hestir - truth in platos sophist

1A “ C O N C E P T I O N ” O F T R U T H I N P L A T O ’ S S O P H I S T

Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. 41, no. 1 (2003) 1–24

[1]

A “Conception” of Truth inPlato’s Sophist

B L A K E E . H E S T I R *

1 . I N T R O D U C T I O N

PLATO’S SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM of falsehood carries a notorious reputation whichsometimes overshadows a variety of interesting developments in Plato’s philoso-phy. One of the less-noted developments in the Sophist is a nascent conception oftruth which casts truth as a particular relation between language and the world. F.M. Cornford, for one, in his translation and commentary on the Sophist takesPlato’s account of truth to involve something like correspondence: “The [true]statement as a whole is complex and its structure corresponds to the structure ofthe fact. Truth means this correspondence.”1 In more general contexts, we findA. N. Prior claiming in his Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on the correspondencetheory of truth: “Aristotle did not originate the correspondence theory but took itover from Plato’s Sophist.”2

However, all this assumes a lot about Plato, much less Aristotle. For one, itassumes that to claim that the statement ‘Theaetetus is sitting’ is true is to claimthat it is true because it corresponds with the fact that Theaetetus is sitting. Otherscholars, for a wide variety of interpretational reasons, have been reluctant toaccept Cornford’s view, but few offer any explanation of what sort of account oftruth we might ascribe to Plato by the end of the Sophist. Michael Frede claims

* Blake E. Hestir is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Texas Christian University.

A number of people commented on this paper along the way. I am grateful to Jim Butler, RichardGalvin, Darren Hibbs, Tim Mahoney, Catherine McKeen, and Bill Pohl for their questions and com-ments. I am also grateful to those present at the 24th Annual Workshop in Ancient Philosophy, hostedby Florida State University; in particular, I would like to thank Patricia Curd, Margaret Dancy, DanDevereux, Maria Morales, Alex Mourelatos, Tim O’Keefe, John Palmer, Robin Smith, Gisela Striker,Ellen Wagner, Steve White, and my commentator, Andy Miller. Finally, I am greatly indebted to RussDancy and the anonymous referees at the Journal for their thoughtful criticisms and suggestions.

1 Francis M. Cornford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge: The Theaetetus and Sophist of Plato (Indianapolisand New York: Bobbs Merril Company, Inc., 1935/1957), 311, 314–5.

2 A. N. Prior, “Correspondence Theory of Truth,” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. I, PaulEdwards, ed. (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. and the Free Press, 1967), 224.

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2 J O U R N A L O F T H E H I S T O R Y O F P H I L O S O P H Y 41: 1 J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 3

that Plato thinks a true statement is true precisely if a form is something that iswith reference to a subject. Frede is quiet about whether this expresses a particu-lar conception of truth, but if he’s right, truth involves something other thancorrespondence. Alfred Tarski has argued at length that truth is a simpler notionthan that of correspondence or coherence or whatever. In fact, one claim heemphasizes about his own “conception” of truth is that it is similar to the classicalconception of truth we find in places like Aristotle’s Metaphysics—a conception oftruth which is formulated in Greek in very much the same way Plato formulates itin the Sophist. Unfortunately, Tarski never sufficiently explains exactly what it isabout the classical conception that makes it closer to his own.

I shall argue that in a very general sense Tarski is right about the ancient con-ception of truth, but this is not to claim that Tarski’s own conception of truth canbe found in Plato. By interpreting in a certain way Plato’s solution to the paradoxof not being and his solution to the problem of falsehood, I argue that the ac-count of true and false statement that emerges within the discussion of not beingand falsehood generally neither entails nor outwardly suggests any of the tradi-tional characterizations of a correspondence “theory” of truth.3 On the contrary,what emerges from the Sophist is a very minimalistic “conception” of truth whichrequires neither positing the existence of facts or states of affairs nor formulatinga precise, explanatory definition of truth. Aristotle’s discussion of truth in theCategories and De Interpretatione is in many respects remarkably similar to Plato’s;and I argue that although some, including W. D. Ross and J. L. Ackrill, have foundforms of the correspondence theory in these early works, Aristotle’s conceptionof truth makes no radical departures from Plato’s and in fact stands as an obviousextension of the ideas about truth Plato presents in the Sophist. In the final sec-tion, I offer a few reasons why one should not expect to find the emergence of a“theory” of truth in the Sophist. If my general interpretation of Plato is correct, weshould revise at least one historically significant footnote to Plato accordingly:Plato did not father the correspondence theory of truth and those claiming oth-erwise risk anachronistically attributing a problem-laden theory to Plato and/ormissing one of Plato’s points about the fundamental nature of truth.

2 . T H E T A R G E T P A S S A G E : S O P H I S T 2 6 3 B 4

Interesting philosophical developments in Plato’s dialogues are frequently ob-scured by vexing translational issues, and the Sophist certainly contains a few. Infact, Plato’s account of true statement at 263b4—hereafter referred to as the “thetarget passage”—has been translated variously. Since the translation of the targetpassage has significant implications for the interpretation of Plato’s account oftruth, I shall begin by arguing for what I consider to be the most charitable anddefensible translation.

3 I must assume for the purposes of this paper that the so-called Eleatic Stranger is in fact present-ing us with Plato’s own views about truth and falsehood. Such an assumption is not much of a stretch,but it is open to debate. However, even if the Stranger’s views are not those of Plato’s, they remainhistorically and philosophically significant.


The key exchange between the two main interlocutors, the so-called EleaticStranger and Theaetetus, occurs at Sophist 263a12–b12.4 Just prior to that pas-sage the Stranger offers two simple examples of a statement, one true, the otherfalse, respectively: ‘Theaetetus sits’ and ‘Theaetetus flies.’ They agree that bothare about and of Theaetetus. At b4 the Stranger claims: “And the true [one] ofthem states of the things that are (ta; o[nta) that they are (wJ~ e[stin) about you.”And at b7–9, he says, “But the false [one] [states] other [things] than the thingsthat are (e{tera twn o[ntwn). . . . Therefore, it states of the things that are not (ta;

mh; o[nt j) that [they are] beings (wJ~ o[nta).”The word ‘that’ translates the Greek word ‘wJ~’ (hôs). Unfortunately, ‘wJ~’ can

be used both as a conjunction and adverbially with the sense “as,” which leaves uswith the following two possible translations of b4:

A. A true statement states of the things that are that they are about some subject S;orB. A true statement states the things that are as they are about S.

The difference between A and B is subtle, but significant. The tone of A issomething like: x states with respect to this y that it is, while the tone of B is closerto x tells it like it is, or in other words, x states it as it is. If B were the correct reading,

4 The full passage:

ES. But, we say, it’s necessary for each of the statements to be of a certain sort.[263b] Th. Yes.

ES. Of what sort must one say each of these is?Th. I suppose the one is false, the other true.ES. And the true [one] of them states of the things that are that they are about you.Th. What else?ES. But the false [one] [states] other [things] than the things that are.Th. Yes.ES. Therefore, it states of the things that are not that [they are] beings.Th. I guess so.ES. But really [it states] things that are other about you. For we said, I dare say, that abouteach [thing] there are many things that are but many things that are not.XE. Poio;n dev gev tinav famen ajnagkaion ”ekaston e«inai twn lovgwn.

[263b] QEAI. Naiv.XE. Touvtwn dh; poiovn tina eJkavteron fatevon e«inai;QEAI. To;n me;n yeudh` pou, to;n de; ajlhqh.XE. Levgei de; aujtwn oJ me;n ajlhqh;~ ta; o[nta wJ~ “estin peri; sou.QEAI. Tiv mhvn;XE. JO de; dh; yeudh;~ e{tera twn o[ntwn.QEAI. Naiv.XE. Ta; mh; o[nt j a[ra wJ~ o[nta levgei.QEAI. Scedovn.XE. [Ontw~ dev ge o[nta ”etera peri; sou. Polla; me;n ga;r e[famen o[nta peri; ”ekastone«inaiv pou, polla; de; oujk o[nta.

There is a question about the text at 263b10–12. Burnet emends the text based on Cornarius, inwhich case one should translate the text: “But [it states] things that are other than the things that areabout you.” D. B. Robinson (Platonis Opera I, E. A. Duke et al., eds. [New York: Oxford University Press,1995], 162) proposes o[ntw~ based on texts bTW, and then proposes we emend as follows: “ontw~ dev geo[nta ”etera <twn o[ntwn> peri; sou. Then the ES would be claiming: “But really [it states] things that areother <than the things that are> about you.” I will stick to the more reliable bTW, though the sense ofthe sentence is basically the same either way. See Michael Frede, Prädikation und Existenzaussage,Hypomnemata 18 (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1967), 57–8 (hereafter cited as PE).


there would be some grounds for making an argument for the claim that Plato ispresenting a nascent correspondence theory of truth. Assuming a statement statesthings as they are suggests that a statement intends to mirror, reflect, or capturein some way the structure of some state of affairs; so, when a statement “corre-sponds” with the state of affairs, the statement is true and the statement is truebecause of that correspondence.

