La nozione di “apparenza” nel Sofista di Platone

Abstract

In this paper I would like to show that the core of the Sophist is devoted to the definition of the status of appearance.
When, in Sph. 257b3-4, the Stranger says that “when we say ‘not being’, we do not call something contrary to what is, but only different from being”, he refers to the not-being as ‘what is different from being’ and ‘what is different from being’ is precisely the appearance.
Plato, in my view, wrote the Sophist in order to thematise a crucial issue, which in such a dialogue is problematised for the first time: being, the reality of things, does not present itself to us directly and clearly. In order to understand the reality of things, which seems evident, and instead escapes, it is necessary to chase it as one chases a prey that hides. If it is necessary to search for the being in order to catch it, it is because most of the time what we catch is not being, but appearance.