From Indeterminacy to Rebirth: Making Sense of Socratic Silence in Plato’s Sophist

J. Caleb Clanton, Pepperdine University

We might expect philosophical misbehavior from Derrida, Rorty, and other bad boys of philosophy, but Plato typically is taken to be the conservative old father. We look to the old man for a good snooze, especially when we read him through the lenses of analytic philosophy. In this article, I wish to challenge the spirit of this misunderstanding by revisiting a text that often is overlooked or mistaken for a lesson in logical hygiene: the Sophist. Perhaps it is the case that Plato himself is up to what might be traditionally conceived of as rather subversive.