However, there are good reasons for preferring A over B. At Sophist 240e10–241a1, the Stranger offers a parallel formulation of the 263b8 account of falsestatement: “And I think a statement will be thought false along the same line:stating of the things that are that they are not and of the things that are not thatthey are.”5 Although the Stranger does not explicitly formulate the account oftrue statement at 240e+, such an account would run the same way: A true state-ment states of the things that are, that they are. The Greek verb ‘levgein’, which Ihave translated in both passages as “to state,” can either take a simple direct ob-ject (e.g., I state ‘Socrates’) or it can introduce a dependent substantive clause(e.g., I state that Socrates is pale). When ‘levgein’ introduces a substantive clause,as it does in both of the above passages, the word ‘that’ need not have a comple-ment in the Greek; when there is, there are two possible candidates: ‘levgein’ maybe followed by either ‘o{ti’ or ‘wJ~’, both of which can mean “that.” A third candi-date is the accusative plus infinitive construction, properly expressed in Englishby adding the word ‘that,’ though in this sort of construction, ‘that’ does not havea specific grammatical complement in the Greek. At Sophist 240e10–241a1, Platofavors the accusative (ta; o[nta) plus infinitive (e«inai) construction with ‘levgein’;so, the context grammatically requires the use of ‘that’ in translation. Therefore,if charity demands that one consider his accounts of false statement and, by impli-cation, true statement to be consistent between the 240e and 263b passages, theproper translation of the target passage must be what I have expressed in A.6

3 . T H E S E N S E O F T H E T A R G E T P A S S A G E

There are a set of difficulties with the sense of the expressions ‘ta; o[nta’ and ‘wJ~

e[stin’ at b4: What does it mean to state of the things that are that they are about a

5 “Kai; lovgo~ o«imai yeudh`~ ou{tw kata; taujta; nomisqhvsetai tav te o[nta levgwn mh; e«inai kai; ta; mh;o[nta e«inai.”

6 This is not the only textual evidence in favor of the A reading. See also how Plato treats ‘wJ~’ atSophist 258d5, e3, e6–7; and 261a9–10. In all these cases, the most reasonable sense to be gotten fromthe text involves reading the ‘wJ~’ as “that.” Moreover, in the Theaetetus, Plato confronts Protagoreanrelativism with a barrage of criticisms. The embodiment of Protagoras’s view is expressed succinctly inthe potently quotable statement at 152a2–4: “A human is measure of all things, of things that are thatthey are, and of things that are not that they are not” (Pavntwn crhmavtwn mevtron a[nqrwpon ei\nai, twnme;n o[ntwn wJ~ e[sti, twn de; mh; o[ntwn wJ~ oujk e[stin). The content of Protagoras’s account of truth hereis of course different from what Plato claims in the Sophist, but grammatically Protagoras’s expressionis relevantly similar and tells us something important about the history of the kind of language em-ployed in the Sophist: ‘wJ~’ is taken with ‘mevtron’ and properly translated “that.” The following transla-tors use ‘that’ at 152a2–4: M. J. Levett, Plato: Theaetetus, Bernard Williams, trans., ed., Myles Burnyeat,rev. trans. (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., Inc., 1990); Robin Waterfield, Plato: Theaetetus,trans. with an essay (New York: Viking Penguin Inc., 1987); Seth Benardete, Plato’s Theaetetus: TheBeing of the Beautiful, trans. with commentary (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press,1986); John McDowell, Plato: Theaetetus, trans. with notes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973). But cf.Cornford, op. cit. Cornford’s translation is the least literal.


subject? There are a variety of possible responses here. The first appeals to a char-acteristic of the Greek neuter plural. It is a well-known fact that the neuter pluralis routinely treated as a singular and taken with a singular verb. So it is possiblethat using the neuter plural is simply a way of referring to any one property.7 Sup-pose that is the case. Then according to the account of false statement, ‘Theaetetusis flying’ states another thing than the thing that is about Theaetetus. However, inthis context Plato seems to want more—a point that has generated a considerableamount of debate among scholars. The upshot of it all is that those who want tokeep the singular think that Plato means more by the term ‘other’ (e{teron) thanjust difference or otherness: he means by ‘e{teron’ something like “incompatiblewith”8 or “in contrast to”9 or “contrary to.”10 But the problem with this style ofinterpretation is that the word ‘e{teron’ just means other or different, and Plato makesno mention anywhere in the text otherwise. In short, these incompatibility theo-ries fail to be supported by much hard evidence.

The other response is that of Frede who thinks we ought to take the neuterplural for what it is since Plato “wants to get a reference to the whole class ofthings that are, relative to a given subject, into the characterization of a true state-ment, as this will be needed to get an adequate characterization of false state-ment.”11 The idea is that a true statement about, say, Theaetetus states with re-spect to any of the things that are in the case of Theaetetus that they are. A falsestatement, then, would state something other than all those things that are in thecase of Theaetetus, and this in fact is a more natural way of reading the Greekterm ‘e{teron’.12

Supposing ‘ta; o[nta’ is to be treated as a plural, the next step is to determinewhat the expression “the things that are” means. There are four possibilities. Thefirst three are problematic for various reasons; the fourth is the most plausible,

7 Cornford, op. cit.8 K. Lorenz and J. Mittelstrass, “Theaitetos Fleigt: Zur Theorie wahrer under falscher Sätze bei

Platon,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 48 (1966): 142; noted by David Keyt, “Plato on Falsity:Sophist 263B,” in Exegesis and Argument, Phronesis, Supplementary Volume I, A. Mourelatos and R. Rorty,eds. (1973): 295.

9 J. M. E. Moravcsik, “Being and Meaning in the Sophist,” Acta Philosophical Fennica 14 (1962): 69.10 Cornford, op. cit.11 Michael Frede, “Plato’s Sophist on false statements,” in The Cambridge Companion to Plato, Rich-

ard Kraut, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 420; he continues, “This correspondsto the need for a universal quantifier in a proper characterization, first, of the use of ‘ . . . is not . . . ’along Plato’s lines, and then of falsehood, a need several commentators have insisted on. . . . For it isclear that it will not do simply to say of a false statement that it speaks of something other than any ofthe things that are, namely with reference to the given subject” (420). Also include in this group G. E.L. Owen, “Plato on Not-Being,” in Plato I: Metaphysics and Epistemology, Gregory Vlastos, ed. (GardenCity: Anchor, 1970), 223–67, repr. in Owen, Logic, Science and Dialectic: Collected Papers in Philosophy,Martha Nussbaum, ed. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), 104–37 (hereafter cited as LSD);perhaps W. D. Ross, Plato’s Theory of Ideas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951), esp. 116, and I. M. Crombie,An Examination of Plato’s Doctrines, vol. 2 (New York: Humanities Press, 1963), esp. 495. Contrast thiswith David Wiggins, “Sentence Meaning, Negation, and Plato’s Problem of Non-Being,” in Vlastos, op.cit., 299; John McDowell, “Falsehood and not-being in Plato’s Sophist,” in Language and Logos, M.Schofield and M. Nussbaum, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 115–34; and DavidBostock, “Plato on ‘Is Not,’” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 2 (1984): 113.

12 Although I am generally sympathetic with the Owen-Frede interpretation, I do not wish todefend it here. There are specific difficulties with it, but I think the difficulties are more likely to bePlato’s own than ones Frede and Owen have inadvertently foisted on him.


and evidence for it can be found buried in the arguments Plato employs at 255e–259b to solve the paradox of not being.13

First a word about the Greek verb ‘e«inai’. A number of scholars have arguedthat there are a variety of uses and meanings of the verb ‘e«inai’ which the Greeksare notorious for leaving, intentionally or not, ambiguous. For example, the sen-tence ‘Theaetetus is a man’ predicates the property being a man of Theaetetus,whereas the sentence ‘Theaetetus is’ would seem to mean Theaetetus exists. Someargue that in Greek, as in English, there is a syntactic distinction between differ-ent uses of the verb ‘to be,’ and some also argue that there is a semantic distinc-tion answering to the syntactic distinction: a so-called complete use of ‘is’ means“exists,” whereas an incomplete use can have other meanings.14

In light of these distinctions, one might take the expressions ‘ta; o[nta’ and ‘wJ~

e[stin’ as they occur in A in any one of the following three ways:

(1) A true statement states of the things that exist, that they exist about some subject S.(2) A true statement states of the things that are so, that they are so about S.(3) A true statement states of the things that are F, that they are F about S.15

One can immediately rule out option (1) given that in the case of false statement,assuming the existential reading would introduce into the argument non-existingentities and certainly supply a Sophist—the one claiming the impossibility of stat-ing that which is not—grounds for objection. For example, if Socrates were tostate that Theaetetus is flying, the Sophist could object that the statement thatflying exists with respect to Theaetetus is making a statement about somethingthat does not exist simpliciter. Likewise in the case of a true negative statement—astatement that states in the case of the things that do not exist that they do notexist about S. Both of these seem to conflict with the Parmenidean dictum appro-priated by the Sophists. One can certainly imagine Euthydemus and Dionysodorusmaking quite a racket over this formulation. (It is interesting that even by the endof the Sophist, the problem of how one might successfully designate and talk aboutnon-existent, fictional entities remains.)16

13 What I shall refer to below as the “Core Argument” of the Sophist.14 A complete use is one in which there is no complement to the verb, as for example in the

sentences ‘Socrates is’ and ‘Animals are.’ An incomplete use is one in which the verb has a comple-ment, such as in the sentence ‘Socrates is a man’ and ‘Helen is beautiful.’ Those who think there aredifferent senses for the verb ‘to be’ between its complete and incomplete uses claim that in its com-plete use the verb ‘to be’ means “exist” (‘to be’ in the existential sense), or “is true”/“is the case” (‘tobe’ in its veridical sense) when the subject is of sentential form (for example, “‘Socrates is a man’ istrue”). The incomplete use can also have a number of different meanings including “is such andsuch” (‘to be’ in its copulative sense), “is the same as” (‘to be’ indicating identity), “is enduring”(temporal sense), and “is located in space” (locative sense). See Lesley Brown, “Being in the Sophist,”Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 4 (1986): 49–70; and Brown, “The Verb ‘to be’ in Greek Philoso-phy: Some Remarks,” in Companions to Ancient Thought 3: Language, Steven Everson, ed. (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1994), 213. Cf. Charles Kahn, “The Greek Verb ‘To Be’ and the Conceptof Being,” Foundations of Language 2 (1966): 245–65, esp. 249–52.

