Episode 143: Plato's "Sophist" on Lies, Categorization, and Non-Being

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Recorded11 Jul 2016

Publisherpartiallyexaminedlife.libsyn.com ↗

Handlerec:5514831

Show notes

On the later Platonic dialogue. What is a sophist? These were guys in Ancient Greece who taught young people the tools of philosophy and rhetoric. They claimed to teach virtue. In Sophist, "the Eleatic Stranger" (i.e., not Socrates) tries to figure out what a sophist really is, using a new "method of division." This Plato era provides a nice transition to the category man Aristotle, and the whole concern with sophistry is certainly still relevant today! End song: "Dumb," by Mark Lint and the Fake from the album So Whaddaya Think? (2000). Get this and every episode ad-free by becoming a PEL supporter at partiallyexaminedlife.com/support.

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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