranger is declared not to possess the character and attributes of Megaric disputation.