being and not-being; an introduction to plato's "sophist"by paul seligman

Canadian Journal of Philosophy

Being and Not-Being; An Introduction to Plato's "Sophist" by Paul SeligmanReview by: J. M. E. MoravcsikCanadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 6, No. 4 (Dec., 1976), pp. 737-744Published by: Canadian Journal of PhilosophyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40230662 .

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CANADIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY Volume VI, Number 4, December 7976

CRITICAL NOTICE

Paul Seligman, Being and Not-being; an Introduction to Plato's Sophist, (The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1974)

Reinterpreting Plato poses a perennial challenge, not only because of Plato's role as a pioneer in metaphysics, but also because of the mixture of metaphor and language innovation (e.g. coining the Greek word for "quality'') that Plato was driven to, in order to pave the way for a special vocabulary for philosophy. Semi-metaphorical answers given to what turned out to be perennial questions tempt keen minds, century after century, to clarify Plato's views in such a way as to link these to whatever is central to the philosophizing of the day.

The past two decades witnessed a considerable growth in the literature concerning the SophisV. Many of the contributors are associated with what has been loosely called "analytic philosophy". The concentration on the Sophist is explained by the fact that among Plato's dialogues this one lends itself most easily to an interpretation that presents it as focussed on issues such as negation and truth-value; issues that are also in the focus of current analytic philosophy. Needless to say, such interpretations face the danger of being one- sided, and distorting to some extent Plato's philosophic problems.

Professor Seligman's new book is meant to function as an antidote to such tendencies. One of the salient features of the book is the insistence that Plato's problems are primarily ontological, and that these must be seen in the context of Plato's Eleatic heritage; a heritage that is basically metaphysical, and not logical or centered on problems of language.

1 For useful bibliographies see the appropriate parts of Michael Frede's Predikation und Existenzaussage, Gottingen, Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967, and James Kostman's "False Logos and Not-Being in Plato's "Sophist" in Patterns in Plato's Thought, ed. by J. Moravcsik, Dordrecht, Reidel 1973.

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Seligman's intention to "restore balance" in this way, is most commendable. His attempt is, however, marred by some mis- understandings concerning what is or is not a metaphysical characterization of Plato's Forms.

For one thing, there is the ambiguity of the notion of a concept. In one of its uses 'concept' designates something in people's minds. But in another familiar sense, introduced by Frege, it designates something abstract that characterizes things and exists independently of minds. Thus it is unfortunate that Seligman criticizes M. Frede and others for describing the Forms as "concepts", or "significations of

expressions", or "functions in propositions" (pp. 2-3) as if these characterizations prevented one from regarding the Forms as on-

tologically independent and prior to all else. This misunderstanding prevents Seligman from appreciating fully alternative interpretations of 248-249a; he thinks that the issue is whether Forms are regarded as concepts (p.35, note 3); while the real issue is whether Plato would have regarded the fact that Forms can be subjects of temporally dated, tensed, propositions

- e.g. "Socrates is thinking of the Form of the Good" - as sufficient ground for regarding the Forms too to be in some sense in motion. (It must be admitted by all parties that "motion" is used by Plato in a very wide sense, including just about anything that can be regarded as change.) This passage is still a topic of lively controversy, but Seligman's claim about Forms not being concepts does not resolve the issue.

Difficulties arise also in Seligman's treatment of ontological ties

among the Forms (pp. 46-47, p. 86.). The key issue is whether the notion of "having a communion with" (or "share of"?) is symmetrical or asymmetrical. The fact that this relation may exist reciprocally between Forms, e.g. between Rest and Being, is not relevant to the question. E.g. 'kick' designates an asymmetrical relation, even though it may exist between some people reciprocally (e.g. in a football game).

