being and power in plato's sophist

Being and Power in Plato's Sophist1Fiona Leigh

What should we make of the passage in the Sophist at 247d-e, in whichthe Eleatic Stranger declares that being is whatever has the power (du-namis) to act or be affected, even if only once, in the smallest way? Doesthis proposal about being — the 'dunamis proposal'2 — express the viewof the Stranger's interlocutors, the giants, or is the Stranger speakingin his own voice and so representing Plato's view?3 If the latter, howcould the proposal be seen to survive the encounter with the 'friends ofthe Forms', and be applicable to immutable Forms? Is the employmentof 'horos' and 'horizein' at 247e3 meant to indicate that a mere mark ofbeing is offered in the proposal, or the very definition of being? Howthese questions are answered determines what role, if any, one takes thedunamis proposal about being to play in the later constructive part ofthe dialogue, in which the Form, Being, takes centre stage.

Contemporary readers of the dialogue have argued either that theStranger is simply articulating the giants' ontology in the dunamis pro-

I am grateful to M.M. McCabe, Lesley Brown, Richard Sorabji, Dirk Baltzly, JohnBigelow, David Sedley, Myles Bumyeat, Nick Denyer, the audience at a meeting ofthe B Club, Cambridge, an anonymous reviewer for Apeiron, and especially PeterAdamson for comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper. The mis-takes that inevitably remain are of course entirely my own.

L. Brown, 'Innovation and Continuity: The Battle of Gods and Giants', 181-207, at184ff

Although it has been recently challenged, the orthodox position, that providedone proceeds with care one can read off Plato's position — however partial andprovisionary — from the views expressed by the main character of a dialogue,remains, and I shall assume it here. (For the case pro, see D. Sedley, Plato's Cratylus,1-2; M. Frede, "The Literary Form of the Sophist', 142,150-1. For the case contra, seee.g., R. Blondell, The Play of Character in Plato's Dialogues, 18-21.)

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64 Fiona Leigh

posal, or that he is presenting his own (and so Plato's) view of a markor criterion of being, though not one that is significant to the puzzlesabout being and not-being from 254c onwards. An alterative reading isthat Plato endorsed the dunamis proposal and subsequently developedit and put it to work in the later sections of the dialogue. In this papermy aim is to show that the case for this alternative view is considerablystronger than has generally been supposed, and moreover, to suggestthat the proposal expresses a definition of being. I shall argue that in theSophist Plato has the Stranger forge the definition — that whatever hasthe power to act or be affected is a being — by distinguishing relationsof causation (or poiesis) from relations of change.

1 The proposal and its provenance

In the middle section of the Sophist, the Stranger conducts a series ofconversations with imaginary metaphysicians about their respectiveaccounts of being or reality, each of which ends badly for his fictionalinterlocutors. When the Stranger's questioning of the 'gentle' giants'account of being leaves these characters in speechless bewilderment,he suggests to Theaetetus that 'if they are in such a state [of aporia],consider whether they would be willing to accept and agree with ourproposal, that being is the following:' (247d5-6)4

I say that anything that has by nature any power at all — whether toact on some other thing or to be affected by the most meager thing ineven the smallest way, even if only once — every such thing really is.For I lay it down as a horos of being that it is nothing other than thispower. (247d8-e4)5

λέγω δη το και όποιανοΰν τίνα κεκτημένον δΰναμιν εϊτ' είς το ποιεΐνϊτερον ότιοΰν πεφυκός εϊτ' είς το παθεΐν και σμικρότατον υπό τουφαυλότατου, καν εΐ μόνον είς άπαξ, παν τοΰτο όντως είναι· τίθεμαιγαρ δρον όρίζειν, τα οντά ως Εστίν ουκ αλλο τι πλην δΰναμις.

4 Except where stated otherwise, translations of the Greek are my own. For theGreek I use the 1995 OCT, in which the Sophist is edited by D.B. Robinson.

5 Literally, 'For I lay down the horos to horizein beings as what is nothing else besidesthis power' (247e3-4: τίθεμαι γαρ pov όρίζειν τα οντά ως Εστίν ουκ άλλο τι πληνδύναμις). I leave horos and horizein untranslated here — the issue of translation isaddressed in the conclusion.



Being and Power in Plato's Sophist 65

The majority of readers do not take the Stranger to be speaking in hisown voice in this passage, and it is presumably why it is often passedover quickly. (Indeed, in contrast to his ancient readers, contemporaryreaders have generally not accorded the proposal much significance.)6

Occasionally more detailed discussions of the proposal appear, typical-ly where a scholar has considered that (what is taken to be) the giants'view here affords important insights into Plato's thinking. So M.M. Mc-Cabe takes the dunamis proposal at 247d-e to be a claim the giants agreewith (or, more accurately, one that Theaetetus agrees with on their be-half), and not one the Stranger presents himself as endorsing.7 Thusthe case for my reading begins with an examination of a preliminaryquestion, which seems to have received insufficient attention thus far:'In whose voice does the Stranger speak when he articulates the duna-mis proposal?'

We first observe that the Stranger introduces the proposal at 247d5as proffered by himself and Theaetetus (προτεινομένων ημών8), withwhich the giants are invited to agree. Further, the employment ofόμολογεϊν at d6 would be strongly suggestive even by itself, and the useof ήμΐν adds weight to the suggestion that the Stranger is presenting aclaim of his own, a suggestion that is reinforced by his speaking in thefirst person throughout the proposal — λέγω at 247d8, and τίθεμαι at247e3. And a few lines later, in the debate with the friends, the impres-sion is sustained when the Stranger tells Theaetetus at 248cl-2 that they,the friends, would not agree with 'what was said just now by us (ήμΐν)

Epicurus (Ep Herod 67), the Stoics (Cicero, Academica, I 39), Plotinus, VI 2.7-8, VI7.12-13 and Proclus, in Parm IV 930-1; Plat Theol m 26.12-23 (cf., N. Notomi, TheUnity of Plato's Sophist, 2; J. Brunschwig, 'La theorie stoicienne du genre supremeet l'ontologie platonicienne', 19-127). Modem scholars who have passed over theproposal include A. E. Taylor, Plato, the 'Sophist'and the 'Statesman', M. Frede, Pr -dikation und Existenzaussage: Platans Gebrauch Von '...1st...' und '...1st Nicht...' Im So-phistes, L.M. de Rijk, Plato's Sophist: A Philosophical Commentary, N. White, Plato:Sophist, and A. Silverman, The Dialectic of Essence.

