플라톤 - 소피스테스 [Plato - Sophist]

<Sophist> 소피스테스

<정리>

[소피스테스]는 [테아에테토스]와 함께 인식론의 문제를 고찰하고 있는 글인데, [테아에테토스]에서는 ‘형상 이론’을 도입하지 않은 데 반해서, 이 글에서는 본격적으로 형상 이론을 도입하여, 인식의 문제를 추구하면서, 동시에 ‘소피스트’라는 존재가 의미하는 바도 밝히고 있다.

이 글에서 고찰되고 있는 명제는 파르메니데스의

 

Never shall this be proved--that things that are not are; but do thou, in thy inquiry, hold back thy thought from this way. (200)말이다. 콘포드는 플라톤이 파르메니데스의 이 말이 적용되지 않는 부분을 밝혀내고 있다는 걸 보여주며 다음과 같이 정리하고 있다.

 

Parmenides forbade us to assert 'that things that are not, are'. That is to say, he recognised only one sense of 'is not', namely 'is totally nonexistent'. We have ruled out that sense long ago; and now we have brought to light another sense, which allows us to assert that things which are not (are different from other things) nevertheless are (exist). (294)

 

이 부분은 그러니까, 영어의 be 동사에 해당하는 그리스 어가 영어와 마찬가지로 이중적인 뜻, 즉 ‘있다’와 ‘이다’의 두 가지 의미를 지니기 때문에 이러한 사정이 발생한다고 볼 수 있다.

더 나아가 만물은 하나라는 파르메니데스의 명제도 부정되는데, 콘포드는 다음과 같이 말하고 있다.

 

What is meant is that Parmenides, like the physicists, has failed to distinguish between his one Real thing and the two Forms, Reality and Unity, or which it partakes, and to see that he cannot assert his one Real thing without also recognising the reality of those two Forms. (222)

 

이 부분에 대한 콘포드의 설명을 옮겨보자.

Premiss: If the Real is a whole (one thing with many parts), then the Real is not identical with Unity Itself (which has no parts).

Dilemma: Either A) The Real is a whole of parts: Then the Real is not Unity Itself, and there will be a plurality (viz. the Real and Unity Itself),

or B) The Real is not a whole of parts: Then

either a)Wholeness exists ; but then

1) The Real will not be a thing that is;

2) There will be plurality (viz. the Real and

Wholeness Itself) ;

or b) Wholeness does not exist; but then

1) The Real will not be a thing that is

2) There will be plurality; and also

3) There will be no coming-into-being of a thing

that is;

4) There will be no finite number

(only indefinite plurality).

 

여기서 더 나아가 거짓 진술에 대한 증명도 길게 이어지고 있는데, 그 핵심 부분은 다음과 같다.

Each element in the statement has now a meaning; and so the statement as a whole has meaning. What is missing in the case of the false statement if : 1) the relation 'partaking' between the actual 'sitting' and the different Form Flying; 2) "flies" does not stand for this 'sitting', though it has a meaning of its own, which the word calls up to the hearer's mind; 3) the statement as a whole does not correspond with the fact as whole or with any fact. only by thus using the theory of Forms can Plato meet the Sophist's objection that false statement cannot exist because there is nothing for it mean. (315)

 

 

플라톤의 논구를 제대로 정리하기에는 내 이해 수준이 아직도 턱없이 부족하다. 다만, 내 나름대로 느끼는 것은 플라톤 철학이 ‘언어학’과 ‘논리학’ 기타 그 밖의 여러 학문과, 분리되지 않은 채로 밀접한 연관을 맺고 있다는 점이다. 그리고 철학의 도구가 언어인 관계로 언어의 중요성이 점점 더 부각되는데(모국어인 우리말은 물론 외국어인 영어, 그리고 능력이 닿는다면 또 다른 언어도), 명석한 사고란, 던져진 질문에 대한 끊임없는 고찰 다음에 오는 것이라는 생각도 든다. 아직은 혼란스럽기 짝이 없지만, 그래도 나아가야할 방향이 보이는 것 같기는 하다.

 

(콘포드의 책은 플라톤의 글을 이해하는 데 있어서 뿐만 아니라, 철학한다는 것이 보여주어야 할 방향성도 짐작하게 해 주었다.)