Whether the key relations among Forms that Plato defines are symmetrical or asymmetrical has nothing to do with whether we construe the Forms as analogous to classes, or as analogous to attributes, or properties. (Seligman's way of putting this is: whether they are extensional or intensional.) The issue is relevant, however, to the understanding of why Plato sets out to prove the non-identity of the "greatest kinds". Seligman does not seem to have understood the matter fully. He notices, correctly, that the greatest kinds are co- extensive, (p. 64.) But he does not see what the full impact of the proofs are, and why they are needed. The point is that the greatest kinds are necessarily co-extensive, not just contingently so; yet Plato wants to regard them as distinct properties. Hence the need for the proofs of

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Critical Notice of Seligman

non-identity, and the central role of these in the middle part of the Sophist

Seligman's characterization of the greatest kinds, in particular that of Being, is not quite clear. He describes Being as a "Form of Forms" or a "meta-form" (p.43, p.56). This is misleading since Being is not a second-order property for Plato; by the time he writes the Sophist Forms as well as other entities, e.g. souls, partake of Being. Indeed, it is the counterintuitiveness of construing notions like being, identity, etc. as falling within certain types

- as properties do - that is partly responsible for these notions remaining the focus of lively controversy among philosophers and logicians today.

These difficulties lead to an insufficient characterization of both the problem of falsehood and Plato's solution (p.101). Seligman thinks that Plato is on his way to developing the line of thought according to which truth and falsity are not properties of reality, or unreality. According to Seligman, had Plato followed this line to its completion, he would have seen that there is no need to give an ontological justification of falsehood. The point that truth and falsity are not

ontological notions needs defense; certainly many logicians in our times, including Frege, have construed them so. Plato's concern is with what underlies - or makes true - a true proposition: and thus

correspondingly, with the problem of how what is a configuration of real things can underlie a meaningful sentence that expresses a false

proposition. Plato's solution rests on positing certain types of

correspondence between propositions and what they describe.

Though philosophers may disagree with Plato's way of construing correspondence and lack of correspondence, the issue is again still

open; it underlies some of the deepest metaphysical speculation of our times, such as those of Frege and the early Wittgenstein, not to mention F.H. Bradley who belonged to a different tradition.

What is, then, the metaphysical core of the Sophist! It will not do to

say: "the problem of falsehood", for that issue need not be viewed as a

metaphysical puzzle. Indeed, the sophists did not view it that way. Yet it is characteristic of Plato that he would not regard an answer to concrete questions of certain types adequate without metaphysical backing. In the Phaedo the fully adequate answer to how one should face death includes the Theory of Forms and arguments for

immortality, while in the Republic the issue about how rulers should function takes us again to the Theory of Forms and a carefully worked out epistemology. Thus it is not surprising that in the Sophist the

problem of falsehood should be viewed in the Eleatic frame; i.e. insofar as Not-Being of some sort underlies falsehood, how could there be such a thing?

The main metaphysical issues of the dialogue are the following. First, Plato's reply to Parmenides, showing that there can be Not-Being

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of a certain sort (announced at 258d-e). Secondly, since the demonstration of Not-Being rests on the Communion of the Forms, the demonstration of the latter. Thirdly, an analysis of what underlies falsehood; i.e. a misconnection of elements of reality. In the course of the treatment of the last problem Plato shows the difference between what is said being meaningful, and its being true; a distinction not found in the Eleatic view that Plato is attacking.

There are at least three intuitively plausible lines of interpretation that one might think of at first glance, but each of which needs to be rejected.

One of these is to assume complete parity between Plato's treatment of Being and Not-Being. Thus his reply to Parmenides would contrast the Eleatic conception of both Being and Not-Being as something complete, self-contained, with a treatment of both Being and Not-Being as incomplete and relational. But Being and Not-Being are not treated by Plato in a completely analogous fashion. The early paradoxes of Not-Being (237-239), have no exact parallel in the puzzles about Being that Plato introduces (240-249), and at the end it is claimed that we gave up talking about a complete opposite of Being (258e), while nothing analogous is said about Not-Being. Being for Plato seems to retain both its self-contained and relational nature, while the same does not hold for Not-Being. (This is not to say that Plato insists on a "purely existential sense" of 'is'; see below.)

The second line that needs to be resisted would have Plato answer Parmenides by singling out some of the greatest kinds and construe them purely as connecting Forms, thus having a pluralistic ontology in the contrast with the Eleatic monism. To be sure, the "vowel Forms" are needed for the interwoveness of the Forms, but they are not on par with the predicative tie. And as far as predication is concerned, Plato does not have - as Seligman rightly sees - a "superconnecting Form" that would stand for all instances of predication.