Plato and his Predecessors: The Dramatisation of Reason, 74-9; 86-9. Plato's point inintroducing the dunamis proposal, according to McCabe, is to underline the factthat the only kind of materialist who can talk to and reason with others, consis-tently with their own theoretical commitments, is a 'mild' materialist, one whoadmits intelligence and reason into his ontology. See also P.M. Comford, who alsodevoted a detailed discussion to the proposal (Plato's Theory of Knowledge, 234-9).

It could equally be translated '[the following] put forward by us' or '[the follow-ing] tendered by us'.



66 Fiona Leigh

to the earthborn ones about being'. Plato does not have the Stranger referto 'what was said just now by us and the earthborn ones about being'— though of course he could have easily done so. And when he thengoes on to recount the proposal presented to the giants he speaks oncemore in the first person (εθεμεν, 248c4).

Next, consider that throughout the series of disputes with fictionalor absent interlocutors (243d-9d), the Stranger takes care to flag whosetheoretical doctrines he is discussing.9 When introducing a claim thatbelongs to one of his opponents, he employs either the second personsingular (when Theaetetus stands proxy for them) or the third person(when he and Theaetetus are discussing their views). So, when rehears-ing the key claims of the dualists (243d9ff)), the monists (244b9ff), thecoarse giants (246a8-b3), the gentle giants (246e5ff) and the friends(248aff), the Stranger makes a show of deliberately addressing themin the second or third person. Moreover, he explicitly asks Theaetetusto 'interpret' what the gentle giants say (άφερμηνεύω, 246e3), then re-peats the request with the same verb at the outset of the debate withthe friends (248a5). This contrasts quite sharply with the deliberate andsystematic employment of the first person that we have just seen in thecontext of the proposal about being, and which we also find a little lateron: At 249d6-7, the Stranger appears to credit himself and Theaetetuswith contemplating their own account of being when he speaks of theaccount they have grasped,10 and at 251c8 he speaks explicitly of theiraccount of being (ήμΐν ό λόγος).

Last, it is worth noting that the verbs used in the definition of beingat 247el-2, poiein and pathein, echo the Stranger's use of pascho in hisearlier debate with the monists.11 In that debate, as I will detail below,the Stranger explicitly draws a distinction several times between beingthe nature of a property (being some property itself) and being charac-terized by that property (possessing it as an attribute) — the latter beingmarked by way of paschein or pathos (e.g., 245cl-3). The contrast is notone the monist is represented as proposing, but is the Stranger's own(245dl2-e2). If this earlier use of pathein and poiein is read — as I will

9 Which historical thinkers these interlocutors represent in each case is unclear. Butsee McCabe, Plato and his Predecessors, 71-9; 85-92.

10 249d6-7: άρ' ουκ επιεικώς ήδη φαινόμεθα περιειληφέναι τω λόγψ το ον;

11 The same point is picked up by Moravcsik, 'Being and Meaning in the Soph-ist', 37.




later argue it should be read — as introducing a distinction the Strangergoes on to deploy when proffering the dunamis proposal, then that isfurther, albeit weak, evidence for the claim I have been arguing for,namely, that the Stranger offers the proposal in his own voice.

Finally, consider the way the proposal is introduced: Plato has theStranger announce it with the kind of fanfare appropriate to a state-ment of significance, framed as a proposal that being is thus and such(τοιόνδε εΐναί το v, 247d6), and concluded with a declaration that theproposal is to be understood as a horos that horizein being (247e3-4). TheStranger then repeats the claim almost immediately, at the start of theconversation he and Theaetetus conduct with the so-called 'friends ofthe Forms', when he asks, at 248c4-5, 'Didn't we lay it out as a sufficienthoros of beings "whatever has present to it the power of being affectedor acting, even in relation to the smallest thing"?' That the proposalis clearly presented as a statement of some importance, the impact ofwhich is reinforced for the reader by its repetition soon after, directsthe reader to take it seriously, and raises the likelihood, I think, that itrepresents the Stranger's, and so Plato's, own view.

But an analysis of language and literary context will not suffice tosettle the question of whether or not Plato endorsed the dunamis pro-posal. There is the issue of the fate of the proposal in the debate with thefriends of the Forms who reject the proposal outright (248c-e) as inap-plicable to their prime case of being, Forms. If we want to argue thatPlato sanctioned the proposal, against the friends, the question of howForms would satisfy it — do Forms act or suffer, and in what sense?— presents an important stumbling block for that assertion.

2 The dunamis proposal and the friends of the Forms

The Stranger's exchange with the friends — folk who are described asradically separating being and becoming — begins with the friends im-mediately rejecting the dunamis proposal. They reject it because it doesnot apply to their beings par excellence, Forms: only things in the realmof becoming, not being, are capable of acting and being affected (248a-c). Next, when considering the possibility of knowledge of Forms, thefriends vehemently deny that knowing and what is known can be char-acterized as either one of the relata in the relation between what actsand what is affected. Moreover, they reason, if the object of knowledge(and for them, Forms are objects of knowledge) were what is affect-ed, it would be changed, and this cannot happen to what is unmoving



68 Fiona Leigh

(248dlO-e5). But then they concede that in the case of knowledge nousis implicated in relations of change, since without soul and life therewould be no intelligence (i.e., nous). But nous is, according to the friends,in communion with being or what is, so something, namely nous, isboth some part of being and something involved in relations of change.Confused, the friends agree that being does after all encompass what ischanged as well as change (or motion, kinesis — 249b2-3). The status ofthe dunamis proposal is left unclear at the close of the debate with thefriends. They reject it at the outset, but how we are to interpret theirrejection is uncertain, since their beliefs prove problematic and they ap-pear confused, or at least somewhat muted, at the close of the debate.