15 Where ‘F’ stands for some form or property.16 There are other important, yet more subtle philosophical reasons for rejecting the existential

(and veridical, for that matter) reading. One need not take 1–3 to be mutually exclusive possibilities.Both Brown and Kahn have argued that there is no hard distinction between the existential andcopulative uses of ‘e«inai’. For example, in his self-proclaimed “last word on ‘to be,’” Kahn (“SomePhilosophical Uses of ‘to be’ in Plato,” Phronesis 26 [1981]: 105–34) claims that “the uses of e«inai inPlato (as in Greek generally) are often overdetermined: several grammatical readings of a single occur-


That leaves (2) and (3). Let us start with (2). One might suppose withCornford17 et al.18 that Plato thinks the sentence ‘Theaetetus sits’ states some-thing about the state of affairs, the things that are the case, or the fact Theaetetussitting. Unfortunately, if it were true it would be difficult to make sense of theexpression ‘peri; sou’ at the end of the sentence. If a true statement states of theobjective fact Theaetetus-sitting that it is the case, it would be superfluous to add‘about Theaetetus’ since Theaetetus is already a participant in that state of af-fairs.19 That leaves option (3): a true statement states of the things that are F that

rence are not only possible but sometimes required for the full understanding of the text” (105).Kahn argues that the verb ‘e«inai’ has a variety of different senses, but it is misleading to claim that it ispossible to make a hard semantic distinction between these senses, because there is a fundamentalinterconnection between them. His point is that the copulative use of ‘e«inai’ is primitive but has in itboth a veridical element and an existential element that can become thematized simply by rearrang-ing the syntax of a statement. Brown favors the view that predication implies existence, and so there isno hard distinction between the complete and incomplete uses of ‘to be.’ I agree in part with Kahnand Brown. However, I do not accept that Plato, or any other Greek perhaps before Aristotle, recog-nized different semantic uses of the verb ‘e«inai’. This is not to deny that in colloquial Greek an expres-sion like ‘Theaetetus is’ can suggest something similar to what we mean when we say that Theaetetusexists, nor is it to deny that there is a syntactic relationship between ‘Theaetetus is’ and ‘Theaetetus isF.’ In fact, in the more philosophically loaded contexts in Plato, what has been translated existentiallymust, strictly speaking, be taken predicatively, and in these cases the question of sense is deferred ontothe entire expression and the context of the expression. If one pays close attention to the Sophist (see,for example, 252a2–10, 254d4–10, 256a1, 256d8–e4, and 258a11–b4) for something to be is, at thevery least, for it to participate directly or indirectly in the kind being. So, Plato cannot hold that astatement like ‘Theaetetus is’ employs the complete use of the verb ‘is’ and means the same thing as‘Theaetetus exists.’ The ‘is’ in ‘Theaetetus is’ is always syntactically incomplete and in contexts whereone would normally be tempted to translate such a statement existentially, Plato is philosophicallycommitted to claiming that ‘Theaetetus is’ is an elliptical expression of ‘Theaetetus is a being.’ More-over, this general point about the complete and incomplete uses of ‘to be’ actually gives me evenfurther reasons why we should accept (3) over (1) and (2). On philosophical grounds, (1) and (2) arereducible to (3)—at least in the quasi-copulative interpretation of (3) I defend. So, I present mydiscussion of the three possible interpretations as directed not only toward those who accept thatthere are different senses of the verb ‘to be’ and there is a sharp distinction between the uses of ‘to be,’but also at those who think there is a close connection between them. For the latter group, to say, forexample, that the form sitting exists in the case of Theaetetus is merely a different way of claiming thatTheaetetus is sitting. But I think this is actually a quite misleading way of claiming that the form sittingis in the case of Theaetetus, because it suggests that there is a strict sense of existence for Plato whenthere is not. When I state that sitting is in the case of Theaetetus, I am stating something about thebeing of sitting in the case of Theaetetus (for further discussion, see notes 20 and 22). (Also, recallthat there is not a separate word for “existence” in Greek. The word from which we derive our ‘exist-ence’ is the word ‘ejxivstasqai’, which for the Greeks of Plato’s time means something quite differentfrom existence.) Therefore, I propose that the most charitable and consistent route is to translateoccurrences of ‘e«inai’ in philosophically significant contexts with the proper forms of ‘to be’ andavoid attributing any added complexity to an already confounding set of texts. So, stating that sittingis in the case of Theaetetus is merely a different way of saying that Theaetetus is sitting. Why this is aninterestingly different way of stating that Theaetetus is sitting I hope to explain below.

17 Cornford, op. cit., 310–1.18 See, for example, Kahn, The Verb ‘Be’ in Ancient Greek (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1973), 340, n. 12;

Kahn, “The Thesis of Parmenides,” Review of Metaphysics 22 (1968–69): 719–20; Kahn, “On the Theoryof the Verb ‘To Be’,” in Logic and Ontology, Milton Munitz, ed. (New York: New York University Press,1973), 13; Kahn, “The Greek Verb ‘To Be’,” 252–3, and “Linguistic Relativism and the Greek Projectof Ontology,” in The Question of Being, Mervyn Sprung, ed. (University Park: The Pennsylvania StateUniversity Press, 1978), 35–6.

19 Cornford, op. cit., puts himself in a position to alleviate this problem by taking ‘peri; sou’ with‘levgei’ and translating 263b4–5: “And the true one states about you the things that are (or facts) asthey are.” But although such a formulation seems to treat the properties Theaetetus has as the fact,


they are F. But there is a subtlety to this version which makes for two different waysof interpreting it. First, the expression ‘the things that are F’ outwardly implies thatthere are things that have some property F; for example, this table, my shoes, andthat dog are all things that are brown. So, a true statement about the dog would stateof the dog that is brown that the dog is brown, but this way of reading the expression‘ta; o[nta’ reduces the copulative reading to the states-of-affairs interpretation,since we are really making a statement about the complex the-dog-that-is-brown.

The more plausible “copulative” way to take ‘ta; o[nta’ is as follows. G. E. L.Owen and Frede have argued similarly that the expression ‘ta; o[nta’ actually re-fers to the forms or properties that are in relation to some subject, rather than tosome state of affairs. In what preceded, I argued in a way that suggests that Owenand Frede are right. But after a dozen or so readings of both, it remains somewhatunclear what exactly it means to say that ‘ta; o[nta’ are the things that are in rela-tion to some subject. As many scholars including Owen and Frede accept, the keyto understanding the sense of ‘ta; o[nta’ can be found in the Core Argument at255e–259b, so I shall turn there for clues.

The general outline of the Core Argument is this. Plato’s goal is to demon-strate a way in which not being can be. The reason one must be able to explainnot being is that stating falsely involves stating something about that which is not,and if that which is not is that which does not exist, i.e., nothing, then statingfalsely would amount to stating nothing, which is not stating at all. The Strangerappeals to the five “very large” kinds—being, motion, same, rest, and other—inorder to explain the origin of not being. For example, the kind motion is notinsofar as it is not the kind same: motion is not in the sense that it partakes of thekind other relative to the kind same, so motion is other than the same. This works forall the kinds insofar as each kind is other than the rest of them, and so forth. Theproblem with this solution is that when Plato turns to what appears to be negativepredication (for example, “Theaetetus is not tall”), the employment of the othergives what appears to be the wrong result: it cannot be the case that Theaetetus isnot tall because Theaetetus partakes of the other relative to the tall; it goes withoutsaying that Theaetetus is other than the form tall.20

Cornford later describes Theaetetus sitting as the “existing fact” (311). But if Theaetetus sitting is ta; o[nta, thenthe redundancy objection stands. In addition to this objection, we can add Frede’s claim that Cornford’sinterpretation conflicts with how the ES takes ‘peri; sou’ at 263b11: “But it actually [states of things]that are other about you [that they are]” ( [Ontw~ dev ge o[nta ”etera peri; sou). See Frede, 1992, op. cit.,418. McDowell, 1982, op. cit., has some other, quite good criticisms of the states-of-affairs views.

