Major Works

• Sophist

  - Recommended translation: Plato. "Sophist." In The Being of the Beautiful: Plato's Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman, translated by Seth Benardete, 123–234. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
  In the Sophist, which takes place the day after the Theaetetus and was written c. 360 BCE, Plato explores what constitutes sophistry and how sophists differ from philosophers and statesmen.   From the publisher: The Being of the Beautiful collects… More

Commentary

• Plato’s Trilogy: “Theaetetus,” “The Sophist,” and “The Statesman”

  - Klein, Jacob, Plato's Trilogy:"Theaetetus," "The Sophist," and "The Statesman", Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1977.

• Plato’s Sophist: The Drama of Original & Image

  - Rosen, Stanley, Plato's Sophist: The Drama of Original & Image, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983.

• The Being of the Beautiful

  - Benardete, Seth, The Being of the Beautiful: Plato's Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984, xi-xlix.
  Excerpt: A bibliography of Platonic studies for the years 1958-75 lists 3,326 items; of these 102 are indexed as dealing with the Theaetetus, 188 with the Sophist, and 21 with the Statesman. Since the difficulties of the Statesman, as to its plan and… More

• Sophist

  - Cropsey, Joseph, "Sophist," Plato's World: Man's Place in the Cosmos, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995, 69-110.
  Excerpt: The transition to the Sophist is made complex by the complexity of what precedes it, for this dialogue is preceded in one way by Theaetetus and in another by Euthyphro. As preceded by Theaetetus, the transition is from the atmosphere of… More

• Plato’s Sophist

  - Heidegger, Martin, Plato's Sophist, trans. Richard Rojcewicz and Andre Schuwer, Indiana University Press, 1997.
  Excerpt: This book is a translation of Platon: Sophistes, which was published in 1992 as volume 19 of Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe (Collected Works). The text is a reconstruction of the author’s lecture course delivered under the same title at the… More

• Plato’s “Laws” by Seth Benardete

  - Benardete, Seth, Plato's "Laws": The Discovery of Being, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
  From the publisher: “The Laws was Plato’s last work, his longest, and one of his most difficult. In contrast to the Republic, which presents an abstract ideal, the Laws appears to provide practical guidelines for the establishment and maintenance… More

• On Plato’s Sophist

  - Benardete, Seth, "On Plato's Sophist," The Argument of the Action, Ronna Burger and Michael Davis, eds., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000, 323-52.
  Excerpt: Once the stranger takes over the discussion at the beginning of the Sophist and agrees to discuss the sophist, the statesman, and the philosopher, it is hard to remember that Socrates had arranged to meet with Theodorus, Theaetetus, and young… More

• Plato’s Sophist 223 b1-7

  - Benardete, Seth, "Plato's Sophist 223 b1-7," The Archaeology of the Soul: Platonic Readings in Ancient Poetry and Philosophy, Ronna Burger and Michael Davis, eds., South Bend: St. Augustine's Press, 2010.

• Introduction to the Sophist

  - Brann, Eva, "Introduction to the Sophist," The Music of the Republic: Essays on Socrates' Conversations and Plato's Writings, Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2011, 278-93.
  Excerpt: The drama of the Sophist is part of a continuing conversation. Three of its participants had talked the day before: Socrates who is known to the world as a philosopher; the brilliant young geometer Theaetetus who so uncannily resembles the ugly… More

• Nonbeing Enfolded in Being: The Sophist

  - Brann, Eva, "Nonbeing Enfolded in Being: The Sophist," The Music of the Republic: Essays on Socrates' Conversations and Plato's Writings, Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2011, 294-303.
  Excerpt: Parmenides’ discovery of Being as One and as the one and only truth is, I think, the primordial event of First Philosophy. But in named Nonbeing so as to proscribe it as unthinkable and unsayable, he establishes it—an unintended… More

• On Translating the Sophist

  - Brann, Eva, "On Translating the Sophist," The Music of the Republic: Essays on Socrates' Conversations and Plato's Writings, Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2011, 304-20.
  Excerpt: In 1995, I was asked by the series adviser Keith Whitaker to do a translation for the nascent Focus Philosophical Library; Plato was suggested as a possibility. The Focus Press under its editor Ron Pullins publishes fresh translations, intended to be… More