The interpretive options, broadly speaking, are two: One can arguefor a 'formal' or 'logical' reading of the dunamis proposal, according towhich it can be satisfied by something that serves as either a subject orpredicate in a true proposition.121 take it that Lesley Brown has alreadyshown that the logico-formal readings of the proposal are less than ad-equate, so I shall have nothing to say about them here.13 The alternative

12 On this reading, it is the friends' failure to grasp this, at least initially, that has themin a muddle. Then two further interpretive routes become available. One mightsuppose (a) that since it appears that changing or being changed is equivalent inthe context to 'acting or affecting' (248dlO-e5), the sense of change or alteration(kinesis) in play here is likewise logical or formal rather than substantive, and sois benign for immutable Forms 0. Moravsdk, 'Being and Meaning in the Sophist',39-41; G.E.L. Owen, 'Plato and Parmenides on the Timeless Present', 42-3); alter-natively, one might suppose (b) that changing and being changed and acting andaffecting are equivalent for the friends but not for the Stranger, so that by his lightsForms come under the proposal (in the logico-formal sense) without, however,themselves undergoing change or alteration (G. Vlastos, 'An Ambiguity in Plato'sSophist', App I, 309-10). I discuss further the question of the distinction betweenthe capacity for change and the power to act or be affected according to the friendsand in Plato's thought generally in 4 and 5 below.

13 The primary defect of version (b) of the formal reading, as I understand it, is as fol-lows: It holds that Forms are affected yet unchanged, since 'affected' can be cashedout as Tjeing known' (Vlastos, 'An Ambiguity', 313-14). But 'affected' cannot beunderstood in this purely formal sense (nor indeed, as Brown points out, in thesense advocated by version (a)), since it was offered to the giants as explanatoryof substantive cases such as a person being just, and grasping rocks and trees. The(additional) problem for version (a) of the formal reading is that it requires thatForms 'change' to the extent that they are known, which qualified sense of changeis not however mentioned by the Stranger when he reasserts the immutability,according to the friends, of objects of nous at 249bl2<4. Brown, 'Innovation andContinuity', 190-2,197-9.




reading is a metaphysical one — the dunamis proposal is satisfied by anentity being in a particular metaphysical relation, the relation betweenwhat acts and what is affected, considered apart from propositionsabout that relation (or, indeed, about anything else). I will argue thatthe friends' confusion is intended to highlight and forestall a misun-derstanding of the dunamis proposal. The proposal, as I understand it,is satisfied by an entity being in a particular metaphysical relation, therelation of poiesis. But the friends conflate this relation with the relationof change and so they deny that the proposal applies to Forms. A simi-larly metaphysical — and highly influential — reading of the proposalhas been advanced by Brown, although, as I shall now attempt to show,it is not one that marries well with the text.

Brown's strategy is to locate the friends' error, and then read off Pla-to's own view in opposition to it. Plato can be thought to endorse theproposal if the view attributed to him — a correction of the friends'position — explains how immutable Forms are able to act or be affect-ed. Now, Brown thinks the friends very likely represent Plato's earlierviews in the Phaedo.14 Thus, the debate with the friends can be seen as animportant contribution to Form theory, as either a correction of a mis-understanding of the earlier formulation, or (more likely, for Brown,) arecord of progression in Plato's own thought about Forms.

At the time of writing the Sophist, according to Brown, Plato's moremature view is that Forms are active, not passive, in relation to theknowing mind. A Form does not itself suffer any change or alterationin being known, although the knower is of course changed thereby.Hence, Forms satisfy the proposal about being 'because they have thepower to affect, while [remaining] immune from being affected' (199).Brown appeals to the inherent plausibility of the idea that it is the sub-ject, not the object, of knowledge that is affected in the act of knowing.She also reminds us that Forms are said elsewhere to be capable of poie-sis (Phaedo), and cites Tht 157ff as further support. Where the friends gowrong, according to Brown, is in making the assumption that Forms,qua objects of knowledge, would occupy the passive role in the poieinl paschein relation if the case of knowing instantiated that relation: oneof their key objections to the proposal is that the passive partner in theknowing relation would suffer change (248e).

14 She also entertains the possibility that they represent misguided followers of thatview, 194.



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Now, Brown is right to say that Plato sees Forms in the Phaedo ascapable of poiesis, and as responsible for the effects they cause. In thePhaedo these effects are instances of the property the Form is namedafter, such that the participant in the Form possesses the property asan attribute.15 But instead of counting towards Brown's reading, thisobservation in fact raises two difficulties for Brown's view. First, the ob-servation that Forms were already capable of poiesis in the Phaedo (lOOb-e; 100e-101b, cf. 102b ff)shows only that the poiein / paschein relationcharacterizes the relation between Form and participant — it does notshow that it characterized the relation between Form and (the know-ing) mind. Indeed the 'like-causes-like' principle that has been arguedto lie behind the account of causation in the Phaedo could be taken asruling out Forms as causes of anything but the attributes things possessas a result of participation in Forms.1 The evidence of the Phaedo sug-gests, then, that although Plato already thought of immutable Forms ascapable of poiesis, he did not conceive of Forms as actors in an unquali-fied sense (of being what acts, or is capable of acting, upon a numberof different sorts of affected things), but only as actors in relation totheir participants. This is presumably why Brown also appeals to theTheaetetus.

Second, and more seriously for Brown's view, the Phaedo demon-strates that earlier in his career Plato had already considered Forms ca-pable of poiesis while at the same time remaining immutable.17 So if thefriends of the Forms in the Sophist represented Plato's earlier view, wewould expect them to accept the dunamis proposal as soon as it is put tothem at 248c, not reject it. It would be, one imagines, a qualified accep-tance that pointed to the relation between Forms and their participants,but that is all that the Stranger's proposal requires (since the proposaldid not claim that every relation a being bears to anything else shouldbe characterized as satisfying the dunamis proposal, but only that everybeing is capable of being in such a relation). It cannot be objected thatthe context restricts the question of Forms as capable of acting or being

15 E.g., Phd 100b-e; 100e-lb; cf., 102bff.

16 See Sedley, 'Platonic Causes', 117ff. It is perhaps worthwhile recalling that it wasAristotle, not Plato, who hit upon the idea that the mind takes on the form of itsintentional object without the matter in perception (DA Π 12).