20 These points give me additional reasons for rejecting the existential reading of the targetpassage. The paradox of not being which fuels the problem of falsehood is resolved in the core argu-ment by appealing to the kind other, and it is fairly clear from that discussion, despite the difficulties Inote, that not being involves some sort of participation relation with the other. So, when the Strangeroffers his account of false statement in terms of otherness, and we suppose he has an existential use of‘ei\nai’ in mind, we are forced to see not being as “other existing.” However, in light of the coreargument, things that are not are things that are other, and being other is either a matter concerningidentity or a matter concerning predication, but not a matter concerning existence. So, the existentialreading of the target passage leads to even greater conflict with the philosophical context of theSophist. As I mention in the next paragraph, Frede’s interpretation of the core argument and its im-plication for the target passage is the most charitable, but again my intuitions are that Plato’s difficul-ties with distinguishing between predication and identity are real. For more on this issue, see Wiggins,op. cit.; McDowell, op. cit.; Bostock, op. cit.; Frede, op. cit.; and Jan Szaif, Platons Begriff der Wahrheit(Freiberg-im-Breisgau: Verlag Karl Alber, 1996), pt. II (hereafter cited as PBW).


Frede argues that whether or not Plato has here conflated predication withidentity need not be a significant obstacle since Plato’s main concern is simply toshow different ways in which not being can be. Frede notes an interesting featureabout the Stranger’s language which, I think, reveals Plato’s understanding ofhow something can be said both to be and not to be.21 Consider the claim thatmotion is. One can infer from the above argument that motion is a lot of things.For example, motion is other than each one of the kinds, motion is the same asitself, motion is one, etc.; in fact, Plato wants to say that one way for motion to be is,e.g., for motion to be the same as itself. Plato also seems to think that motion’sbeing the same as itself is a way in which the kind the same is; that is, one way forthe same to be is for it to be in the case of motion. This assumption gets applied tonot being, as well. For example, one way for motion not to be is for motion not to bethe kind the same, and likewise one way for the same not to be is for the same not tobe in the case of motion.

I shall refer to this understanding of the “bi-directionality” of being and notbeing as the Two-Way Assumption (TWA):

TWA: For any subject x and form F, one way for x to be and one way for F to be is for x to be F.TWA(n): For any subject x and form F, one way for x not to be and one way for F not to beis for x not to be F.

Supposing TWA is something Plato accepts,22 ‘to; o[n’ (“that which is”) should beinterpreted this way:

B1: ‘That which is’ can refer to any subject x when, for some F, x is F.B2: ‘That which is’ can refer to any form F when for some x, F is with respect to x.

In other words, the expression ‘that which is’ (and likewise ‘that which is not’)can refer either to subjects or forms as if they, together with their specific way ofbeing in a particular context, were fragmented from the thing to which they arerelated. Such a distinction supplies a way of reading ‘ta; o[nta’ which does not

21 See Frede, PE, 52–5, 80, 94–5; and Frede, op. cit., 403, 404–5, 411–2, 419. Both Frede andOwen (in Vlastos, Plato I, 232–3, 237–8; repr. in Owen, LSD, 111, 114–5) seem to accept somethingsimilar to what I label below as the Two-Way Assumption. Perhaps also to some degree Szaif, op. cit.,pt. II, §19.

22 The justification for TWA and TWA(n) is the Core Argument itself. But even if one accepts thisjustification, there still may be lingering doubts as to whether Plato really wants to commit himself tothe claim that one way for a form or kind to be is for it to be in the case of a particular. There are atleast two questions here: (1) What exactly does it mean for a form to be in the case of a particular?; (2)Is a particular the sort of thing that can support a relation of being? It is not precisely clear how Platowould answer these questions, but consider the following: First, it is important to note that as I haveformulated TWA, the fact that a form is in the case of some subject does not mean that there is nolonger an ontological priority of forms over particulars. Plato obviously wants to retain the metaphysi-cal assumption that some x is F because of the F itself. To claim that a form F is in the case of a subjectis just to say that that subject is F. Whether or in what way this involves the kind being is an importanttopic about which Plato remains silent; however, see Parm. 161e7–162a6, Soph. 250b8–11, 251d5–252a3, 253a1–6, 259ab. Second, aside from the Core Argument, there are other sources of evidencefor TWA which may be found in places such as: (a) the Stranger’s comparison of kinds like being withthe vowels, which “go through” and bind words together; (b) the exegesis of the friends of the forms;and (c) in the Parmenides, Parmenides’ discussion of the “greatest difficulty” with the theory of forms.For the purposes of this paper, I purport only to show that based upon a particular interpretation ofthe Sophist which has found favor among myself and others, a particular conception of truth emergeswhich is different from what scholars have traditionally thought.


imply any state of affairs, nor does it entail reading the verb forms as having anyparticular sense, though it does reflect the syntactical incompleteness of ‘to be’ inits participial and declarative forms. On this interpretation, the account of truestatement is claiming that a true statement states of being F that F is in the case ofx. The sense, then, of ‘o[nta’ and ‘wJ~ e[stin’ is explained by appealing to TWA andB2 above, and the plural ‘ta; o[nta’ is explained, as Frede claims, by the fact thatPlato “wants to get a reference to the whole class of things that are.”23 Generally,a true statement states in reference to forms insofar as they really are in the case ofthe subject that they are in the case of that subject. What is philosophically signifi-cant about this sense of the target passage is that there is nothing here suggestingthat a statement is true because it corresponds to some state of affairs. Truthemerges carrying a rather minimal load.

4 . “ F I T T I N G ” A N D C O R R E S P O N D E N C E

Before turning to a more detailed description of what I take to be Plato’s concep-tion of truth, there is one passage in the Sophist just prior to the target passagediscussed above that might seem to provide evidence for the correspondence inter-pretation. In the following section, I argue that this particular passage should notbe understood to imply the presence of any kind of correspondence theory of truth.

At 261c5–262e2 the Stranger and Theaetetus focus the discussion on the topicof syntax. A statement is said to consist of at least two kinds of “indicators”(dhlwmavtwn): a verb (rJhvma) which is an “indication for action” (to; me;n ejpi; tai~

pravxesin o]n dhvlwma, 262a3) and is something that “signifies actions” (o{sa pravxei~

shmaivnei rJhvmata, 262b5–6); and a name (ojnovma), which is a sign (shmeion) of thething which performs the action.24 A statement comes about from the “interweav-ing” (sumplokhv) or blending (keravnnunai) of a verb with a name. The examplethe Stranger gives of a statement is ‘[a] man learns’ and about it qua simple state-ment he says, “[it] makes an indication (dhloi) about the things that are (peri; twn

o[ntwn) or are coming-to-be or have come-to-be or are about to come-to-be” (262d2–4).25 Statements “name” (ojnomavzei) and “finish something,26 weaving togetherthe verbs with the names” (ti peraivnei, sumplevktwn ta; rJhvmata toi`~ ojnovmasi,262d4), and this naming and finishing something through weaving explains whystatements “speak” or “state” (levgein).27 The words ‘lion,’ ‘stag,’ and ‘horse’ spo-

23 Frede, 1992, op. cit., 420.24 “to; de; g j ejp j aujto i~ toi~ ejkeivna~ pravttousi shmeion th~ fwnh~ ejpiteqe;n o[noma” (262a6–7).

Note the genitive ‘th`~ fwnh`~’.25 In light of the Stranger’s remarks at 262b9–c3, the Stranger must mean here that statements

make an indication about the properties subjects have or are coming to have, etc., because they arepartaking of certain forms. Note how Plato uses ‘dhloun’ in the following passages: Rep. 485a10–b3,523e3–4, e6–7, Tht. 185c4–d3. The idea must be that a statement indicates or reveals being in someway, or coming-to-be in some way, or about to come-to-be in some way, etc., of a subject, i.e., of a thingthat is. The point is analogous to claiming that Plato’s Apology is about Socrates but makes an indica-tion about or reveals a collection of particular ways of being in the case of Socrates: being on trial,being a defendant, having a characteristic way, coming-to-be guilty, but all these insofar as they are ofor about Socrates.

26 We can construe this “finishing something” as asserting something.27 Note that the sense of the verb ‘ojnomavzei’ (“it names”) in its occurrence here is broader than

that sense applied to the narrow definition of the corresponding noun ‘ojnovmata’ (“names”): names


ken in succession do not form a sentence because they do not “indicate action orinaction or being of something that is or something that is not” (262b9–c3). Butwhen verbs and names “fit together” (sunarmovttei) there is a weaving that pro-duces a statement. The Stranger concludes the discussion with the following claim:“So just as in the case of the things some fit with each other, and some do not, onthe other hand concerning the signs of the voice, some do not fit, and others ofthem fitting produce a statement” (262d8–e2).28

The particular point one might cite in favor of a correspondence reading ofthe text is that this so-called fitting occurs both linguistically and ontologically.The thought here is that by making such a claim about “fitting,” Plato is establish-ing the conditions necessary for the view that it is because of some sort of corre-spondence between the “fittings” of statements and fittings of real-world things ina state of affairs that statements become true. For example, when I state thatTheaetetus sits, the verb ‘sits’ fits with the name ‘Theaetetus’ to yield a meaning-ful statement that asserts that sitting is with respect to Theaetetus; or in otherwords, the statement ‘Theaetetus sits’ makes an indication about the sitting that isin the case of Theaetetus. When the Stranger says that this fitting occurs “just as inthe case of the things” (italics added) what he means is that there is a structuralsimilarity between the linguistic and ontological fitting: ‘Theaetetus’ fits with ‘sit-ting’ and Theaetetus and sitting fit together in a particular way (i.e., Theaetetusparticipates in or partakes of the form sitting). So, the argument would go, thefoundation for a correspondence account of truth is provided by Plato’s remarkthat the components of statements fit together like their real-world counterparts,and all Plato would need to assert in addition is that a statement is true becausethere is some sort of correspondence between these two levels of fitting.29

But consider the following. Correspondence theories of truth characteristi-cally hold that truth involves a relation between a statement and a fact. Thesetheories are generally of two types: either correspondence as correlation or corre-spondence as congruence.30 Congruence theories claim that there is some sort ofmirroring, reflection, or at least some minimal structural isomorphism betweenstatements and facts when the statements are true: if a statement is true, the struc-ture of the statement reflects or mirrors or is structurally isomorphic with thestructure of the fact. On the other hand, correlation theories claim that it is notbecause a statement is structurally isomorphic in any way with a particular state of

name in the precise sense, but statements can name as well, presumably by naming the subject. For anaccount of Plato’s theory of naming in the Cratylus and Sophist, see Gail Fine, “Plato on Naming,”Philosophical Quarterly 27 (1977): 289–301.