The third line to be resisted would leave open the question of the exact nature of the Communion of Forms, and would explain the nature of Not-Being by supposing that after 256e Plato introduces a completely new notion of Difference in terms of which the not- beautiful, not-large, etc. are explained, and in terms of which negation and falsehood are explicated. But the type of Not-Being discussed in 257-258 cannot be totally separated from the notion emerging from the proofs of non-identity, else one would have to charge Plato with proving his point only by equivocation. On the other hand, the notion of Difference developed by 256e, by itself, will not suffice. Thus the subsequent discussion of Difference, in terms of which the negative attributes are explained, must be construed as being distinct from but at the same time emerging from the notion that is developed in the previous section.

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These reflexions indicate certain general constraints within which any adequate interpretation of the middle part of the Sophist must be formulated. First, the treatment of Being and Not-Being must account both for they symmetries as well as the asymmetries of the two notions as Plato develops these. Secondly, any interpretation of the Commu- nion of Forms must leave the notion of Difference as developed by 256e as the foundation of the discussion of Not-Being and negation in 257-258, and both of these must be shown to serve for Plato as the foundation for the analysis of falsehood in 263a-b. Thirdly, it must be shown how the solutions to the metaphysical puzzles involving the Communion of Forms serve for Plato as the philosophically adequate background for the refutation of the claim that there can be no

meaningful falsehood. Seligman himself might have moved further along the lines of his

suggestion that we should not overemphasize the utility of contem-

porary analytic tools for the interpretation of Plato. For he, like others, (including the reviewer's early work) still deals with notions like class

membership, class-subsumption, entailment, etc. as the basic notions in terms of which the relationships established among the Forms must be explicated. But there is no reason why Plato might not have quite different primitives than the ones that have become familiar in the

logical analyses of the past 70 years. The Method of Division seems to

operate with primitives that do not correspond to those of modern

logic2. Why shouldn't this hold also for the Communion of Forms, and the explication of Not-Being in 257-258?

Since Plato's aim is to show via a metaphysical argument that

negation and falsehood are not paradoxical, there is not reason to assume that he must be trying to disambiguate the word 'is'. This latter

enterprise might not lead to the accomplishment of Plato's aim at all, and it is certainly not a necessary condition of it. Seligman is quite correct when he states (pp. 68-69) that Plato is not concerned to

disambiguate 'being', or any other word. This does not mean, however, that Plato is not concerned with any type of ambiguity at all; 256a11-12 shows quite clearly that the upshot of Plato's explanations is

supposed to be the realization that certain seemingly contradictory statements are "not meant in the same sense". As Frank Lewis pointed out recently3, this does not mean that there is any one word that Plato intends to show to be ambiguous; indeed, there is no direct evidence

2 For details see J. Moravcsik "The Anatomy of Plato's Divisions" in Exegesis and

Argument (Festschrift for G. Vlastos) ed. by E. Lee, A. Mourelatos, and R. Rorty, Assen, Van Gorcum, 1973, pp. 324-348.

3 Frank Lewis, "Did Plato discover the ESTIN of identity?" mimeogr. 1975.

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that Plato is at any stage concerned with disambiguating some word or phrase, (which isn't to say that he confuses senses). The metaphysical distinctions are supposed to serve to enable us to analyze certain sentences as having underlying them different propositions.

Not only is Seligman correct in thinking that Plato is not

distinguishing the usual philosophic senses of 'is' - i.e. existence and the copula

- but also in claiming that there is no single Form

corresponding to any one of these senses, in particular predication (p.70.) This means, however, that there is no "superconnector"; e.g. the Form of participation, linking all attributive connections. It does NOT mean that there is no Form underlying some predicative ties.

Seligman criticizes the suggestion that one aspect of Being underlies certain predicative ties; i.e. that corresponding to some statements of the form: "a partakes of F" there is the ontological link: "F is in

relationship to a", (pp. 68-70, and p. 91.) But Plato does give us this formulation in 256e5-6, and he refers to it again in his solution of the paradox of falsehood (263b11-12).

Plato faces a problem here that has its echoes again in subsequent theories of predication. If predication is held together by a tie, what ties the tie to the relatal Seligman is right in thinking that Plato is not committed to seeing another predicative tie between the relata and

Being; but it does not follow that an aspect of Being is not involved in what underlies attributive propositions. Needless to say, Being will underlie these connections regardless whether there is or is not a

linguistic sign used to signify the copula; e.g. we have the same configuration underlying "Being is at rest" or "Being rests" - or "Theaetetus sits", for that matter (contra Seligman p. 91).