17 Phd 78c-83e; lOOd. Plato also characterizes Forms as aitiai in the Phaedo, and Sedleyhas argued that aition and aifta is used by Plato in the Phaedo as synonymous withwhat is capable of poiisis in this sense, as, e.g., at 99a-c. ('Platonic Causes', 115-17.)




affected to the case of knowledge alone. For, the case of knowledge isonly put to them at 248d after they have initially rejected the dunamisproposal at 248c. What is more, if the friends rejected the proposal be-cause they (falsely) assume Forms would occupy the passive role in theknowing relation (conceived of as an instance of the poiesis relation),we should not find them entertaining the thought that Forms are theactive partner in the knowing relation (and then reasoning against it).But we do find just this at 248d4ff. This strongly implies, contra Brown,that even if they were persuaded that Forms are the active agents forthe knowing mind, they would still not be reconciled to the dunamisproposal in the case of Forms.

But what of the Theaetetus passage Brown cites in support of herreading? At 157a and 160a, Brown points out, 'Plato labelled the thingperceived "the agent" (to poioun), and the thing which perceives "thepatient" (ίο paschon)' (200). She suggests that since Plato is at times con-cerned with the similarities between perception and knowledge, thiscould indicate that he was alive to the idea that these roles apply in thecase of knowledge, too: The Stranger's argument against the friendscould be taken to suggest that both knower and perceiver are actedupon by their respective objects. She concedes, however, that the theoryreferred to in these passages of the Theaetetus is not Plato's own, andthat he was typically more exercised by the differences between per-ception and knowledge than their similarities. But then, I submit, if theTheaetetus suggests that Plato was alive to the possibility that the mindis acted upon by its intentional object in the case of knowledge, it seemshe chose not to embrace it. Brown does not mention any other passagein the corpus that lends support to the suggestion that Plato consideredthe pair 'Form / nous' to fall under the description of what acts and isacted upon respectively.18 We must conclude, then, that there is scantreason to think that Plato did in fact cast his Forms in this role.

But if Plato already thought of Forms prior to writing the Sophist ascapable of poiesis and yet immutable (so that, pace Brown, it would be

18 Moreover, Brown's reading requires that we credit Plato with the supposition thatForms are unchanging (or changeless) changers in the case of knowledge, and thistoo seems unlikely. It is nowhere stated or argued for in our text, is not a view com-monly attributed to Plato, and passages in the Cratylus (439a-40c) and the Theaete-tus could be read as telling against it. Further, if Plato had postulated unchangingchangers, then we would expect Aristotle to acknowledge or at least allude to theview in the Physics (Books ΙΠ, V, or VIII) or in DA ΙΠ 4, but he does not.



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difficult to identify the friends with the author of the Phaedo), and if,despite Brown's suggestion, it appears he did not think of Forms asacting upon the mind that knows them, what is the point of the debatewith the friends? The debate is designed, I suggest, to correct an ex-tremist understanding of Forms, in which it is assumed that becausethey are immutable, Forms are incapable of acting or being acted upon.Where the friends go wrong, I will argue, is in conflating relations ofchange with relations of causation (poiesis). To see this, however, weneed to first take a step back, to the section immediately preceding thisdebate, in order to appreciate that the dunamis proposal is a proposalabout cause and causation.

3 A causal reading of the proposal at 247d-e

The proposal about being at 247d-e is a central part of an account ofbeing the Stranger has been building towards, an account that explic-itly appeals to the notion of cause in the discussion with the giants.I suggested above that the use of poiein and paschein in the proposalabout being at 247d-e (and 248c) echoes the earlier use of paschein in theStranger's exchange with the monists. I now want to fill out that claimby tracing the Stranger's efforts to carefully distinguish two contrastingmodes or ways of being certain properties in that exchange — the prop-erties of being whole and being one — through employment of the verbpaschein (and its cognates). We will see that these two modes of being aproperty are (i) suffering the property by bearing it or possessing it as acharacteristic, and (ii) being the property itself. The immediate purposeof the Stranger's contrast of the two is to show how the monists' failureto delineate them traps them in a series of contradictions, but a subsid-iary aim — I claim — is to introduce the distinction to Theaetetus (andthe reader), as something that will be returned to and developed by theStranger in the debate with the giants and in the dunamis proposal.

Plato's use of language throughout the Stranger's debates with themonists and then the giants (and beyond) reveals him to introduce andthen deploy the distinction between these two modes of being a prop-erty as a causal distinction. In particular, Plato's employment of poieinand its cognates, and dia plus the accusative or causal dative, shows, inlight of Sedley's work on the Phaedo,19 that Plato was at pains to delib-

19 Sedley, 'Platonic Causes', 115. See also Hankinson, Cause and Explanation, 85-6.




erately introduce causation and causal talk at this point in the dialogueat the conclusion of the discussion with the giants.

The earlier exchange with the monists occurs in two movements, butfor my purposes only the second is relevant.20 There, after the Strangerquotes and discusses a few lines from Parmenides' poem (244e3-5=B843-5), he concludes that the monists' being clearly possesses the proper-ty of being one (πάθος του ενός £χειν, 245al-2) because it is one wholeof parts. But something with this characteristic (πεπονθός, 245a5) can-not be the one itself (αυτό το εν αυτό, 245a5-6), since it is completelynecessary that what is truly the one (το αληθώς εν, 245a8) is partless. 'Thus the monists' conception of the one entails a contradiction. Thepoint to which I wish to draw attention in this argument is the use ofthe contrast between the nature of a property and the possession of it asan attribute, marked by familiar Platonic language for a property con-sidered T?y itself', and the employment of pathos (245al) and paschein(245a5).