28 “o”utw dh; kaqavper ta; pravgmata ta; me;n ajllhvloi~ ”hrmotten, ta; d j ou[, kai; peri; ta; th~ fwnh~ au\shmeia ta; me;n oujc aJrmovttei, ta; de; aJrmovttonta aujtwn lovgon ajphrgavsato.”

29 Plato’s remarks about weaving and fitting have been compared to what Aristotle says in placessuch as De Interpretatione 1.16a9–13, 5.17a15–7, 9.19a32–3, where some suggest we can find a nascentcorrespondence theory of truth. See, for example, J. L. Ackrill, Aristotle: Categories and De Interpretatione,trans. with notes and glossary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 114, 140–1. I am unconvinced thatAristotle subscribes to a correspondence-type theory of truth. I address this issue in section 6 hereto.

30 I am indebted to an exceedingly clear discussion of theories of truth by Richard L. Kirkham,Theories of Truth: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1992), chs. 4–5. For an ex-ample of a correspondence as congruence theory, see Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (Ox-ford: Oxford University Press, 1912), ch. XII. For an example of a correspondence as correlationtheory, see J. L. Austin, Philosophical Papers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), ch. 5.


affairs that it is true; rather, they claim that the correlation is merely a matter oflinguistic convention and a statement is true because the state of affairs to whicha statement is correlated actually obtains. Given this distinction and what Platoasserts at 262d8–e2, one might claim that the truth of sentences is determinedeither (a) by the way the “fitting” that occurs in the truth bearer mirrors or isstructurally isomorphic in some minimal way with the fitting that occurs in a stateof affairs, or (b) by the “fact” that there is some conventional correlation betweenthe linguistic fitting and the real-world fitting, such that a statement is true whena statement fits together in a specific way and the state of affairs to which thestatement refers obtains.

However, there are significant reasons against reading 262d8–e2 as the ex-pression of a correspondence theory of truth in either of the previous two ways.First, the word ‘things’ in line 262d8 translates ‘pravgmata’, which can sometimesmean “affairs,” and one might be tempted to introduce “states of affairs” into thetranslation at this point, thereby weighting the translation in favor of either corre-spondence interpretation. But according to what follows in the text, it is clear thatthe Stranger intends the word ‘pravgmata’ to refer to the referents of names andverbs, rather than to a particular state of affairs. For example, at 262e13 when theStranger claims, “I shall give you a statement by putting together a thing (pravgma)with an action through a name and a verb” (italics added), he must mean thoseparticular sorts of “things” which stand as the subject of some activity rather thanto some state of affairs. Given the proximity of this claim to 262d8, one shouldthink that the Stranger means something similar by ‘pravgmata’ in both places:the “things” at d8 are both the “things” that can stand as subject and whatever it isthat verbs take as their referents. Moreover, saddling Plato with the existence ofstates of affairs would potentially add ontological weight to an already burdenedtheory. It is perhaps trivial and uncontroversial to claim that Plato neither speaksof nor directly commits himself to the existence of entities such as states of affairsor facts or complex objects.31 The obvious members of Plato’s ontology are firstand foremost forms and kinds, and perhaps less importantly sensible particulars.So, unless there is sufficient evidence for supposing that Plato would welcometalk of states of affairs—and I think that there is not—one should be hesitant tointroduce them at this point in the Sophist. And, since both general types of corre-spondence theory depend upon casting truth as some relation between statementsand states of affairs, attributing such a view to the text would involve a somewhatad hoc insertion of entities into Plato’s ontology beyond what he mentions or needsin the dialogues.

Second, in addition to the general considerations above, there are reasons forconcluding that Plato is not thinking of truth specifically in terms of correspon-dence as correlation. The 262d8–e2 passage specifies that there is a “fitting” at thelinguistic and ontological level, but the correlation theory distances itself from anaccount of truth that has as a necessary condition of truth a particular arrange-ment or structure or fitting of real-world entities in a state of affairs. The correla-tion theory holds only that truth is a condition of a statement’s referring to a

31 Hopefully, readers will agree with me that this is a relatively uncontroversial claim.


particular state of affairs when that state of affairs obtains, and has nothing to dowith a correlation between the structure of the statement and the structure of thefact. If truth were to have something to do with correlated structures betweensentences and real-world entities, truth would involve more than simple correla-tion: truth would depend upon the satisfaction of some necessary structural con-dition involving statements and states of affairs. For this reason, 262d8–e2 cannotbe taken as evidence for a correspondence as correlation account of truth.

Third, congruence theories come in several strengths, but there are several rea-sons against attributing any variation of them to Plato. If on the one hand Platoconceives of truth specifically in terms of a strong congruence between truth-bearerand state of affairs, one would expect to find him employing “mirroring” or “re-flection” metaphors in the text (perhaps similarly to what he says in the Cratylus aboutnames). But clearly there is no textual support for this. Statements name subjectsand they make indications about what those subjects are or are undergoing, etc.,but Plato never claims that statements are mirrors, pictures, or models of reality.

On the other hand, suppose Plato were to subscribe to a weaker version of thecorrespondence as congruence theory, such that statements are true because theparticular linguistic items which refer to real-world entities are combined as thoseparticular real-world entities really are combined. However, recall that this is notthe way Plato’s discussion of truth unfolds in what follows 262d8–e2. The remarkat d8 about the fitting of things is introduced by the words ‘ou{tw dhv’, which sug-gests that Plato at this point is merely making an analogy between the cohesive-ness one finds among the constituents of a statement and among things to whichthe members of a statement refer—an analogy outwardly expressing only his un-derstanding of what constitutes statementhood. So, the discussion of fitting con-cludes a brief explanation of the syntax of statements, with a quick nod towardhow statements go about meaning something, but the account of what constitutestruth and falsehood proceeds rather differently with no mention of the weaving,fitting, or blending metaphors. Moreover, as I argue in sections 2 and 3, Platothinks it is not the case that a true statement states the things that are as they areabout some subject S; rather, a true statement states of the things that are that theyare about some S, and stating that something is about S is significantly differentfrom stating something as it is. Stating the things that are as they are introducesthe possibility that a true statement captures a particular arrangement of the in-gredients of reality, but there is no such implication in stating of things that arethat they are. Plato makes no gesture toward stipulating that even the weakeststructural isomorphism is a necessary condition for the truth of a statement.

Given all these considerations, one must conclude that Plato is not commit-ted, textually or otherwise, to either general type of correspondence theory, andthat the “fitting” of the “things” which the Stranger mentions at 262d8–e2 is sim-ply intended as a means of articulating a significant and interesting point aboutsyntax and not as the expression of a correspondence theory of truth.

5 . P L A T O ’ S C O N C E P T I O N O F T R U T H

On my interpretation, then, the general idea is that for a statement like ‘Theaetetusis sitting’ to be true the statement itself must, minimally, first satisfy the conditions


for being a statement (have a subject and a verb which fit together and “make anindication about something”32 ); and second, it must state or assert of the actualform sitting, that sitting is in the case of the actual person named “Theaetetus” ifand only if this property is in the case of Theaetetus, i.e., that sitting is in the caseof Theaetetus is a necessary and sufficient condition for the truth of ‘Theaetetusis sitting.’ And again, nowhere in that discussion does the Stranger add, “And bythe way, this means that a true statement is true because it corresponds to the facts.”Plato’s conception of truth neither requires nor outwardly suggests that a state-ment be true because that statement corresponds in any way to a fact or a particu-lar state of affairs. This conception of truth is not the absence of a correspon-dence theory of truth; it is the beginnings of a view that Tarski believed his ownconception of truth followed in spirit.

