Dialogues of Plato - MobileReference [863]
STRANGER: The latter should have two names,--one descriptive of the sale of the knowledge of virtue, and the other of the sale of other kinds of knowledge.
THEAETETUS: Of course.
STRANGER: The name of art-seller corresponds well enough to the latter; but you must try and tell me the name of the other.
THEAETETUS: He must be the Sophist, whom we are seeking; no other name can possibly be right.
STRANGER: No other; and so this trader in virtue again turns out to be our friend the Sophist, whose art may now be traced from the art of acquisition through exchange, trade, merchandise, to a merchandise of the soul which is concerned with speech and the knowledge of virtue.
THEAETETUS: Quite true.
STRANGER: And there may be a third reappearance of him;--for he may have settled down in a city, and may fabricate as well as buy these same wares, intending to live by selling them, and he would still be called a Sophist?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: Then that part of the acquisitive art which exchanges, and of exchange which either sells a man's own productions or retails those of others, as the case may be, and in either way sells the knowledge of virtue, you would again term Sophistry?
THEAETETUS: I must, if I am to keep pace with the argument.
STRANGER: Let us consider once more whether there may not be yet another aspect of sophistry.
THEAETETUS: What is it?
STRANGER: In the acquisitive there was a subdivision of the combative or fighting art.
THEAETETUS: There was.
STRANGER: Perhaps we had better divide it.
THEAETETUS: What shall be the divisions?
STRANGER: There shall be one division of the competitive, and another of the pugnacious.
THEAETETUS: Very good.
STRANGER: That part of the pugnacious which is a contest of bodily strength may be properly called by some such name as violent.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And when the war is one of words, it may be termed controversy?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And controversy may be of two kinds.
THEAETETUS: What are they?
STRANGER: When long speeches are answered by long speeches, and there is public discussion about the just and unjust, that is forensic controversy.
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And there is a private sort of controversy, which is cut up into questions and answers, and this is commonly called disputation?
THEAETETUS: Yes, that is the name.
STRANGER: And of disputation, that sort which is only a discussion about contracts, and is carried on at random, and without rules of art, is recognized by the reasoning faculty to be a distinct class, but has hitherto had no distinctive name, and does not deserve to receive one from us.
THEAETETUS: No; for the different sorts of it are too minute and heterogeneous.
STRANGER: But that which proceeds by rules of art to dispute about justice and injustice in their own nature, and about things in general, we have been accustomed to call argumentation (Eristic)?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: And of argumentation, one sort wastes money, and the other makes money.
THEAETETUS: Very true.
STRANGER: Suppose we try and give to each of these two classes a name.
THEAETETUS: Let us do so.
STRANGER: I should say that the habit which leads a man to neglect his own affairs for the pleasure of conversation, of which the style is far from being agreeable to the majority of his hearers, may be fairly termed loquacity: such is my opinion.
THEAETETUS: That is the common name for it.
STRANGER: But now who the other is, who makes money out of private disputation, it is your turn to say.
THEAETETUS: There is only one true answer: he is the wonderful Sophist, of whom we are in pursuit, and who reappears again for the fourth time.
STRANGER: Yes, and with a fresh pedigree, for he is the money-making species of the Eristic, disputatious, controversial, pugnacious, combative, acquisitive family, as the argument has already proven.
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: How true was the observation that he was a many-sided animal, and not to be caught with one hand, as they say!
THEAETETUS: Then you must catch him with two.