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The Old Stoa on the Truth-Value of Oaths
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2013
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Recent works on Stoic logic report that among complete λεκτά only a sub-class was regarded as capable of being true or false: by contrast with statements (ἀξιώματα), such other sentences as questions, orders and oaths do not bear a truth-value. But the situation is a good deal more complicated than that, at least in the case of oaths, which I propose to examine.
In characterising all such utterances as ‘sentences’ I do not wish to beg questions which will be discussed below. Surface grammar, with its distinctions of indicative, imperative, interrogative and optative, can mislead us as to the real force of an utterance. In the case of oaths there seems to be no preferred form of expression; and it is a matter for deeper philosophical probing to determine their true relation to other speech-acts.
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- Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 1974
References
page 44 note 1 See Mates, Benson, Stoic logic (Berkeley, 1961), pp. 18–19Google Scholar; Kneale, W. and Kneale, M., The development of logic (Oxford, 1962), pp. 144–5Google Scholar.
page 44 note 2 Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, ed. von Arnim, J. (photoreprint, Stuttgart, 1964), vol. II. 186Google Scholar [henceforth, SVF 11 etc.].
page 44 note 3 SVF II. 187.
page 44 note 4 SVF II. 188.
page 44 note 5 SVF II. 192.
page 44 note 6 I translate these words ‘swear well’ and ‘swear amiss’ to avoid begging questions which will be discussed below.
page 44 note 7 SVF I. 581.
page 45 note 1 SVF II. 197.
page 45 note 2 ἀληθορκεῖν appears to have been coined by Chrysippus; Ψευδορκεῖν is found elsewhere only once in Aristophanes (Eccl. 603), without any intention to mark the sort of distinction here employed by Chrysippus.
page 45 note 3 These words too appear to be Chrysippean coinages.
page 45 note 4 Note 
.
page 45 note 5 S.E. 25. 180a 34–b 7.
page 46 note 1 Reading δἐ in 180a39, instead of γἀρ which is printed in most modern editions but has inferior manuscript support.
page 46 note 2 Construing 
as object of 
, not of 
.
page 47 note 1 Aristotle's classic denial that all complete utterances have a truth-value comes, of course, at De Int. 4. 17a 2–7. But the type of utterance there specifically exempted – prayers – have a clear grammatical differentiation from statements, which oaths do not.
page 47 note 2 How to do things with words (Oxford, 1962), pp. 14–19Google Scholar.
page 47 note 3 Pp. 98–102.
page 47 note 4 Pp. 144–6.
page 47 note 5 For a different type of explanation see Long, A. A., Problems in Stoicism (London, 1971), pp. 100–1Google Scholar, who appeals to much more general features of Stoic thought. I have restricted myself to more narrowly logical considerations. But it may be that both approaches would finally lead in the same direction.
page 47 note 6 I have been helped by comments from Dr Geoffrey Lloyd and Miss Rosemary Ellis.
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