Seligman's own solution to this problem is puzzling. On the one hand he thinks that participation is a notion that is outside Plato's ontology, i.e. that there is no Form corresponding to it (p.70). On the other hand, (p.76.) he thinks that Plato's key move is to recast the Parmenidean "is nor is-not" into "participates in and is different from". He writes: "The Eleatic disjunction has been replaced by a conjunction, tautology by synthetic a priori truth" (ibid,). Taken together, these claims present us with a dilemma. If the solution to the Parmenidean paradox involves explaining Being in terms of participation, but that notion is outside of the Platonic ontology, then Plato's ontology cannot be used to refute Parmenides. Apparently, the refutation requires notions that are outside the Platonic ontology. But in that case isn't Plato begging the Eleatic question? And was it not one of Seligman's earlier key claims that we must interpret Plato's enterprise in the middle part of the Sophist as constructing an ontological structure?

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At the very least, interpreters should show how - on their accounts - Plato came up with a theory (hat seemed to him to be refuting Parmenides without begging any questions.

The relationship between the ontological configurations and the structures which they are supposed to clear up remains problematic also in Seligman's treatment of Plato's analysis of falsehood. For he thinks that in his proposed solution Plato assimilated false propositions and true negative propositions. The structure of Plato's argument, however, can be reconstructed without saddling him with such a move. The key to Plato's problem is the separation of criteria of

meaning from criteria of truth; furthermore, given the framework of Plato's thinking, both have to depend on the Communion of Forms. In 259-260 Plato discusses what makes "logos" i.e. significant discourse, possible. This turns out to be the linking of the appropriate parts of

speech; but that in turn, depends on the interwovenness of the Forms. Combinations of, e.g. nouns and verbs, will be meaningful

- i.e. express something for us - because they are analogous to the linkage among Forms, or Forms to particulars. (Furthermore, taken by themselves, they will have referents). The problem of falsehood becomes the problem of how the wrong elements can be combined at times; resulting in a statement that does not have a configuration in

reality underlying it.

Thus, "Theaetetus flies" is meaningful, since it involves the combination of the appropriate elements of language.

Secondly, the terms it combines stand for what are indeed elements of reality, i.e. Theaetetus and Flying respectively. (We shall

ignore in this summary the role of Being which is - as we saw above -

controversial.)

Thirdly, it relates terms standing for Theaetetus and Flying instead of relating terms for Theaetetus and not-flying, the configuration that does in fact hold in reality. In other words, it relates terms that stand for elements that are different from the elements the terms for which would be related by the corresponding true proposition.

One might object at this point by saying that instead of assuming positive and negative relata, one should talk about elements that are and those that are not in fact related in the appropriate way in reality. However, this would ignore the thoroughgoing "expressionism", or

correspondence theory, that underlies Plato's philosophizing throughout the dialogues. There are no facts in Plato's ontology; only configurations, and these are positive or negative. One of the

consequences of this is that Plato only expresses what logicians would call internal, as opposed to external negation (or, alternatively, subsentential vs. sentential negation). But it should be remembered that in ordinary language most denials are expressed in terms of

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constituent-negation; sentential negation is mostly an artifact of modern logic, useful only in a limited number of theoretical contexts.

In conclusion, let us remember that disagreements over details are likely to endure in a case in which the text under discussion has been under scrutiny for so many centuries. The main function of this book is as an antidote to currently fashionable tendencies. As such it merits serious attention. It also makes one rethink and revise many of the claims that were made about the Sophist in the past 15 years4. Thus it serves as a useful stimulus for further work on this Platonic dialogue whose richness of content seems inexhaustible.

October 1975 J.M.E. MORAVCSIK Stanford University

4 Seligman criticizes repeatedly, among others, the earlier work of this reviewer. It will be clear from the above to those familiar with the controversies that on some points I have changed my views and that on others I remain intransigent. There remain many points on which Seligman indicates disagreements with me; it did not seem to me appropriate within the confines of this review to respond to all of these.

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being and not-being; an introduction to plato's "sophist"by paul seligman

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