How is Plato's View of Being in Sophistes Sublated in Stoic Ontology?

Abstract

Stoic ontology or physics, in which distinctions between appearance and reality or soul and body are not drawn, substitute what is (to on) with something (to ti) as the supreme genus, so as to show that in addition to existing corporeal entities, incorporeals also somehow subsist. Because their appropriation of Plato’s definition of what is (power to act and/or be acted on) in the famous Gigantomachy passage in the Sophistēs, the Stoics, throughout history of philosophy, have been associated with those described as sons of the earth/giants in the dialogue. These identifications are invalid, however, because the Stoics operate with two principles—one is active (god/nature) and the other is pasive (matter)—and they consider things like soul, virtue, and wisdom to be corporeals, accommodating in their philosophy both corporeals and incorporeals, bringing them together under a higher genus, namely, something, rather than the genus of what is. The principal purpose of this study is to investigate whether the Stoics are materialists and whether they really can be identified with the so-called sons of the earth mentioned in the Gigantomachy passage. To address these questions, the paper will discuss i) the locus of Platonic ideas or the concepts in general in the Stoic ontological scheme, ii) Stoic ontology in general, and iii) the concept of something, which is one of the most essential concepts of Stoic ontology. The paper will confine itself to sections 237d and 246a-249d of the dialogue.