Since the publication of The verb “be” in Ancient Greek by Charles Kahn, people have put a lot of emphasis and invested too much labor in all kinds of historico-philological analyses in order to resolve philosophical questions regarding the concept of existence in Greek thought. Useful as these analyses might be, they cannot provide us with conclusive answers to the specific philosophical questions under scrutiny, and, perhaps, it is time for us to abandon the overwhelming optimist motivating the pioneers behind (...) these attempts. I use the Sophist as a case study. I conclude that whether the Form of Being represents existence or predication cannot be settled on speculation regarding the syntax of the verb εἶναι; absolute εἶναι need not be existential in meaning, and complemented εἶναι may be existential in meaning. (shrink)

The version of the paradox of false judgement examined at Tht. 188c10–189b9 relies on the assumption that to judge falsehoods is to judge the things which are not. The presentation of the argument displays several syntactic ambiguities: at several points it allows the reader to adopt different syntactic connections between the components of sentences. For instance, when Socrates says that in a false judgement the cognizer is “he who judges the things which are not about anything whatsoever” (188d3–4), how should (...) the clause “about anything whatsoever” be construed? In common with “he who judges” and “the things which are not” (in which case the cognizer would be “he who judges about anything whatsoever the things which are not about it”), or exclusively with “he who judges” (in which case the cognizer would be “he who judges about anything whatsoever the things which are not”)? The most plausible answer is that both construals are envisaged. Accordingly, the argument has two branches corresponding to these two alternative construals. In particular, it attempts to show that in both cases the cognizer will address what does not exist – an impossibility. The idea that a false judgement is concerned with what is not about its reference has a clear echo in the Sophist. The way in which the problem is handled in the Theaetetus provides a hint that can help to find a solution for the hotly debated issue of the interpretation of the Sophist’s account of false statement. (shrink)

With the use of a particular metaphor, which appears at the end of the Cratylus and is taken up with perfect symmetry at the beginning of the Theaetetus, Plato certainly wanted to indicate the succession of Cratylus–Theaetetus as an order for reading the two dialogues, which Trasillus faithfully reproduced in structuring the second tetralogy of Platonic dialogues. The claim of the theory of ideas, with which the Cratylus ends, must therefore be considered the background in which to place not only (...) the analysis of the name carried out in the Cratylus, but also the discussion and criticism of the epistemological theories examined and refuted in the Theaetetus. The transition from the discussion of the name to that of the logos is another important theoretical element that connects the two dialogues. Another one is the theory of knowledge, already precisely elaborated in the Cratylus, and taken up and deepened in the Theaetetus. Finally, the theme of false and error is a third theoretical element common to the two dialogues, which, starting from Euthydemus, finds its solution in the Sophist. (shrink)