Is the Sophist a correction of the Republic? Plato and the problem of the “being” of the Ideas

Abstract

Although the Sophist is the work that most explores the interrelationships between the Forms, it is possible to see in the Republic the affirmation of the existence of a “community of Ideas among themselves” (476a6-7). An example of this interrelation is presented in the Idea of the Good that causes the “being” of the other Ideas (509b7-8). It is noteworthy that this statement is revised in the Sophist, where this same “being” of the Ideas is explained by another cause, the Idea of Being (256a et passim). To evaluate the presence or not of this “revision”, this article will pursue the answer to three questions: (i) whether the predicate caused by the Good in the Republic has the same meaning as that caused by the Idea of Being in the Sophist; (ii) whether it is possible to establish a working rule for the causation of predicates within the so-called Theory of Ideas; (iii) whether Plato is correcting his Ontology in the Sophist.