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- Title
Accounting for Images in the Sophist.
- Authors
Greenstine, Abraham Jacob
- Abstract
Plato's Sophist is a critical dialogue for the question of images, for here the interlocutors divide images into two kinds - likenesses and apparitions - in their hunt for an account of sophistry. Yet much of the recent scholarship on the Sophist does not make much of this division. This chapter defends the continuing significance of the distinction between likeness and apparition. It argues for its importance in Plato's analysis of images, in his theory of accounts, and in his endeavor to differentiate philosophy from sophistry. It further contends that one can only distinguish likenesses from apparitions by establishing a correct perspective on both the image and the original. Thus, the Sophist exhorts us differentiate likenesses from apparitions, even as we struggle to consistently find the right perspective for this task. Living in the cinematic age only intensifies the need to distinguish likeness from apparition. Over the course of this chapter, we consider two films that advance our questions about perspectives, images, and falsity: Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949) and Orson Welles' F for Fake (1974). Like the Sophist, both films reveal a world of apparitions, where names are confused, lies are constant, and the truth is elusive.
- Subjects
IMAGE; PERSPECTIVE (Philosophy); SOPHISTS (Greek philosophy); LOGICAL fallacies; PHILOSOPHY
- Publication
Value Inquiry Book Series, 2019, Vol 332, p19
- ISSN
0929-8436
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1163/9789004398290_003