The same contrast is deployed again in the next lines, centering onthe question of whether being as the monist conceives it is whole. TheStranger suggests that one way for being to be whole is to have thecharacter of unity or oneness (πάθος Ιχον to δν του ενός, 245b4), andso be something that is both one and whole. But if it is characterizedby unity (πεπονθός τε γαρ το δν Εν, 245b7-8), the monists' being willthen (for the reasons given above) not be the same as the one, and ev-erything will be greater than one. Alternatively, if being is not a wholequa possessing the character of being whole as an attribute (ft μη δλονδια το πεπονθέναι το υπ' εκείνου πάθος), but qua being the whole itself(ft δε αυτό το δλον, 245cl-3), then it will turn out to be lacking of itselfand, hence, not being. It follows that being and the whole have separatenatures (245c8-9), and so all things will be more than one.

A discussion of the merits of either of these arguments against mo-nism need not detain us here,22 since it is the Stranger's systematic use

20 (1) 244b6-dl3; (2) 244dl4-5e5. Cf., McCabe, Plato and his Predecessors, 71; see alsoMcCabe's reconstruction of the argument from the variant MSS, 68-70.

21 What is meant by "partless' here is obscure, but it seems reasonable to say withVerity Harte that it is essential to the nature of the one of monism that it is a mereo-logical atom (which Harte understands as an object that has no (proper) parts,Plato on Parts and Wholes, 22n38), 109, cf., 110-12.

22 The remainder of the debate against monism, in which the Stranger presents theconsequences for being if it is in no way whole, can also be passed over. The dis-



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of the distinction between possessing a property as an attribute andbeing the property by itself that is of interest. The distinction is not themonist's but is clearly presented as the Stranger's own, and is deliber-ately introduced, I am arguing, not merely to wrong-foot the monist butalso to acquaint and familiarize Theaetetus — and so the reader — withit, and so in this way to prime him — and us — for further uses of it, inthe debate with the giants, and in the proposal about being at 247d-e.23

In the debate with the gentle giants, the Stranger points to the exam-ple of justice in the soul. The gentle giants accept the phenomena andmoreover agree that some souls are just, some unjust, some intelligent,others unintelligent (247a2-3). Moreover, they assent to the Stranger'ssuggestion that such states of affairs come about by the possession or bythe presence to the soul of (e.g.) justice,24 and whatever has the powerto be present or absent to something is something (εΐναί τι, 247alO). So,it is concluded, justice, intelligence, and all the other virtues and theiropposites, as well as the souls in which these come to be, are, despitethe fact that none of them are visible and that it's doubtful that any aretangible (247bl-5). The giants assent to a plurality of souls and to thesingularity of each virtue, e.g., justice, which may come to be present to,or absent from, each soul. The assumption here, I suggest, is that sincewhat may come to be present to a number of things is distinct from eachof them, justice and the other virtues are distinct entities. The giants also

tinction I am interested in does not get raised there, because the Stranger is con-cerned with the analytic consequences of this proposition, which after all claimsthat neither element of the distinction applies to being.

23 The distinction can be thought of as suggestive, but merely suggestive, of causa-tion, in the sense that pathein and pathos are used to describe the possession ofthe properties of being one and being whole as attributes, and pathein in Greekwas effectively the passive form of poiein. So Plato could perhaps be taken hereas hinting at the thought that the possession of a property is the result or effectof some cause. And since the contrast is with the property considered by itself, orapart from its being possessed as an attribute, the further thought would be thatthe relevant cause is the property itself. The alternative is that the debate with themonists itself contains no such hints or suggestions, but Plato is setting the stagefor the explicit claim of a causal link a little later on, which the reader is then freeto read back into the encounter with the monists (the monists themselves, note, arenot the target of the suggestion, and nothing in the Stranger's dispute with themrums on the idea that possession of a property has, or could be thought to have,any causal overtones).

24 247a5-6: δικαιοο~ύνης ϊξει καΐ παρουσίςι τοιαύτην αυτών έκάστην γίγνεσθαι




accept the Stranger's suggestion that it is by the possession or presenceof justice, e.g., that souls come to be just: I take the datives at 247a5-6(δικαιοσύνης εξει και παρουσίςτ) to be causal datives, and the claimto be a causal one. Justice is what is responsible for souls being just,by being present to them or possessed by them. The Stranger is thenable to argue for the further claim that the virtues are each something(members of the ontological population), on the grounds that they havethe power to affect souls by being present to them, or coming to be inthem as attributes (247b2-3). In short, in this passage, the Stranger haspersuaded the giants that non-visible things such as virtues are distinctfrom the souls they sometimes characterise in being attributes of them,and act upon them as causes, and so must be things that are.25

The encounter with the giants comes immediately after that with themonists. So the Stranger ought to be seen as continuing, in his enquirywith Theaetetus, to distinguish between a property possessed as an at-tribute and the same property considered apart from its being possessedas an attribute, i.e., the distinction between the two modes of being aproperty. In both disputes, with the monists and the giants, it is this dis-tinction that the Stranger's adversaries have failed to properly observe,and which undermines their respective metaphysical systems (thoughin different ways). In the argument with the gentle giants, however,the two distinct ways of being a property are linked as cause and effectin the case of the virtues. Immediately after the giants have acceptedthe reality of these non-corporeal entities, the Stranger offers them (andTheaetetus) the dunamis proposal, in which he appears to generalizefrom the case of virtues, declaring that he horizei (defines or marks out)being as whatever has the power of acting upon something else or ofbeing affected, even in the smallest way by the basest thing and even ifonly once (247d8-e4). At the conceptual level, this proposition is mostnaturally taken by the reader as an account of being that turns on thenotion of causation, since the idea of the capacity for one thing to dosomething to another or to have something done to it answers to our in-tuitions about cause and causation. But the language of the propositionconfirms that Plato intended his audience to read the claim this way.The verbs central to the proposal are poiein and pathein, which again, inlight of Sedley's analysis of the Phaedo, and so clearly contrasted with

25 Indeed he has been read in just this way on both counts by some notable schol-ars (Comford, Plato's Theory of Knowledge, 234-8; Taylor, Plato, the 'Sophist'and the'Statesman', 144-5).



