Abstract

Of all the themes running through the Sophist, in this paper I am interested in focusing on the definitions, particularly on the seventh of these, as in its attempt to hunt the sophist and distinguish his own particular activity, Plato may therein make important references to the "technique of producing images" (eidolopoiike techne). It is in the context of this seventh definition of the sophist as a 'wizard' (goes) and 'imitator' (mimetes), belonging to the "genre of the illusionists" who perform illusions in their discourses, where Plato mentions the examination of such a productive human technique of an imitative nature (mimetike) and, what interests me, the explanation of its potential divisions (eikastike and phantastike) in order to include the sophist in one of these. The drama of the original and the image that the Sophist stages, and whose inclusion leads to a new reworking in the domain of mimetics, will allow us, in making it extensive in the specific case of poetic mimesis, to corroborate from another perspective the counterpoint between poetic paradigms (traditional and platonic) which can be deduced from books II, III and X of The Republic.