Skeptics might wonder at this point whether Plato would have understoodsuch a distinction between, on the one hand, the necessary and sufficient condi-tions for truth and, on the other, the stronger, explanatory conditions which typifyfull-blown theories of truth—after all, there is a substantial difference betweensupplying necessary and sufficient conditions for truth and explaining what it isthat causes a belief or statement to be true. But there is evidence that Plato wasfully aware of a distinction he could have appealed to in order to specify strongerconditions for truth. One of the clearest examples of such a distinction occursduring an early exchange about piety in the Euthyphro. Euthyphro proclaims thathe “knows accurately” (ajkribw~ eijdeivhn) and “in what way” (o{ph) the pious andimpious “are” (e[cei). At 5c8–d1 Socrates asks Euthyphro to tell him specificallywhat sort of thing (poiovn ti) the pious is and what sort of thing the impious is.Euthyphro’s first definition of the pious is “to prosecute the one who is guilty ofwrong-doing,” which of course happens to be what Euthyphro plans to do to hisfather. But Socrates quickly responds that such an account of the pious is inad-equate since, as Euthyphro admits, many other things are pious, too, such as re-specting one’s elders, etc. The problem with Euthyphro’s account of piety is thathe has supplied what is merely a sufficient but not necessary condition for piety: aperson can surely be pious without ever having prosecuted a wrongdoer. One mayinfer from this that, at the very least, Socrates is seeking the necessary and suffi-cient conditions for piety, and for the various virtues generally.

However, necessary and sufficient conditions are certainly not all he demandsof an adequate account of virtue. At Euthyphro 6d9+, Socrates specifies what he is after:

And bear in mind then that I did not bid you to tell me one or two of the many piousthings, but that form itself by means of which all the pious things are pious? For did you saythat I suppose by means of one form the impious things are impious and the pious things[are] pious; or do you not remember?—I [do].—Teach me then this form itself whatever it is,so that I may look upon it, and using it as a paradigm, say that any action of yours or another’sthat is of that kind is pious, and if it is not, that it is not.33

Socrates wants more than a mere delineation of the necessary and sufficient con-ditions for some virtue’s being what it is. An adequate account of, say, piety must

32 See Soph. 262d.33 Translation by G. M. A. Grube, Plato: Five Dialogues (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co.,

Inc., 1981); modified slightly and italics added for emphasis.


not only clarify the paradigm (paravdeigma) one looks to in order to pick outinstances of piety, but also provide that form by means of which ( »w/) all piousthings are pious.34 The latter use of the so-called instrumental dative35 suggeststhat Socrates wants to know about the form of the pious that explains why piousthings are pious, i.e., the form because of which pious things are pious.36 Considerwhat would explain why such and such a person is a bachelor. Theaetetus is abachelor because he is an unmarried male adult; in other words, being an unmar-ried male adult explains why Theaetetus is a bachelor. It is not simply thatTheaetetus’s being an unmarried male adult is necessary and sufficient for hisbeing a bachelor. Lest we forget, a creature’s having a heart is a necessary andsufficient condition for its having a kidney, but certainly having a heart does notexplain why a creature has a kidney. And as far as Socrates is concerned, someperson or action is pious because it has through its relation to the pious itself thecharacteristic properties that supply the oujsiva of the pious (Euth. 11a7), whateverthat turns out to be. In light of these remarks in the Euthyphro, it is not at all unrea-sonable to suppose that Plato was aware of an important distinction between atleast necessary and sufficient conditions and stronger, explanatory conditions.

In the Sophist passage, there is no appeal to any such thing as a form or a stateof affairs or a relation or a definition that would suggest that the Stranger is inter-ested in the conditions that explain why a statement is true. The Stranger merelyoffers an account of what conditions need to be in place when a statement istrue.37 There is no move, philosophical or otherwise, toward an overtly theoreti-

34 Thanks to Russ Dancy for making this distinction clear to me.35 The use of the dative here is significant. The instrumental dative is regularly used of the form

to express the fact that the universal makes the particular things that share the property how they areinsofar as they have that particular property. See John Burnet, Plato’s Euthyphro, Apology of Socrates andCrito (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924/1977), 117–8. The instrumental dative can be used to denotethat by which or with which an action is done or accomplished, and a particular form of the instru-mental dative, the dative of standard of judgment, can be used to express that by which something ismeasured or judged. See H. W. Smyth, Greek Grammar (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,1920), §§ 1503–12. The latter form of dative seems to be what Socrates means when he claims to belooking for the paradigm.

36 I do not here wish to speculate on whether or not this form is any more than a definition. It isunclear whether Socrates has any ontological commitments to forms here. My own inclination is thatthere is no metaphysics happening in the Euthyphro.

37 One might argue that since the specific formulation of truth in terms of necessary and suffi-cient conditions is not explicitly found in the characterization of true statement at 263b4–5, I amadding to the text something that is not there. However, I extract the formulation I have offered byfollowing simple interpretational strategies one must employ when confronted with an account suchas we find at 263ab. After interpreting the sense of the target passage, one is bound to wonder whatpoint this makes about the nature of truth. Imagine Theaetetus responding to the Stranger in orderto clarify his account of truth: “So, Stranger, if I state that sitting is in my case, and if my statement istrue, then sitting is in my case, and whenever sitting is in my case and I state that it is, then my state-ment that sitting is in my case is true?” What is a reasonable answer to hand the Stranger based onwhat we know of Plato? Well, I think he must respond, “Exactly,” and there are instances in Plato whichsuggest that he would have conceded Theaetetus’s way of expressing the nature of truth. For example,return to the Euthyphro. At 6e4–7a5, we get the following exchange:

Socrates: Teach me then this form itself whatever it is, so that I may look upon it, and using it as aparadigm, say that any action of yours or another’s that is of that kind is pious, and if it is not, that it is not.Euthyphro: If that is how you want it, Socrates, that is how I will tell you.Socrates: That is how I want it.


cal account of truth. Moreover, even if the Stranger were to demand that Theaetetussupply him with the explanatory conditions, that need not imply that the accountof truth embody a correspondence theory:38 it is one thing to claim that a sen-tence is true when certain conditions are met and quite another to claim that asentence is true because it corresponds in some way to a fact. Correspondence istheoretically messy business, while truth is a very simple affair.

Davidson and Tarski have had some things to say about the classical concep-tion of truth which are instructive with respect to my comments on the correspon-dence theory of truth and my interpretation of Plato’s account of truth in theSophist. Davidson39 criticizes Tarski40 for preferring the following expression oftruth: “A true sentence is one which says that the state of affairs is so and so, andthe state of affairs indeed is so and so.” Tarski claims that he thinks his conceptionof truth is a modernized form of a classical conception of truth, like the versionwe find in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, though he thinks these classical conceptions arenot as precise and clear as we should like.41 But as Davidson notes, Tarski none-theless thinks that the classical conception of truth is better than the followingones: (1) The truth of a sentence consists in its agreement with (or correspon-dence to) reality, and (2) A sentence is true if it designates an existing state ofaffairs. Tarski’s aversion to the latter two formulations of truth is the reason whyDavidson questions Tarski’s above remark. Tarski’s own conception of truth quiteintentionally moves away from correspondence theories; he defines truth in termsof the notion of satisfaction and not correspondence. Very briefly, the predicate ‘istrue’ is defined for some language when it entails all sentences of the form ‘X istrue ↔ p,’ where we replace X with a description of a sentence and p with that

Euthyphro: Well then, what is dear to the gods is pious, what is not is impious.Socrates: Splendid, Euthyphro! You have now answered in the way I wanted. Whether your answer istrue I do not yet know, but you will obviously show me that what you say is true. (Translation by Grube,op. cit.; modified slightly and italics added for emphasis.)

Socrates is searching for the definition of piety, and he expects to determine whether that definitionis true or false. G. Santas (Socrates: Philosophy in Plato’s Early Dialogues [London, Boston, and Henley:Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979], 108) has pointed out that since Socrates here and in places like theLaches (192b–93d) is concerned with the truth or falsity, correctness or incorrectness of definitions,he must think that the proposed definitions are expressed in the form of statements. Socrates’ remarkat 6e6–7 suggests the conditional force—at least in one direction—that I am claiming characterizestruth. So, I think it is not unreasonable to suppose that Plato would accept the formulation of theaccount of truth in terms of ‘if and only if,’ given that it does not add any additional baggage to theaccount and echoes what is already subtly present in other texts.

38 As I discuss below, Aristotle makes a claim about why statements are true, but the view is notsubstantially different from Plato’s.

39 Donald Davidson, “The Folly of Trying to Define Truth,” Journal of Philosophy 93 (1996): 263–78.40 Alfred Tarski, “The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages,” Logic, Semantics and Metamath-

ematics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956), 152–278.41 Tarski, “The Semantic Conception of Truth,” in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 4 (1944):

342–60. Tarski says, “The question has been raised whether the semantic conception of truth canindeed be regarded as a precise form of the old, classical conception of this notion. Various formula-tions of the classical conception were quoted in the early part of this paper (section 3). I must repeatthat in my judgment none of them is precise and clear. Accordingly, the only sure way of settling thequestion would be to confront the authors of those statements with our new formulation, and to askthem whether it agrees with their intentions. Unfortunately, this method is impractical since they diedquite some time ago. As far as my own opinion is concerned, I do not have any doubts that ourformulation does conform to the intuitive content of that of Aristotle” (259–60).


sentence. So for example, we could instantiate his “schema T” this way: ‘Socratesis sitting’ is true ↔ Socrates is sitting.42 Correspondence, then, posited as an ex-planatory condition of truth is rejected in favor of something else, something lessfoggy. So, as Davidson points out, it is somewhat curious to see Tarski comment-ing on truth in terms of “states of affairs” because it “suggests that postulatingentities to correspond to sentences might be a useful way to characterize truth.”43

The idea is that talk of states of affairs opens the door to talk about truth in termsof correspondence, but truth, for Tarski, is in a way a simpler notion.

