This thesis will explore the epistemological and ontological content of logos as it appears in Plato's Theaetetus and Sophist. As a tether between the realms being and becoming, logos occupies the dianoetic space in which meaningful, objective communication of ideas takes place. Complex in nature, logos exists as the combination of simple units; namely the forms, which provide themselves as the elements of this combination, of human knowledge, and the communication thereof. At issue is thus how, in response to the objections to the theory of forms raised in the Parmenides, the forms can exist as relational entities, and therefore as well how Plato understands the process by which logos is constructed.

The use of the term “sophist” in Plato’s Statesman has been understood to apply to all rulers who are not statesmen. They do not have the statesman’s expert knowledge but they all imitate the statesman. This seems to be consistent with the idea that a sophist is a false imitator. I argue against this interpretation and instead insist that only the tyrant in the Statesman is a sophist. I base this argument on the final definition of the sophist in Plato’s Sophist and the discussion of imitation in the Sophist. The tyrant is an important figure in the Statesman, even though he is only mentioned briefly. He is the ruler who pretends to be a statesman so that he can rule with the statesman’s power which is above the law. I use my narrower interpretation of the term “sophist” in the Statesman to argue that Plato’s purpose in the discussion of laws and regimes in the Statesman is to protect the city from the tyrant as a sophist. This requires that the people of the city recognize their own ignorance and completely forbid any type of political leadership that would make the city vulnerable to the false statesman. Instead, they imitate the statesman by their complete obedience to the law. The idea of complete obedience to the law, without any room for modification or change, is not politically appealing. However, it is important that part of Plato’s solution to the problem of tyranny is self-awareness of our lack of political knowledge. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA) / The use of the term “sophist” in Plato’s Statesman has been understood to apply to all rulers who are not statesmen. Instead, I argue that only the tyrant in the Statesman is a sophist. I base this argument on the final definition of the sophist in Plato’s Sophist and the discussion of imitation in the Sophist. I use my narrower interpretation of the term “sophist” in the Statesman to argue that Plato’s purpose in the discussion of laws and regimes in the Statesman is to protect the city from the tyrant as a sophist. This requires that the people of the city recognize their own ignorance and completely forbid any type of political leadership that would make the city vulnerable to a false statesman. This argument is important as it shows that part of Plato’s solution to the problem of tyranny is self-awareness of our lack of political knowledge.

Cette thèse présente une nouvelle édition critique de quatre discours de Libanios : les discours 34 (En réponse aux médisances du pédagogue), 35 (À ceux qui ne prennent pas la parole), 36 (Sur les maléfices), et 43 (Sur la convention), ainsi que de nouvelles traductions commentées. Ce premier ensemble est complété par des études thématiques prenant en compte la dimension rhétorique et historique de ces textes. Le corpus libanien a joué un rôle déterminant dans l’émergence et le développement des études sur l’Antiquité tardive. Une nouvelle approche de ces quatre textes offre un intérêt indiscutable pour la connaissance du monde scolaire de cette époque : ils délivrent un grand nombre d’informations sur l’univers et le statut des maîtres de rhétorique, sur le rôle social de l’école et la place de la rhétorique dans l’enseignement. Ils constituent ainsi une source très riche pour l’histoire institutionnelle, culturelle et sociale du IVe siècle ap. JC. Leur contribution à l’histoire de l’espace urbain d’Antioche, champ de recherche actuellement en cours d’exploration, ne doit pas non plus être dédaignée. / This thesis presents a new critical edition of four orations by Libanius : oration 34 (in response to the pedagogue’s badmouthing), 35 (To those who do not speak), 36 (About witchcraft) and 43 (About the convention) and new translations with commentaries. This first set is completed by thematic studies taking into account the rhetoric and historical dimension of these texts. The Libanius corpus played a key role in the emergence and development of Late Antiquity studies. A new approach to these four texts offers an undisputable interest for the knowledge of the school world of that time; they issue indeed a lot of information about the world and the status of teachers of rhetoric, on the social role of the school and the place of rhetoric in education. They constitute a very rich source for institutional, cultural and social history of the 4th century AD. Their contribution to the history of the urban area of Antioch, search field currently being explored, should not be left out.

This paper will examine the issue of Plato’s purposes in the Sophist. First, we will shed light on the main purpose Plato might be drawing in the prologue of the dialog, where the Eleatic Stranger begins to show his philosophical status. Then, we will locate the sophist’s characterization within this main purpose, by reading the result of this characterization as an implicit παράδειγμα which prepares the execution ofthe dialectic and anticipates the defining features of an object key to this science. / El propósito de este trabajo es examinar la cuestión de los objetivos planteados por Platón en el diálogo Sofista. En primer lugar, procuramos echar luz sobre el objetivo general que se estaría trazando en el prólogo de la obra, allí donde el Extranjero de Elea comienza a demostrar su estatus filosófico. En segundo lugar, nos ocupamos de ubicar la caracterización del sofista en el marco de ese objetivo, interpretando el resultado de dicha caracterización como un παράδειγμα implícito que prepara la ejecución de la dialéctica y anticipa los rasgos de un objeto clave de esa ciencia.