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one another, are strong evidence that the proposal accounts for being interms that are self-consciously intended to invoke causation. That theverb was used quite deliberately is reinforced a few lines later at 248c5-6, where it is employed to allude to the proposal, at the outset of thediscussion with the friends of the Forms. It has emerged, then, from thepassages in which the Stranger debates the monists and the giants thatthe distinction between being a property and possessing that propertyas an attribute, which neither party properly distinguished, is a distinc-tion between cause and effect, and is proposed, moreover as the markor definition of being itself.

4 Causation, change, and the friends of the Forms

We have seen that the friends of the Forms reject the dunamis pro-posal about being at once (248c). They countenance two utterly dis-tinct realms: 'being', containing immutable Forms, and Tjecoming',containing the transient and changeable occupants of the sensibleworld (246b6-c4; 248alO-e5). Entities subject to the dunamis proposalare entities that suffer change, so their beings — Forms — cannot besubject to it. Their main reason, then, for rejecting the proposal aboutbeing is the rather strong claim that no being is involved in relationsof change.

But they are drawn into consideration of the case of knowledge,the possibility of which is never in doubt for the friends.26 Evidentlythe friends think that if either the knower or what is known occupiesthe active or the passive role in the poiein / paschein relation, it wouldthereby be in a relation of change — the capacity to act or be affectedis for them equivalent to, or mutually entails, the capacity to changeor be changed (248dlO-e5, cf. 248all-3). And change, they avow, can-not come about in the case of Forms (248a; 248e). The Stranger goes onto exploit the friends' claim that the soul is in contact or communionwith Forms, in the act of knowing (248alO; 248b2-4). For the friends,this relation is essential for the possibility of knowledge, so it raisesthe question of the ontological status of one of the relata in this rela-tion, the soul. In Greek thought, the soul had long been a principle oflife and so is naturally associated with movement or change as well

26 Cf. Silverman, The Dialectic of Essence, 154.




as intelligence.27 And clearly the friends think that the soul undergoeschange when it moves from not knowing to a state of knowledge.But since it has communion with Forms when it attains knowledge,the friends agree that reality includes inter alia what has intelligence(248e7-249a2), and so it turns out that by their lights, the changing soulcannot be excluded from the totality of what is.28 In highlighting thecase of nous, the Stranger has revealed the friends' strong claim — thatno being is involved in relations of change — to be an unwarrantedgeneralization from one case of being (the object of knowledge) to allcases.

Now, although their reason for rejecting the dunamis proposal hasbeen defeated, the friends' example of the object of knowledge as whatneither changes nor is changed constitutes a serious challenge to thatproposal: according to it all beings either act or are affected (or perhapsboth). But if this were so, then the object of knowledge would have toeither act or be affected while remaining changeless, and as far as thefriends are concerned that is a contradiction (248e3-5; 248alO-12; 248c7-10). The Stranger plainly shares the view that the possibility of knowl-edge requires what is changeless (249clO-d4). Hence, either the friendsor the Stranger are mistaken: either the friends' conviction that relationsof action and affection just are relations of change is mistaken, or elsethe Stranger's view that the object of knowledge is changeless and atthe same time a being — i.e., is capable of acting or being affected — is

27 See J. Bremmer, The Early Greek Concept of the Soul, esp. Chapters 1-2. Plato, too,accepts the association insofar as he makes soul the archi of motion (Phdr 245c-d;Leg 895c-6a) and insists that only what is ensouled possesses nous (Ti 30b).

28 το v τε καΐ to πάν (249d4): literally, 'what is and the all'. In the detail of thisbrief argument the Stranger urged the friends to accept that nous is present in τοπαντελώς v, what altogether is (248e8-9al), which grand yet vague phrase hascaused scholars from the Neoplatonists onwards to speculate that nous is meant tocharacterize not the totality of real things, but only the more exalted realm of theForms (cf. R 477a3, and see Plotinus, VI 2.7-8, VI 7.12-13; Proclus, in Farm IV 930-1;Plat Theol ΙΠ 26.12-23). Against this reading, Dana Miller has recently argued thatsince the conclusion at 249d4 specifies 'what is and the all' as being 'together asmany things as are unchanging and are changed' it is likely that the earlier phrase(at 248e-9al) picks out the same referent, viz. the collection of what is ('Fast andLoose about Being', 357-8; cf. Comford, Plato's Theory of Knowledge, 244-7. For re-cent statements of the view contra, see Vasilis Politis, "The Argument for the Realityof Change and Changelessness in Plato's Sophist (248e7-249d5)', 161-3, and LloydGereon, Aristotle and other Platonists, 216-8.)



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self-contradictory. In the first case the dunamis proposal goes through;in the second it doesn't.

I would like to suggest that that the argument is designed to under-mine the equivalence, assumed by the friends, between relations of ac-tion and affection and relations of changing and being changed, and soto further clarify the causal proposal about being. That is, the argumentis intended not only to show that the friends' grounds for rejecting thedunamis proposal are specious, but also to positively defend the propos-al by applying pressure to the friends' explicit conflation of the capacityfor poiesis with the capacity for change. This upshot of the argument isdirected much more at Theaetetus and the reader than the friends. Thefriends were not present for the earlier discussions with the giants andthe monists in which the distinction between being a property itselfand possessing that property as an attribute, and the power to act orbe affected were introduced, and they are not mentioned again beyondthis passage. Moreover, the friends seem less interested in causation orpoiesis than other issues (e.g., knowledge), and so may be consideredespecially prone to conflate or confuse causation with change.

