Abstract
Summary: Through a series of passages quoted from Parmenides’ Poem on Nature, Plato’s Apology of Socrates, Philebus, Sophist, and Luigi Scaravelli’s Due Inediti su Platone, the aim of the paper is to show that the general distinction between the sophist and the philosopher can never be given once and for all: the distinction is possible only ‘step-by-step’, as both the forms of correct discourse and incorrect discourse inhere to the very structure of Logos, to thinking itself. This is the reason why the ‘Socratic-dialectical’ task to distinguish between ignorance and wisdom, richness and virtue cannot be accomplished at once, but it presents itself as a habitus in which it is necessary to persist.
Keywords: Identity, distinction, opposition, essence, act of being.
Parole chiave: Identità, distinzione, opposizione, essenza, atto d’essere.