Plato's Sophist in Antiquity

This book is for scholars and readers interested in philosophy and its history, classics, and the history of ideas. It offers the first full-scale study of the ancient reception of a decisive Platonic dialogue, tracing its impact from the Early Academy to Late Neoplatonism and revealing its enduring philosophical significance.

Plato's Sophist in Antiquity offers the first comprehensive account of how one of Plato's most challenging and influential dialogues was read, interpreted, and transformed throughout the ancient Mediterranean world. Spanning from the Early Academy to Late Neoplatonism, the volume unites leading scholars in a systematic investigation of the Sophist's complex afterlife. Combining historical depth with philosophical insight, it uncovers how ancient thinkers – Aristotle, the Stoics, Plutarch, Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus, and others – engaged with the dialogue's central questions about being, non-being, truth and falsehood, identity and difference, linguistic reference, and much else. By tracing these rich trajectories of reception, the book not only fills a major gap in Platonic studies but also demonstrates the continuing vitality of the Sophist for contemporary debates in metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of language.