 

(1) 김태경 역, 한길사

 

[플라톤 철학에서의 변증술과 비존재

 

*윤리적인 대화편들에서 소크라테스는 인간의 주된 관심은 합리적인 도덕적 인격을 계발하는 것이며, 이런 계발이야말로 인간의 궁극적 행복의 실현을 위한 열쇠하고 주장한다. 이를 실현하기 위해 우리는 우리 마음속에 있는 사람을 사람답게 해주는 이성을 찾아내어 그것을 활용함으로써 참된 선을 통찰해야만 한다. 만일 어떤 사람이 선이 무엇인가를 이성을 통해 확실히 알고 있다면, 그는 그것 이외에 다른 어떤 것도 추구하지 않을 것이다. 따라서 이성을 통해 선을 앎으로써 사람의 사람다움(arete)은 실현된다. 이런 의미에서 “훌륭함은 지식이다”. (33)

*플라톤에서 로고스는 한편으론 요소들을 나누고 차이를 구별해 천체로 나아가는 로고스이다. 존재의 나눔과 이데아들의 분리에 관한 생각은 항상 말 속에 전제되어 있다. 그러나 말한다는 것은 다른 한편 전적으로 구별되는 요소들을 모으고 결합하는 것이다. (68)

 

(본문)

*논쟁술에서 차례로 반박술에, 말다툼에, 싸움술에, 경합술에, 획득술에 속하는 ‘돈벌이를 하는 부류’가 지금 우리 논의에서 밝혔듯 소피스테스인 게로군. (105) (손님)

*소피스테스는 모든 것과 관련해 어떤 ‘지식처럼 보이는 것’을 갖고 있을 뿐, 진리는 갖고 있지 않은 자로 우리에게 밝혀졌네. (125-6) (손님)

*237c5-d5에 언급된 요지는 다음과 같다. ‘있지(...이지) 않은 것’은 ‘있는 (...인) 것들’ 가운데 하나에 적용될 수 없으며, 그래서 그것은 어떤 것에 적용될 수 없다. 왜냐하면 “어떤 것”이란 말은 언제나 존재에 대해서 언표되기 때문이다. 모든 존재에서 분리되어 벌거벗긴 채 있는 것처럼 그것 차체만으로 어떤 것을 언표하기란 불가능하다. (137) (역주 65)

*혼은 플라톤 이전에는 통상 그리고 철학자들에 의해서 눈으로 볼 수 없는 미세한 물질로 구성된 것으로 여겨졌다. 원자론자들은 줄기차게 그것이 다른 사물들처럼 원자들로 구성되었다고 주장했다. (167) (역주 97)

*나는 ‘있는(---인) 것들’을 규정하는 징표를 ‘힘’ 이외의 다른 어떤 것이 아니라고 놓고 있으니까 말일세. (169) (손님)

*진술은, 그게 정녕 진술이라면, 반드시 어떤 것에 대한 진술이어야 하지, 어떤 것에 대한 진술이 아닐 수는 없네. (214) (손님)

*[지자가 아니면서 지자의] 흉내를 내는 짓, 논의를 통해 자가당착으로 몰고 가는 짓, [지식은 없이] 의견만 갖고 시치미떼는 부분, 영상제작술 가운데서도 말로써 신적인 것이 아닌 인간적인 ‘닮아보이는 것’ (유사영상)을 만들어내는 요술을 부리는 짓인데, 누가 “이 가계와 혈통”에 진짜 소피스테스가 속한다고 말한다면, 그는 무엇보다도 진실을 말한 것 같네. (230)

 

 

*as we know from his Seventh Letter, Plato's final decision was that the ultimate truth could never be set down on paper, and ought not to be, even if it could. (169)

*Goodness, although according to Socrates it consists in a certain kind of 'knowledge', is not a thing that anyone can teach; not a stock of information that can be transferred from one man to another. Moreover, the men who professed to sell 'goodness' did not possess it themselves or even know what it was. To offer for sale what you do not possess, and, if you did possess it, could not transfer is fraudulent. (175)

