The Sophist (Greek: Σοφιστής; Latin: Sophista[1]) is a Platonic dialogue from the philosopher's late period, most likely written in 360 BC.
Because Socrates is silent, it is difficult to attribute the views put forward by the Eleatic Stranger to Plato, beyond the difficulty inherent in taking any character to be an author's "mouthpiece".
In Cratylus, contemporary or slightly preceding the Republic, Plato poses the problem, decisive for the use of dialectics for cognitive purposes, of the relationship between name and thing, between word and reality.
Voyage en Cratilie’ (1976), starts from Plato's speech to argue the idea of arbitrariness of the sign: according to this thesis, already supported by the great linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, the connection between language and objects is not natural, but culturally determined.
Finally, the concept of language and of “true discourse” of Cratylus will be very important for the study of diairetic dialectic in the ‘Sophist’.
The dialogue begins when Socrates arrives and asks the Eleatic Stranger, whether in his homeland, the sophist, statesperson, and philosopher are considered to be one kind or three.
The same is true with the collection of learning, recognition, commerce, combat and hunting, which can be grouped into the kind of acquisitive art.
By following the same method, namely, diairesis through collection, he divides the acquisitive art into possession taking and exchanging goods, to which sophistry belongs.
Throughout this process the Eleatic Stranger classifies many kinds of activities (hunting, aquatic-hunting, fishing, strike-hunting).
These are similar to the Categories of Aristotle, so to say: quantity, quality, relation, location, time, position, end, etc.
In other words, he has to clarify what is the nature of the Being (that which is), Not-Being, sameness (identity), difference, motion (change), and rest, and how they are interrelated.
Therefore, he examines Parmenides’ notion in comparison with Empedocles and Heraclitus’ in order to find out whether Being is identical with change or rest, or both.
While when the verb states something that is different (it is not) from the properties of the subject, then the statement is false, but is not attributing being to non-being.