Being and Structure in Plato’s Sophist is a study of the metaphysical notion of being as it is at play in Plato’s dialogue the Sophist, and the senses in which Plato’s conception of being entails further accounts of ontological structure and goodness. While modern metaphysics primarily concerns existence, ancient metaphysics primarily concerns what grounds what, and in this dissertation I consider the nature and value of Plato’s understanding of being as a notion of ground rather than a principle of existence. I argue that Plato conceives of being in the fundamentally unified sense of participation, which entails a self-and-other and hence complex relation. For Plato, being must be understood in its context as one among many Platonic forms, or the network of mutually co-constitutive structures of determinacy that are the grounding stability necessary for the very possibilities of becoming, knowing, and discourse. I argue that Plato inherits his view in large part from Parmenides, and that the account in the Sophist makes explicit a previously implicit aspect of the Parmenidean tradition insofar as it involves a novel sense of nonbeing not as absolute nothingness, but instead as difference in the sense of constitutive and determinate otherness. I furthermore discuss the ways in which this account helps to show the connections between seemingly disparate elements of the dialogue like its dramatic setting, the method of division, and the discussion of the great ontological kinds. In this way, the dissertation entails a study of the entire dialogue and the interrelation of its parts, as well as its context among several other key Platonic and Parmenidean texts.

In this paper I examine Plato's response in the Sophist to the problem of falsity as it had developed in ancient Greek philosophy. The problem of falsity has its origins in Parmenides' absolute ontological distinction between being and not-being. This ontological distinction was translated by the sophists into an epistemological distinction between truth and falsity: a true statement says what is; a false statement says what is not. Because the problem of falsity has its roots in the views of these earlier thinkers, Plato's approach to this problem in the Sophist is historical. In this paper I attempt to trace out the ways in which Plato's response to the problem of falsity is a response to those thinkers who had made falsity so problematic, viz. Parmenides and the sophists. It has long been recognized that the first part ofPlato's Sophist is a response, indeed a challenge, to Parmenides. What has not been recognized is that the second part of the Sophist is also a challenge--to the sophists. The role the sophists played in the development of Plato's later period epistemological views has been, I think, quite underrated. Though Plato's middle period views on truth and falsity were not quite the same as those of Parmenides, they were certainly Parmenidean in spirit. In the Sophist we see a change. The Parmenides-inspired views on falsity have been quietly dropped. It is the sophists' definition of falsity-a false statement says that which is not--which is adopted, though with significant modifications. I believe it is the purpose of the second part of the Sophist to challenge the sophists by showing that they didn't understand their own definition. Though the sophists were right in holding that a false statement says that which is not, the implications they drew from this were entirely incorrect. A statement which says that which is not is no more problematic than a statement which says that which is. In this paper I examine the Sophist as a challenge directed towards Plato's predecessors. I believe this dialogue can only be properly understood against the historical backdrop ofthe problem ofnot-being and falsity as it developed out of the philosophies of Parmenides and the sophists. It is only by looking at the Sophist against this backdrop that Plato's accomplishment in this dialogue can truly be appreciated. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

[pt] Através de três caminhos, essa dissertação percorreu alguns itinerários sobre linguagem via Foucault. O primeiro persegue os temas da retórica, sofística e microfísica, enfatizando a relação entre estes três pontos e o lugar ocupado pela discursividade do próprio Foucault. O segundo consiste em acompanhar detidamente A arqueologia do saber nos aspectos relativos às práticas discursivas e à linguagem. O último escolhe um caso específico, o da literatura, para discutir os lugares que ela ocupa entre práticas discursivas. Apesar da aparente separação, procurou-se relacionar elementos dos três caminhos abordados, com o intuito de dar conta do problema da linguagem e do discurso, segundo os caminhos de Foucault em um recorte que nos parece crucial - a virada para a década de 1970. Com isso, esperamos ampliar o escopo da discussão sobre linguagem, que este trabalho procura suscitar. / [en] This dissertation walks through three itineraries on language, via Foucault. The first deals with rhetoric, sophistry and microphysics, emphasizing the relation between them and the place occupied by Foucault s own discursivity. The second closely follows The Archaeology of Knowledge in regards to discursive practices and language. The last one dwells on the specific case of literature, discussing its place amongst discursive practices. Despite their apparent embranchment, we ve tried bringing these three pathways together, trying to handle language s and speech trouble, by ways of Foucault into a crucial cutting – the turn to 70 s. With this, we hope broadening the scope of the language s debate.