Davidson’s comments on Tarski carry a lesson we can apply in Plato’s defense:those who are determined to saddle Plato with a correspondence theory of truthare the same ones who (a) claim that true statements, according to Plato, state thethings that are as they are, and (b) tend toward expressing his account of truestatement in terms of states of affairs.44 But in the Sophist, there is no conclusiveevidence for the claim that Plato conceives of a true statement in terms of its “re-flecting” or “mirroring,” or weakly “corresponding with” a particular state of af-fairs or fact or complex object. On the contrary, I have argued that Plato seems toconceive of the truth of a statement in terms of a statement’s asserting a certainway of being between the subject and form45 if and only if that form and subjecthave being in relation to each other. This conception of truth does not conjure themysterious relation of correspondence, since it neither entails nor suggests a cer-tain relationship between linguistic constructions and states of affairs.46 Tarski wasright about at least one version of the classical conception of truth.

6 . S I M I L A R I T I E S W I T H A R I S T O T L E ’ S C O N C E P T I O N O F T R U T H

Since I reach the previous conclusions about Plato’s conception of truth more orless within the confines of a single dialogue, I think it is important to show howthese conclusions fit into the broader historical and philosophical context. In thefinal two sections, I briefly discuss Aristotle’s account of truth as well as another,quite different account of truth found in Plato that provides at least one reasonwhy one should not expect to find a theory of truth in the Sophist.

Despite the core project of the Sophist to solve a problem concerning not beingand ultimately the problem of falsehood, Plato, as I have discussed, presents arather developed, albeit compact account of syntax and semantics at 261c5–262e2,and he follows this with his account of truth and falsehood. It is interesting thatthis account of truth is remarkably similar to what Aristotle claims about truth inboth the Categories and De Interpretatione. Although some, including Ross and Ackrill,have found various forms of the correspondence theory of truth in these works,Aristotle has no obvious philosophical commitment to a correspondence theory;

42 Of course this is an overly simple formulation of Tarski’s view. I only intend to cover that partdirectly pertinent to the Greek conception of truth.

43 Davidson, op. cit., 266.44 I have mentioned Cornford and Kahn. Perhaps also Francis Jeffry Pelletier, Parmenides, Plato,

and the Semantics of Not-Being (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 32–3.45 At least one form, perhaps more.46 I think my view also goes some way toward explaining what David Keyt meant when he de-

scribed one way of reading 263b4’s account of truth as “the agreement in logical quality between ta;o[nta and e[stin.” See Keyt, op. cit., 288.


in fact, his conception of truth can be seen as a natural and obvious extension,intentional or not, of Plato’s conception.

The locus classicus of Aristotle’s account is at Metaphysics G 7 1011b26–7, wherehe claims, “For the act of stating of that which is that it is not or of that which isnot that it is [is] false; but [stating] of that which is that it is and of that which isnot that it is not [is] true.”47 Aristotle prefaces this point about truth by claimingthat what he is giving us is some sort of definition.48 Although I do not have thespace here to offer a detailed exegesis of Aristotle’s remarks on truth, it is interest-ing that the language of this account of truth is practically the same as the versionwe find in the Sophist, especially the account of false statement at Sophist 240e10–241a1. Here ‘levgein’ is taken with the infinitive ‘e«inai’ which demands “that”rather than “as” in the translation. As for the sense of the expressions ‘to; o[n’ and‘to; mh; o[n’, there is no substantial textual evidence that Aristotle treats them anydifferently from the way Plato treats them in the Sophist, though clearly Aristotledoes not mean for ‘to; o[n’ to refer to Platonic forms.

The Metaphysics G passage is not the only place Aristotle discusses truth. In theCategories and De Interpretatione, Aristotle makes a number of striking claims abouttruth which suggest that his own conception of truth was not far from Plato’s. AtDe Interpretatione 16b26 Aristotle defines a statement as “a significant spoken soundsome part of which is significant in separation. . . . ” And shortly thereafter heclaims that all statements are significant, though “not every statement is a state-ment-making statement, but only those in which there is truth or falsity” (DI 17a2–3). Statements with truth values are either affirmations or negations, and Aristotleclaims that “a single affirmation or negation is one which signifies one [thing]about one [thing] [hJ ’en kaq j eJno;~ shmaivnousa]” (DI 8 18a12–3). For example, thestatement ‘Theaetetus is a man’ signifies manhood of or about Theaetetus. In DeInterpretatione 1, Aristotle specifies further syntactic and semantic conditions whichmust be met for the possibility of truth:

For falsity and truth have to do with combination [suvnqesin] and separation [diaivresin].Thus names and verbs by themselves—for instance ‘man’ or ‘white’ when nothing furtheris added—are like the thoughts that are without combination and separation; for so farthey are neither true nor false. A sign of this is that even ‘goat-stag’ signifies [shmaivnei]something but not, as yet, anything true or false—unless ‘is’ or ‘is not’ [to; e«inai h] to; mh;e«inai] is added (either simply or with reference to time).49 (DI 16a12–8)

So, single words cannot be true or false. Statements require combinations of verbsand nouns, and they signify things about real-world subjects. Notice that thesepoints are more or less the same ones Plato makes in the Sophist passages dis-cussed above.

The truth of statements presumably involves something like the following. Inthe Categories, Aristotle claims that statements cannot be true unless the subject is:“neither ‘Socrates is sick’ nor ‘Socrates is well’ will be true if Socrates himself is

47 “to; me;n ga;r levgein to; o]n mh; e«inai h] to; mh; o]n e«inai yeudo~, to; de; to; o]n e«inai h] to; mh; o]n mh; e«inaiajlhqe;~ . . . ”

48 Met. 1011b25: “It will be clear if we define what the true and the false [are]” (dhlon de; prwtonme;n oJrisamevnoi~ tiv to; ajlhqe;~ kai; yeudo~).

49 Categories and De Interpretatione translations by Ackrill, Aristotle: Cat. and De Interp.


not at all” (Cat. 10 13b16–7). And at the end of Categories 12, where Aristotleaddresses different types of priority, he presents us with the following account oftruth:

For there being a man reciprocates as to implication of being with the true statementabout it: if there is a man, the statement whereby we say that there is a man is true, andreciprocally—since if the statement whereby we say that there is a man is true, there is aman. And whereas the true statement is in no way the cause of the actual thing’s being, theactual thing does seem in some way the cause of the statement’s being true; it is becausethe actual thing is or is not that the statement is called true or false.50 (Cat. 12 14b14–22)

In light of the Categories and De Interpretatione passages, it is reasonable to thinkAristotle is claiming that for a statement to be true, the following conditions mustbe met: (a) a statement must satisfy the conditions for “statementhood,” and (b)any statement of the form ‘x is P’ is true if and only if x is P. Compare theseremarks to a few others about truth in De Interpretatione. In chapter 9, Aristotleclaims, “For if it is true to say that it is white or it is not white, [it is] necessary thatit is white or not white, and if it is white or not white, then it was true to say or denythis”51 (DI 9 18a39–b2). The substance of Aristotle’s remarks in DI 9 have beenthe subject of much debate, but looking beyond those difficulties, one can seethat there is an expression of truth here which seems to embody the very notionof truth I am attributing to Plato. Aristotle uses very simple statements (‘it is white,’‘there is a man’), but we can instantiate with a more informative one: ‘Theaetetusis white’ is true if and only if Theaetetus is white. Here Aristotle is thinking oftruth in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions: statements are true whenthese conditions are met. However, unlike Plato, Aristotle goes even further toclaim that statements are true because these necessary and sufficient conditionsare met. However, there is neither an appeal to states of affairs, etc., nor mentionof any sort of structural isomorphism that would imply or suggest either versionof the correspondence theory.

If there is any place where one might find Aristotle gesturing toward truth interms of some sort of correspondence, it is later in De Interpretatione 9 in the middleof the “sea battle” argument. After claiming it necessary that either a sea battlewill occur tomorrow or not, Aristotle says rather mysteriously, “oiJ lovgoi ajlhqe i~

”wsper ta; pravgmata” (DI 9 19a33). This line has been translated variously: “propo-sitions correspond with facts” (Ross) and “statements are true according to howthe actual things are” (Ackrill). However, both Ross and Ackrill have taken a largeand unnecessary interpretative step; literally, Aristotle is claiming that “the state-ments [are] true just as the things.” Perhaps Aristotle is making the first move

50 For reasons cited above, I have modified ‘existence’ and ‘exists’ to ‘being’ and ‘is,’ respectively.The Greek:

“to; ga;r ei\nai a[nqrwpon ajntistrevfei kata; th;n tou ei\nai ajkolouvqhsin pro;~ to;n ajlhqh peri; aujtou lovgon:eij ga;r e[stin a[nqrwpo~, ajlhqh;~ oJ lovgo~ w|/ levgomen ”oti e[stin a[nqrwpo~: kai; ajntistrevfei ge, <eij ga;rajlhqh;~ oJ lovgo~ w/| levgomen ”oti e[stin a[nqrwpo~, e[stin a[nqrwpo~: <e[sti de; oJ me;n ajlhqh;~ lovgo~ oujdamw~ai[tio~ tou ei\nai to; pragma, to; mevntoi pragma faivnetaiv pw~ ai[tion tou ei\nai ajlhqh to;n lovgon: tw/ ga;rei\nai to; pragma h] mh; ajlhqh;~ oJ lovgo~ h] yeudh;~ levgetai.”

