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False Statement in the Sophist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

R. S. Bluck
R. S. Bluck
Affiliation:
Queen Mary College, University of London
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Extract

Various attempts have been made to find a satisfactory alternative to Cornford's explanation of what the Sophist has to say about false statement, and in particular to his interpretation of the passage in which the statements ‘Theaetetus is sitting’ and ‘Theaetetus is flying’ are discussed. The difficulty with Cornford's view is that he wants to find the explanation of truth and falsity entirely in the ‘blending’ or incompatibility of Forms, but that in the examples Socrates chooses, while Sitting and Flying may be Forms, Theaetetus cannot be. Hence Cornford has to say, ‘It is not meant that Forms are the only elements in all discourse. We can also make statements about individual things. But it is true that every such statement must contain at least one Form’. Unfortunately, when talking about the ϵἴδων συμπλοκή at 259e, the Stranger seems clearly to envisage a blendin g of ϵἴδη with each other:. How can this be reconciled with an ‘example’ in which only one term stands for a Form?

I do not propose to discuss in detail the various solutions that have been offered, but to set forth my own interpretation of the whole passage. This may be regarded as to some extent a ‘blending’ of what has been said by Professor Hackforth and Mr. Hamlyn, but a number of points arise which deserve further discussion, and it may perhaps be hoped that such a σύνθϵσις as this may prove to be .

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 77 , Issue 2 , November 1957 , pp. 181 - 186
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1957

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References

1 E.g. Hackforth, R. in CQ xxxix (1945); 56 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Robinson, R. in Phil. Rev. lix (1950), 3 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Peck, A. L. in CQ n.s. ii (1952), 32 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ackrill, J. L. in Bulletin of the Insttute of Classical Studies of the University of London, no. 2 (1955), 32 ff.Google Scholar; Hamlyn, D. W. in Phil. Q. v (1955), 289 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Plato's Theory of Knowledge, 300.

3 loc. cit., 57, n. 2.

4 Cf. especially 129c ad init.: .

5 As Cornford observes (op. cit. 261, n. 1), εἷδος and γένος are treated as synonymous in the Sophist. Cf., e.g., 256d—e; and when at 260b an allusion is made to 258c, where τὸ ήμ ὄν was said to be an εἰδος, we are told that it was found to be a γένος.

6 loc. cit.

7 loc. cit., 294–5.

8 loc. cit., 294, 301.

9 This view receives support from the summing-up at 263d (which I quote below as proposition (9)). Hack-forth (loc. cit., 57) speaks of ‘obviously meaningless conjunctions of noun and verb’, like ‘Books drink’ or ‘Boots love’, but these expressions do give information, however untrue, and might be said to have a meaning. If a fairy story were written about boots in love, a child would understand what was meant.

10 op. cit., 313.

11 Cf. the description of a true statement at Crat. 385b as one ; and Ctesippus' grudging admission at Euthyd. 284c that a false statement .

12 loc. cit., 58.

13 That ὄντα here is emphatic was suggested in a paper (to which the present article is much indebted) read by Professor R. C. Cross at a joint meeting of the Northern Association for Ancient Philosophy and the Scottish Group in September 1955.

14 Hackforth (loc. cit., 58) writes: ‘That which is truly asserted may be positive (x is A, B, C) or negative (x is not D, E, F). Now D is something said about x, but something different from what is about x. Hence the false statement x is D substitutes one of the negative determinations of x for one of the positive.’ This is no doubt true, but it is not what the Stranger is saying in the present sentence.

15 E.g. ‘Ainsi un assemblage de verbes et de noms, qui, à ton sujet, énonce, en fait, cômme autre, ce qui est même, et, comme étant, ce qui n'est point, voilà, ce semble, au juste, l'espèce d'assemblage qui constitue réellement et véritablement un discours faux' (Diès). 'So what is stated about you, but so that what is different is stated as the same or what is not as what is—a combination of verbs and names answering to that description finally seems to be really and truly a false statement' (Cornford).

16 Hamlyn (loc. cit., 292) remarks that Plato 'says in 257c that the “nature of difference” is subdivided, and he seems to have in mind here a range of incompatibles; so that to say that A is not B is to say that A is incompatible with B'. The belief that Plato had this in mind here seems to be not uncommon, but it is unlikely to be correct. The sequence of thought is this: The nature of Difference makes all other Kinds different from τὸ ὄν, SO that in a sense they ‘are not’, and in a similar way τὸ ὄν itself ‘is not’ (256d–257a); τὸ μή ὄν is not then ⟨here⟩ the opposite of τὸ ὄν, but only different ⟨from it⟩, just as τὸ μὴ μέγα) is not necessarily the opposite of τὸ μέγα, but may mean τὸ σμικρόν or τσον—the μή simply indicates something different (257b–C); τὸ μὴ καλόν and τὸ μέγα exist just as much as τὸ καλόν and τὸ μέγα, for the parts of ἡ θατέρου ϕύσις must exist just as much as we have seen that it does, and the setting of such a part in contrast to a part of τὸ ὄν does not signify the opposite of τὸ ὄν, but only something different from it—this is the τὸ μὴ ὄν we have been looking for, and it is a Form (257d–258c); Parmenides has been contradicted: τὸ μὴ ὄν is not the opposite of τὸ ὄν(258c–e); an opponent must accept or refute our conclusions that (i) the Kinds blend, (ii) Existence and Difference pervade them all, and (iii) Difference and Existence both are and are not. Now if Plato meant to offer us a range of incompatibles, he has kept his purpose dark. All he insists on is that difference is not the same as non-existence, and the discussion of the ‘parts’ of the Different is simply a justification or elaboration of the analogy between τὸ μὴ ὄν and τὸ μὴ μέγα which at the same time helps to lead to the identification of τὸ μὴ ὄν with τὸ ἕτερον. The only possible ground for supposing that e.g. τό μὴ μέγα does not embrace all Forms other than τὸ ἕτερον is 257b, where on Hamlyn's hypothesis we should have to take τὸ ἴσον to be a grade on the height-scale between tall and short; but that seems unreasonable. In any ordinary sense being equal to something or someone is not incompatible with being tall. τὸ ἴσον and τὸ μέγα are simply different.

17 If τὸ μέγα at 258b–c is a self-predicational Form, as it appears to be, Plato must still have believed in para-deigmatic Forms. Belief in the possibility of a direct mystical apprehension of them would not be inconsistent with the present account of propositional truth, which yields a different kind of knowledge.

18 Plato does not say that words are not names of things, and we may notice the μόνον here. That he did still think of the words of a sentence as standing for or representing things of some kind is shown by 257c: .