Le sens commun et la philosophie se disputent la signification qu’il convient de donner à l’œuvre de Machiavel. Le premier l’accuse d’être pire qu’un sophiste car son rôle historique serait d’avoir inoculé la perversité dans la théorie et la pratique politiques. La seconde prétend qu’il serait l’un des fondateurs de la science politique moderne qui aurait avec lucidité défini les conditions de la raison d’État. Nous essayons d’abord de rendre justice à ces interprétations qui mettent chacune en lumière un aspect fondamental de l’enseignement machiavélien : d’une part, la nécessité « d’entrer dans le mal » en politique pour sortir la société de l’anomie, et, d’autre part, l’impossibilité que le sujet qui s’y résout soit bien intentionné et bien avisé. Le sujet du machiavélisme, en effet, est dans un rapport d’étrangeté à l’institution objective de l’État et à l’universel ; il veut et pense son « stato », et non l’État. Pour autant, paradoxalement, c’est parce qu’il est doué de malignité qu’il peut participer à l’effectivité du droit. Nous essayons donc de montrer, ensuite, comment Machiavel s’est efforcé de résoudre ce paradoxe. Son originalité consiste à ne pas se fier aux réquisits idéalistes de la raison pratique : ni à ceux de la moralité sociale, ni à ceux de l’éthique conséquentialiste. Dans une perspective matérialiste, il opte au contraire pour un conseil équivoque adressé à une pluralité de destinataires ; des destinataires bornés, aux appétits opposés, mais capables de se réfréner et de se corriger mutuellement, malgré eux. Car notre thèse, enfin, est que la « république » performativement activée par ses conseils est un État non-hégélien, un régime d’équilibre écologique entre des puissances socio-politiques d’espèces différentes mais appariées. / Common sense and philosophy are arguing about the interpretation of Machiavelli’s works. The first one accuses him of being even worse than a sophist, because his historical part would have been to inoculate perversity in political practice and theory. Whereas the second one claims that he would be one of the first builders of modern political science, who would have thought with lucidity the conditions of reasons of State. At first, we try to defend the pertinency of those interpretations, which bring to light, both, a fundamental aspect of Machiavellian’s lessons: the necessity, on the one hand, of “getting into the evil” in politics, in order to rise the society out of anomie, and, on the other hand, the impossibility for the subject who resolves to do it of being well-intentioned and well-advised. The subject of Machiavellianism, indeed, is in a relation of strangeness to the objective institution of State and to universal; he wants and thinks his "stato", and not the State. Paradoxically, however, it is because he is endowed with malignity that he can take part in the effectiveness of right. We then try to show how Machiavelli strove to solve this paradox. His originality consists in not relying on the idealistic requisites of practical reason: neither those of social morality nor those of consequentialist ethics. From a materialistic perspective, he opts for an equivocal advice addressed to a plurality of recipients; narrow-minded recipients, with opposite appetites, but able to restrain and to enhance one another, in spite of themselves. Our thesis, finally, is that the "republic" performatively activated by his advice is a non-Hegelian state, an ecological balance order between socio-political powers of different but paired species.

