Being and the Philosopher’s Object in Plato’s Sophist

In the Sophist, Plato claims that the philosopher is always engaged through reasonings with the idea tou ontos (254a4-b1). I argue that, contrary to appearances and to what various commentators believe, this phrase does not refer to the Kind Being singled out in the Sophist as one of the so-called ‘greatest’ or ‘most important’ Kinds, but to the whole intelligible realm. The proposed reading better accounts for Plato’s exact wording at Sophist 254a4-b1 and preserves the consistency of Plato’s view on the object of philosophical knowledge. I conclude with some broader considerations on the relationship between this passage, Platonic dialectic and Aristotle’s conception of a science of being qua being.