*Contrast with this Socratic procedure the new method of Collection and Division. It is twofold. The preliminary Collection is to fix upon the genus to be divided. The Division is a downward process from that genus to the definition of a species. This process has nothing in common with the deductive movement of the Socratic elenchus(문답?), which terminates in the rejection of a suggested definition. In the Socratic procedure the clear vision of the Form and the true account of it are reached as the goal of series of upward leaps (to use Plato's metaphor). But in Collection and Division the goal is reached at the end of the downward process, when an indivisible species is defined in terms of genus and specific differences. In a word, the Socratic method approaches the Form to be defined from below, the new method descends to it from above. (185)

*the best name for the art which creates, not a likeness, but a semblance will be Semblance-making. (197) (S)

*The whole description of the Sophist as Imitator is meant to recall the attack on fine art as 'imitation' in Republic. (198)

*All the 'images' we are going to consider fall under the inferior branch, the production of semblances, that are not complete reproductions of the original, but involve an element of deceit and illusion. This means that the class of 'images' (eidola) we are concerned with--semblances--imply two relations between image and original. The image is more or less like the original, though not wholly like it, not a reproduction. But it is also conceived as possessing in some sense a lower grade of reality, as illusory, phantom-like. We are to think of the work of 'semblance-makers' (artists and sophists) as analogous to shadows and reflections of natural objects, 'appearances' of things that are themselves only images of the real world of Forms. (199)

* 'This appearing or seeming without really being' covers the metaphysical problem: If there is a world of real being (Parmenides' one Being or Plato's world of real Forms), how can there also be a world of Seeming, which is neither wholly real nor utterly non-existent? Parmenides had said, there cannot be such a world of Seeming. A thing must either be or not be: if it is, then it is absolutely and completely; if it is not, then it is not absolutely and completely. In the first part of his poem he had deduced the nature of the one Reality and found that it excludes plurality, motion, change, and the qualities which our senses seem to reveal. Faithful to his logic, he had dismissed all these appearances of Nature as unreal and false, and left them unaccounted for. (201)

*one cannot legitimately utter the words, or speak or think of that which just simply is not; it is unthinkable, not to be spoken of or uttered or expressed. (206)

*Mr. Russell at one time, by distinguishing 'being' from 'existence', endowed non-existent things, like Chimaeras, with a sort of 'being', 'for if they were not entities we could make no propositions about them'. But this provision for non-existent entities seems now to be abandoned in favour of the view that there are descriptions, e. g. 'round square', which describe nothing. (208)

*What is meant is that Parmenides, like the physicists, has failed to distinguish between his one Real thing and the two Forms, Reality and Unity, or which it partakes, and to see that he cannot assert his one Real thing without also recognising the reality of those two Forms. (222)

*The conflict of materialism and idealism was not an entirely fresh issue that had arisen for the first time among contemporaries of Plato. Ever since the sixth century the schools had been divided into two traditions: on the one side the Ionian science of the Milesians and their successors, on the other the Italian tradition of the Pythagoreans and Parmenides. The Ionians, all though, had been seeking the real nature of things in some ultimate kind of matter or body, such as water or air or all the four elements. The Italians had sought reality, not in tangible body, but in supersensible things. (229)

*Materialism, as describe in Laws x, 889 ff., leads in Plato's view to atheism and 'lawlessness'. (231) (주)

*The soul had been regarded both popularly and by philosophers before Plato as consisting of a subtle and invisible kind of matter. The Atomists continued to maintain that it was composed of atoms, like everything else; only its atoms were round and so specially mobile. (233) (주)

*The stranger now draws conclusions. (1) As just agreed, if Reality consist solely of unchangeable things, intelligence will have no real existence anywhere. But 2) if Reality consists solely of things that are perpetually changing (as the Heralcleiteans said), there can be no intelligence or knowledge. 3) Therefore 'Reality or the sum of things' must contain both changing and unchanging things. (241)

*Parmenides is expressly referred to, and the Pythagoreans (though not mentioned) belonged to that western tradition which had always stood in contrast with the materialistic science of Ionia. The battle is one that is always going on between the two camps, on a fundamental issue of philosophy. (243)

*A god might possess perfect knowledge, but can our imperfect knowledge ever reach the Forms? Yet Parmenides admits that without the Forms there cannot be any discourse at all. The Forms must exist and be knowable. The whole drift of the criticism is that the 'separation' of Forms from things in our world has been too sharply drawn and over-emphasised. (244)

*Some Forms will blend, some not. This means that some affirmative, and some negative, statements (of the types under consideration) about Forms are true. These true statements will make up the texture of philosophic discourse-- that 'dialectical' argument which is entirely about Forms. (260)