Plato himself, of course, had been alive to the distinction betweenpoiesis or causation and change since at least the time of writing thePhaedo. From 102b-3a in that dialogue, Socrates proceeds from the claimthat Forms exist and the other things acquire their name by having ashare in them, to the conclusion that it is the presence in him of tallnessthat is responsible for Simmias being tall (much as the Stranger reasonedwith the gentle giants in the Sophist, immediately prior to the disputewith the friends, that a soul's having the character of being just is dueto the presence in it of justice). An unnamed interlocutor in the Phaedothen objects at 103a that this appears to contradict what they had estab-lished earlier, that an object comes to have a property or quality from astate of not having it (or from having its opposite). In response, Socratesdifferentiates between the cause of having a property — sharing in therelevant Form, i.e., having the property that the Form is named afterpresent to it — and the change from the state of not having the propertyqua attribute to the state of having it.29 As R.J. Hankinson has observed,

29 I take it that the Form, e.g., the Tall (or equivalently, the property it is named after,conceived in the abstract, e.g., tallness), when standing in the relation of beingpresent to X is the cause of X possessing the property — in this case being tall — asan attribute, and I also take it that Tjeing present to' is equivalent to participation.This picture is consistent with both Phd 102b-c and Sophist 247a-b, where the state




in this passage of the Phaedo, Plato both records and sees his way clearof the confusion between causation and change.301 suggest, then, thatit seems plausible to read him in the Sophist, in the presentation of thedispute with the friends, as once again confronting the easy assimila-tion of relations of poiesis with relations of change.

We turn now to the use to which the Stranger puts the causal accountof being in the passages.

5 The application of the causal account of being

Having proposed, in the debate with the giants, an account of being aswhatever can act or be affected, and defended it against an objectionfrom the friends of the Forms, the Stranger is now in a position to applythe account to Forms in the arguments at 255-9. In those arguments, de-signed to illuminate the possibility of not being against the eponymoussophist, he treats Forms as capable of poiesis in the sense that he speaksof the relation between Forms and their participants in distinctly causalterms.

Taking the Form, Change, as his specimen subject, the Stranger se-cures agreement from Theaetetus that it is because it participates in Be-ing (256al). Given the earlier sections of the dialogue we have beendiscussing, we can see that the language here indicates a causal claim:we have am together with the accusative — εστί δε γε δια το μετέχειντου οντος. The Form, Being, is the cause of the property, being, belong-ing to Change as an attribute, in virtue of which we say that it is. Inparticular, in light of the dunamis proposal, we see that Change countsas one of the beings in being acted upon in this way by Being, through

of affairs in which the property is present to the subject is treated as a suitablecause of the subject possessing the property as an attribute, and with Sph 255e-6ewhere participation in a Form is accorded causal status.

30 In regards to the unnamed interlocutor's confusion between causation and change,Hankinson writes: '[t]he logically protean nature of the preposition ek ('from') isto blame here, "x comes to be from F" may mean that χ comes to be as a result ofF (or the F-ness in something); or it may simply mean that x, in becoming F, doesso from a state of not being F (or at least being F to a lesser degree). We may labelthese the 'causal' and 'material' senses respectively.... Plato clearly sees the dis-tinction. ..' (Cause and Explanation, 93). See also Richard Sorabji, who finds the ideaof changeless causation suggested by Plato at Republic 509b (Time, Creation and theContinuum, 311).



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the participation relation.31 The Stranger goes on to show that this isno isolated state of affairs: Change is different from the Same, and is inthis sense not the same, while at the same time it is the same as a resultof the fact that Change, like everything else, participates in the Same(256a3-8; notice again dia plus the accusative at 7-8). He quickly clari-fies that it is the same through, or because of, sharing in the Same inrelation to itself (again dia plus the accusative, 256bl), and not the samethrough, or as a result of, communion with the different (dia plus theaccusative, 256b2-3) in relation to the Same. In being the same and notthe same, Change is acted upon by two distinct causes and so is shownto be a being in each case, rather than an element of some mysteriousnegative state of affairs.

After arguing along the same lines that Change is also different andnot different (256c4-9), the Stranger urges Theaeterus to 'fearlessly con-tend' that Change is different from Being (256d5-6). He says that it is,therefore, not being while reminding Theaeterus that it also is being (ουκ

v εστί και v), seeing that it shares in being (έπείπερ του οντος μετέχει,256d9-10). In being not being, Change is not failing in some way to be,but rather through participating in Difference (in relation to Being), it iscaused to be not being, or different (from Being). But insofar as Changeis being affected in this way by Difference (in relation to Being) it is abeing, which is why this state of affairs is perfectly compatible withChange being a being (εστί ... v, 256d8-9) through sharing in Being,and in this way being one of the beings, one of ta onta (256e3-4). So thecausal account of being expressed by the dunamis proposal allows us todissolve the appearance of contradiction between the statements, say,'Motion is being' and 'Motion is not being', by distinguishing betweencause and effect. That is, Motion's being (a) being is the effect that Be-ing, as a cause, has on it, and because of this it can rightly be called 'be-

31 One might think that it is participation in the Form, rather than the Form itself, thatis being identified as the cause here, and that the language reflects that. However,although we nowadays tend to identify cause with an event or a relation betweenevents, the ancient Greeks up to the time of Plato did not. For them, the relevantquestion in the causal context is closer to the forensic question 'what or who is theculprit, in the sense of the thing responsible or culpable, for the outcome under in-vestigation?', than the question that seeks the particular event or relation betweenevents that happened to occur in the particular case in question, or in fact acted asa trigger for the effect in question. (Cf., Sedley, 'Platonic Causes', 116n3 and pas-sim ; Hankinson, Cause and Explanation, 3-6, 86; M. Frede, "The Original Notion ofCause', 217-49.)




ing'. But cause and effect clearly ought not to be confused. So althoughMotion is through sharing in Being, it is not to be confused with Being.It is in fact not this, but something else, not in virtue of some mysteriousabsence of being, but in virtue of sharing in the Different in respect ofit (cf., 259a-b).

Conclusion

I want to conclude with some brief remarks on the status of the dunamisproposal as a hows: does it specify the definition of being for Plato inthe Sophist, or a mere mark of being? The reader will note that eitherof these answers is compatible with what has been argued above. Andas Brown has pointed out, one cannot settle on an interpretation eitherway on the basis of its use at 247d-e (192-3): on its own, horos (and itscognate verb horizeiri) can mean either Tjoundary', signifying the markor limit of the term, or 'definition', specifying what it is to be the sortof thing the term refers to, or that in virtue of which something can betruly described by the term.

