What I hope to have shown in chapter 1 is that the Sophist theory of the Suject/subject provides a useful model within which to pursue the permutations of subjectectivity within the modern period and after, the model is also impotyant in that the Subject represents the ultimate recourse to metaphysice, and, more important, that the Subject is never the sole concen of a theory which founds (a) discourse upon this a priori Suject. The rheory of the Subject always entails another step: once the system is insituted by its act the absent Subject is paradoxically present within the system as a potential of the subject constituted by the system or discourse. In other words, the subject is always inside/outside discourse, almost everyargument about subjectivity of concern here assumes this potential, and if it does, it therefore unconsciously assumes a relation to the Subject and the metaphysics of origin.