Abstract

This work is the most complete study of the Sophist in any language and the most original account of this dialogue to appear in many years. Virtually every line is subject to exhaustive scrutiny. The major contemporary approaches to reading the Sophist, especially the analytic, are also carefully criticized. The current analytic position maintains or presupposes--and usually little argumentation is given on this point--that the "combination of forms" presented in the Sophist is best understood on the model of grammatical predication. Such an interpretation Rosen argues transposes that doctrine into an Aristotelian or Fregean framework, with which it is wholly incompatible. While predicates are contained in their subjects, the forms combine but remain monoeidetic, for as primary units they do not undergo internal articulation. Furthermore, a study of the text shows that the Eleatic Stranger always distinguishes between language and the forms, making it impossible for the latter to be legitimately subsumed under the former.