If the dunamis proposal is understood, as I have been claiming itought to be understood, as turning on the notion of causal power, thenone might think it can only spell out the boundary (or boundary mark)of being. For we might think that having the capacity to be in a causalrelation is a capacity that something has only once it is already a being(where 'already' indicates logical and causal priority). So though thecapacity could sensibly be said to be a necessary criterion of being, itwould only express confusion or indicate a category mistake to claimthat something is a being in virtue of its having the power to act or beaffected. Now, this consideration would, I think, be valid if the dunamisproposal were taken as merely expressing the view of the materialist gi-ants. For those people think that an entity is a being in virtue of its cor-poreality, and whatever has body is naturally conceived of as capable ofbeing in 'push-me, pull-you' mechanistic causal relations. But clearly itis not a being in virtue of this capacity, rather, on their view it has the ca-pacity because it is a being (a body). Since I have shown, however, thatthe Stranger is instead speaking in his own voice when announcing thedunamis proposal, the question of the status of the proposal remains.

G.E.L. Owen argued that the proposal set out the very definition ofbeing (though not one he thought Plato subscribed to) on the groundsthat an earlier use of horizein clearly means 'definition'. At 246bl, theStranger uses the verb to describe what Owen argued was most natu-



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rally read as the giants' definition of being as body (οΰσίαν οριζόμενοι).And indeed translators have almost unanimously rendered the verbthere as 'definition'. If this is right, it would be quite natural to readthe same verb appearing only a little later on (together with the corre-sponding noun) in the same way — especially as there is no indicationin the text that at 247e3 the verb and noun forms are being used differ-ently. The impression is rather that the declaration at 247d-e is a clearlysignposted proposal of a replacement definition of being.32

Against the interpretation of horos as in any way central to Plato'sconception of being, however, could be raised the following objection:Something is surely a being for Plato (or can be said to be) in virtue of, orbecause of, its participation in Being, a claim that is clearly stated sev-eral times in our dialogue (250a-c, 256al-2, 256d8-9, 256e3-4; cf., 251e8-2a4). But on the view I have been arguing for, something is a being invirtue of being able to be in the Platonic causal relation of participation,regardless of whether it is the Form Being that is the Form in which thesubject participates, or some other Form. Hence a problem for my viewis that it appears to make the role of the Form, Being, entirely redun-dant. However, a solution to the problem can be found, I suggest, if weinterpret horos as firmly indicating 'definition' in the Sophist. If being isunderstood as defined as the power to act and be affected, and if Plato isread as treating Forms and their participants as falling within the scopeof the definition, as I have argued, then any case of participation isthereby also a case of participation in Being. A thing that possesses thecharacteristic of being beautiful, e.g., is a being because it participatesin Being. It is just that one way to participate in Being is to participatein Beauty. Moreover, consider a Form that at some time has no partici-pants — perhaps at a time when, e.g., there are no just people or cities.The Form Justice is still a being, and in this sense is, just because it iscapable of having participants, even though it has none at this time. Itsbeing the sort of thing that it is, a thing capable of having participants,is a result of its sharing in Being.

Finally, the contention that the proposal defines being in the Soph-ist is not incompatible with Platonic metaphysics. Brown sets asidethe possibility that the proposal defines being for Plato in the Sophist,claiming that though some contemporary philosophers entertain an

32 Owen, 'Plato on Not-Being', 109nl3. Owen also cites the use of horos as 'definition'at Phaedrus 237dl and Statesman 266el, 293e2. See also Miller, 'Fast and Loose',350nlO.




ontology in which dispositions are basic, this 'could not ... be accept-able to Plato', who would have 'insisted ... [that] ... things have pow-ers in virtue of what they are' (193). On the reading I have argued for,however, it is not obvious that this is right. That is, if by 'power' wenow understand either the capacity to act on things via participation orthe capacity to be affected in the reciprocal manner, it is not clear, on aPlatonic analysis, that this power would be conceived of as dependenton other 'non-dispositional' properties. For, Plato may well think thatthe power to act in this sense constitutes the being of a Form in somenecessary or 'essential' way. The thought would be that the capacity tocause all other things to be beautiful is constitutive of what the Formof Beauty is, though like all other Forms, it will have other properties,such as being self-identical (cf. Sph 256a-b). And he may well also thinkthat non-Forms possess whatever being they do possess only in virtueof being affected in this way by Forms. If a non-Form were not so af-fected (i.e., did not share in any Form), it would not possess any beingat all, and would be absolutely nothing.33

If the foregoing is right, the Stranger prepares the ground for hisproposal about being by drawing the distinction between the natureof a property and a property possessed as an attribute in his disputewith the monists. He then appeals to this distinction in announcing hisdefinition of being in the discussion with the gentle giants in explicitlycausal terms: being is whatever has the power to be in a causal relation,where Justice is agreed to be a case of cause, in relation to a just soul.The proposal then survives an objection from the friends of the Forms,the Stranger exposing the friends' reasons for rejecting the proposal asthe result of their conflating causation and change. Finally, the Strangergoes on to deploy the definition of being in his attempt to diffuse thesophist's puzzle about not-being, by pointing out that being affected

33 This is not to say that Plato in the Sophist should be read as offering a proto-dis-positional account of ontology, or a proto-dispositional analysis of causa don inthe contemporary sense. That there are many deep differences between Platonismand contemporary metaphysics on the topics of causation, powers, and propertiesalone is cause for considerable caution — the contemporary tendency to think ofcausation as an event (or relation between them) has already been noted (see n. 42above). Of particular concern, moreover, is the fact that the distinction betweennatural and non-natural kinds that is central to contemporary work on disposi-tions in ontology cannot be straightforwardly read into Plato. (See Toby Hand-field, "The metaphysics of dispositions and causes'.)



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by some cause is to be distinguished from being identified with thatcause.

Department of PhilosophyUniversity College London

Gower StreetLondon WC1E 6BT

[email protected]

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being and power in plato's sophist

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