Dedicamo-nos ao estudo do modo como ocorre a retomada da sofística em Nietzsche. Partimos, então, do pressuposto de que há uma ligação entre Nietzsche e os sofistas e, por isso, dialogamos com os principais estudos que aproximam Nietzsche e a sofística. Nosso objetivo é, primeiramente, apresentar a visão geral entre as investigações sobre a relação de Nietzsche com a sofística. Para, então, mostrar certos equívocos no modo habitual de relacionar a filosofia nietzschiana ao movimento sofista. Nossa principal investida é contra o modo habitual de aproximação entre Nietzsche e a doutrina do homem- medida de Protágoras. Também discutimos o lugar de Cálicles no pensamento nietzschiano, principalmente, porque na visão geral que aproxima Nietzsche e os sofistas, a doutrina de Cálicles, acerca do direito do mais forte, está relacionada à idéia nietzschiana de além-homem. Acreditamos que nem na abordagem de Protágoras nem na de Cálicles, há argumentos condizentes para uma retomada da sofística no pensamento nietzschiano. Nossa defesa é de que o sofista Górgias é a palavra-chave no entendimento da relação de Nietzsche com os sofistas. Nosso argumento tem sua base na importância do historiador Tucídides para a concepção nietzschiana de história. Defendemos uma influência da retórica sofista, cujo principal representante é Górgias, tanto na apresentação quanto no modo de investigação do trabalho tucidideano. Tal influência resultará em uma articulação entre Nietzsche, Tucídides, sofística e história. Para apresentação dessa articulação, nosso estudo expõe a importância do elemento ficcional, tanto para as reflexões nietzschianas quanto para a retórica sofística de Górgias, de modo relacionar essa importância à concepção de história de Tucídides. / We are dedicated to the study of how the recovery occurs in Nietzsche's sophistry. We follow the assumption that there is a connection between Nietzsche and the Sophists, and therefore, we dialogue with major studies nearing Nietzsche and sophistry. Our first objective is to show an overview of the research on the relationship of Nietzsche to sophistry. To then show some errors in the usual way of relating to the Nietzschean philosophy with sophistic movement. Our main onslaught is against the usual way of rapprochement between Nietzsche and the doctrine of man-measure of Protagoras. We also discussed the place of Callicles in Nietzsche's thought, mainly because the general view that approximates Nietzsche and the Sophists, the doctrine of Callicles, on the right of the strongest, is related to the Nietzschean idea of beyond-man. We believe that neither the approach of the Protagoras neither Callicles, there are consistent arguments for a resumption of sophistry in Nietzsche. Our defense is that the sophist Gorgias is the keyword in the understanding of Nietzsche's relationship with the Sophists. Our argument has its basis in the importance of the historian Thucydides to the Nietzschean conception of history. We support an influence of sophistic rhetoric, whose main representative is Gorgias, both in presentation as in the way research work tucidideano. Such influence will result in a connection between Nietzsche, Thucydides, sophistry and history. In this joint presentation, our study shows the importance of the fictional element for both Nietzschean reflections as to the rhetoric of Gorgias sophistry relating this to the importance of design history of Thucydides.

Dedicamo-nos ao estudo do modo como ocorre a retomada da sofística em Nietzsche. Partimos, então, do pressuposto de que há uma ligação entre Nietzsche e os sofistas e, por isso, dialogamos com os principais estudos que aproximam Nietzsche e a sofística. Nosso objetivo é, primeiramente, apresentar a visão geral entre as investigações sobre a relação de Nietzsche com a sofística. Para, então, mostrar certos equívocos no modo habitual de relacionar a filosofia nietzschiana ao movimento sofista. Nossa principal investida é contra o modo habitual de aproximação entre Nietzsche e a doutrina do homem- medida de Protágoras. Também discutimos o lugar de Cálicles no pensamento nietzschiano, principalmente, porque na visão geral que aproxima Nietzsche e os sofistas, a doutrina de Cálicles, acerca do direito do mais forte, está relacionada à idéia nietzschiana de além-homem. Acreditamos que nem na abordagem de Protágoras nem na de Cálicles, há argumentos condizentes para uma retomada da sofística no pensamento nietzschiano. Nossa defesa é de que o sofista Górgias é a palavra-chave no entendimento da relação de Nietzsche com os sofistas. Nosso argumento tem sua base na importância do historiador Tucídides para a concepção nietzschiana de história. Defendemos uma influência da retórica sofista, cujo principal representante é Górgias, tanto na apresentação quanto no modo de investigação do trabalho tucidideano. Tal influência resultará em uma articulação entre Nietzsche, Tucídides, sofística e história. Para apresentação dessa articulação, nosso estudo expõe a importância do elemento ficcional, tanto para as reflexões nietzschianas quanto para a retórica sofística de Górgias, de modo relacionar essa importância à concepção de história de Tucídides. / We are dedicated to the study of how the recovery occurs in Nietzsche's sophistry. We follow the assumption that there is a connection between Nietzsche and the Sophists, and therefore, we dialogue with major studies nearing Nietzsche and sophistry. Our first objective is to show an overview of the research on the relationship of Nietzsche to sophistry. To then show some errors in the usual way of relating to the Nietzschean philosophy with sophistic movement. Our main onslaught is against the usual way of rapprochement between Nietzsche and the doctrine of man-measure of Protagoras. We also discussed the place of Callicles in Nietzsche's thought, mainly because the general view that approximates Nietzsche and the Sophists, the doctrine of Callicles, on the right of the strongest, is related to the Nietzschean idea of beyond-man. We believe that neither the approach of the Protagoras neither Callicles, there are consistent arguments for a resumption of sophistry in Nietzsche. Our defense is that the sophist Gorgias is the keyword in the understanding of Nietzsche's relationship with the Sophists. Our argument has its basis in the importance of the historian Thucydides to the Nietzschean conception of history. We support an influence of sophistic rhetoric, whose main representative is Gorgias, both in presentation as in the way research work tucidideano. Such influence will result in a connection between Nietzsche, Thucydides, sophistry and history. In this joint presentation, our study shows the importance of the fictional element for both Nietzschean reflections as to the rhetoric of Gorgias sophistry relating this to the importance of design history of Thucydides.