*the only person, I imagined, to whom you would allow this mastery of Dialectic is the pure and rightful lover of wisdom (263) (S)

*The science of Dialectic does not study formal symbolic patterns to which our statements conform, nor yet these statements themselves. Nor does it study our thoughts or ways of reasoning, apart from the objects we think about. It is not 'Logic', if Logic means the science either of logoi or of logismoi. What it does study is the structure of the real world of Forms. Its technique of Collection and Division operates on that structure. It is a method for which some rules are laid down; but these are rules of correct procedure in making Divisions; they are not laws of inference or laws of thought. (265)

*The individual members of a class of things existing in time and space are not 'real' things. They become and perish and change; they are indefinite in number and unknowable. They cannot enter into truths that can be known; they are not the subjects of the universal truths of science. The goal of Dialectic is not to establish propositions ascribing a predicate to all the individuals in a class. The objective is the definition of an indivisible species--a Form--by genus and specific differences. What we define is not 'all men' but the unique Form 'Man;. (269)

*'Wood' is relative only in so far as it is someone's property, not qua wood. But are 'head' and 'hand' are relative or not? A head or hand must be the head or hand of somebody. The writer is inclined to think that 'head' and 'hand' are not relative, because, although we know that a head must be somebody's head, we can know the essential nature of 'head' without knowing whose head it is. (283)

*Parmenides forbade us to assert 'that things that are not, are'. That is to say, he recognised only one sense of 'is not', namely 'is totally nonexistent'. We have ruled out that sense long ago; and now we have brought to light another sense, which allows us to assert that things which are not (are different from other things) nevertheless are (exist). (294)

*We may here collect the meaning of 'is' and 'is not' that have been brought to light.

1) 'Is' means 'exists'. Every Form exists; consequently 'the non-existent' has no place in the scheme, and we have ruled out that sense of 'is not'.

2) 'Is' means 'is the same as'. Every Form is (the same as) itself. The contradictory 'is not' means 'is different from'. (296)

*every statement or judgment involves the use of at least one Form, is important because the recognition of Forms as entering into the meaning of all statements will solve the problem of false speech and thinking. (301)

*Plato's definition of 'word' thus covers two senses. 1) A common name signifies or 'means' a 'nature' which is a Form, as well as 'standing for' or indicating existing things. 2) A proper name stands for or indicates an existing thing only. With his usual disregards for precision, Plato uses all the common words for 'signify', 'mean', 'indicate', indiscriminately. But in order to understand the analysis of the statement, 'Theaetetus sits', we shall find it necessary to distinguish between a proper name like 'Theaetetus' and a 'common term' like 'sits'. (307)

*(It may be added that the Theory of Forms provides a meaning even for false statements which seem to have no existing subject, such as 'The present King of France favours Free Trade'. The description has a meaning, though it stands for no existing person. But Plato does not consider such statements.) (313)

*Each element in the statement has now a meaning; and so the statement as a whole has meaning. What is missing in the case of the false statement if : 1) the relation 'partaking' between the actual 'sitting' and the different Form Flying; 2) "flies" does not stand for this 'sitting', though it has a meaning of its own, which the word calls up to the hearer's mind; 3) the statement as a whole does not correspond with the fact as whole or with any fact. only by thus using the theory of Forms can Plato meet the Sophist's objection that false statement cannot exist because there is nothing for it mean. (315)

*In his concluding speeches the Stranger emphasises once more that the false statement, Theaetetus flies, is a statement, not 'about nothing' but about the Theaetetus who exists here and now, and who is equally the subject of the true statement, Theaetetus sits. The name Theaetetus stands for a 'thing that is' in the sense of an element of existing fact, no less than flies means a 'thing that is' in the other sense--a Form. Finally, the false statement is defined as a combination of verbs and names stating about its subject 'what is different as the same or what is not as what is'. (317)

*Sophist was not among those who have knowledge, but he has a place among mimics. (330) (S)

*The art of contradiction-making, descended from an insincere kind of conceited mimicry, of the semblance-making breed, derived from image-making, distinguished as a porting, not divine but human, of production, that presents a shadow-play of words--such is the blood and lineage which can, with perfect truth, be assigned to the authentic Sophist. (331)