51“eij ga;r ajlhqe;~ eijpein ”oti leuko;n h] ouj leukovn ejstin, ajnavgkh ei\nai leuko;n h] ouj leukovn, kai; eij e[stileuko;n h] ouj leukovn, ajlhqe;~ «hn favnai h] ajpofavnai:”


toward some account of truth in terms of correspondence, but it is crucial to no-tice that this isolated remark is extremely cryptic, and as a result one must inter-pret it in light of what he says about truth and falsity in the surrounding text (forexample at 18a39+). If so, then what Aristotle must mean when he claims thatstatements are true just as the things is what he says earlier about the conditionsfor truth: the statement ‘Theaetetus is white’ is true if and only if Theaetetus iswhite, and as said, this latter account of truth neither implies nor suggests a corre-spondence theory per se.

If Plato were to have subscribed to the correspondence theory, one might ex-pect to find it in Aristotle, too. However, Aristotle’s remarks show no commitmentto it. At the end of the day, Aristotle’s conditions for statementhood and truth,expressed in strikingly similar language to Plato’s, are just as minimal as Plato’s.So, in the case of both Plato and Aristotle, those who find a correspondence theoryare forced to stretch the text beyond necessity and risk anachronistically attribut-ing theoretical baggage to what is barely more than an account of when state-ments and beliefs are true.

7 . R E A S O N S N O T T O E X P E C T A T H E O R Y O F T R U T H I N T H E

S O P H I S T

In conclusion I would like to suggest briefly a few reasons why one should notexpect to find any theory of truth in Plato. Certainly one could claim that becausethe core dialogue of the Sophist seems to be intended only as a solution to theproblem of falsehood, and an appeal to a theory of truth is not required for thissolution, there is no reason to suppose that Plato did not hold a correspondencetheory. However, at this point in my argument, I should think the burden of proofhas shifted to the side of those who wish to attribute a correspondence theory toPlato.

Perhaps one reason neither Plato nor Aristotle concern themselves with “theo-ries” of truth at all is because they never doubted the possibility of knowledge.52

This is not to say that knowledge was not a significant philosophical concern;rather, it is to say that the pernicious problem of skepticism, which has motivatedmany to think harder not only about what constitutes adequate justification ofone’s beliefs but also about the nature of truth itself, was not exactly perceived asa looming threat. (For example, the problem of skepticism is raised and quicklyshelved at Theaetetus 158b–d.) In some way this suggestion must be right and acloser examination of Hellenistic accounts of truth is in order, but I shall save thatfor another occasion. On the other hand, it is true that Plato considered radicalsubjectivism of the Protagorean stripe to be something of a threat—enough ofone for him to dedicate a sizable chunk of the Theaetetus to defeating it. So, onemight suppose that Plato had sufficient motivation to think more about the na-ture of truth. Of course, given the thoroughness of Plato’s arguments againstProtagoras, it seems unlikely that radical subjectivism posed much of a threat inthe end! In any event, it is uncertain that facing an epistemological crisis and a

52 This point was suggested to me by Gisela Striker and Patricia Curd. I am also indebted to Prof.Striker for encouraging me to include a discussion of Aristotle.


subsequent reevaluation of the nature of truth would have led directly to some sortof “theory” of truth.

Now for a bit of irony. In one respect, Plato does have a theory of truth, atheory which had a rather long tenure among the more Platonically inclined,though one that we currently consider to be more or less archaic. Plato’s “theory”of truth (ajlhvqeia) is a theory about being (oujsiva, to; o[n), that is, a theory aboutforms. I derive the evidence for this view from how Plato refers to ajlhvqeia in a fewdialogues from his so-called middle period.53 One of the interesting tendenciesin Plato is to treat truth as an object of study in the same sort of way that we treattruth as an object when, say, the courts require us to speak the truth about thetruth of the matter. Plato is by no means consistent in his use of ‘ajlhvqeia’. In mostcases, he means it to refer to those propositions that serve as the content of philo-sophical knowledge and understanding, yet sometimes Plato slips into referringto truth as if it were an object independent of the true propositions about it.54 Forexample, in the Cratylus at 439a6–b2, Socrates claims,

So if it’s really the case that one can learn about the things through names and that one canalso learn about them through themselves, which would be the better and clearer way to learn

53 This Platonic notion of truth as something other than that which applies to propositions andjudgments is not something that has gone unnoticed. Heidegger, for one, has made quite a few re-marks on it. For example, his notorious etymological interpretation of ajlhvqeia as “Unverborgenheit”has been the subject of much debate. Heidegger isolates the root of ‘ajlhvqeia’ among ‘laq’, ‘lhq’, and‘lanq’, which are associated with the verb ‘lanqavnein’, meaning something like “to escape notice.”Heidegger’s general etymology and view of what Greek philosophers like Plato did to the notion oftruth (i.e., transformed ajlhvqeia from “Unbervorgenheit” to “Ubereinstimmung”) can be found in anumber of places, certainly including the following: the 1924/25 lectures on Plato’s Sophist in Platon:Sophistes, vol. 19 of Gesamtausgabe, Ingeborg Schussler, ed. (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann,1992), 15–9; Sein und Zeit, 17th ed. (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1993), 212–26; and the 1931/32lectures on the Allegory of the Cave and the Theaetetus in Vom Wesen der Wahrheit: Zu Platons Höhlengleichnisund Theätet, vol. 34 of Gesamtausgabe, Hermann Mörchen, ed. (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann,1988), 66–70, 117–20. For an earlier account of the etymological interpretation of ‘ajlhvqeia’, see the1909 work by Nicolai Hartmann, Platos Logik des Seins (repr. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1965),239, n. 1. Hartmann suggests that the sense of ‘ajlhvqeia’ as “Unverborgenheit” remains through Plato.Heidegger’s etymology and understanding of ‘ajlhvqeia’ has been famously criticized by Paul Friedländer,Platon: Seinswahrheit und Lebenswirklichkeit, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1954). Friedländer of-fers a milder criticism in Platon: Seinswahrheit und Lebenswirklichkeit, 3rd ed. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter,1964); published in English as Plato, 2nd ed., Hans Meyerhoff, trans. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni-versity Press, 1969); see vol. 1, ch. 11. For a different, more contemporary view of the relation betweentruth and being in Plato—and one that is in some respects closer to my own—see Szaif, op. cit., 72–182.

Szaif criticizes the view that ‘ajlhvqeia’ means “Unverborgenheit” (see First Part, Chapter II, §10),and I think that to a certain degree he must be right about this. Szaif recognizes the respect in whichPlato treats truth as an object, viz. the forms, in the middle dialogues, and he argues that one can tracethis notion into Plato’s discussion of linguistic truth in the Sophist. Szaif argues for a quasi-veridical(what he calls “veritativ”) interpretation of the target passage: a true statement states of that which isthe case that it is the case with respect to a subject. Why Plato expresses his account of truth in thismanner (by emphasizing the veridicality of the predicate expression) is explained by Plato’s history oftreating forms as truth, as things that are the case or are true. I find Szaif’s suggestions compelling, butgiven how Plato treats being and forms in the Sophist, and the suspicious absence of an overt mentionof forms in connection with the discussions of truth in the Theaetetus, I remain unconvinced that the“veritativ” interpretation of being in its relation to truth in the Sophist is correct. For pertinent passagesfrom PBW, see, for example, pp. 39–49, 91–109, 465–80.

54 Aristotle also occasionally slips into using ‘truth’ to refer to objects or reality or nature. See, forexample, Met. A 3 983b2 and a 1 993a30–b7.


about them? Is it better to learn from the likeness both whether it itself is a good likeness andalso the truth it is a likeness of? Or is it better to learn from the truth both the truth itself andalso whether the likeness of it is properly made?55

Cratylus responds, “I think it is certainly better to learn from the truth.” It is un-clear whether there is any commitment to real forms in the Cratylus, but what isinteresting about this particular passage is how Socrates and Cratylus treat truth:truth is an object to be studied, learned about—the real thing compared with thelikeness of it.

In the Phaedrus and Republic, where Plato’s ontological commitments are cer-tainly more obvious, there are similar remarks about truth. At Phaedrus 247c3–6in the middle of his second speech, Socrates proclaims, “But it is this way—forone must be bold to speak the truth, especially when speaking about the truth.”56 AtRepublic V 475d8–e5, we find the following exchange between Socrates andGlaucon,

Gla.: Are we to say that these people—and those who learn similar things or petty crafts—are philosophers?—Soc.: No, but they are like philosophers.—Gla.: And who are the truephilosophers?—Soc.: Those who love the sight of truth.57

Glaucon responds: “Yeah, but what do you mean by it?” And Socrates proceeds tosay some important things about forms. At Republic VII 525b11–c6, Socrates claimsto Glaucon,

Then it would be appropriate, Glaucon, to legislate this subject for those who are going toshare in the highest offices in the city and to persuade them to turn to calculation and takeit up, not as laymen do, but staying with it until they reach the study of the natures of thenumbers by means of understanding itself, nor like tradesmen and retailers, for the sake ofbuying and selling, but for the sake of war and for ease in turning the soul around, awayfrom becoming and towards truth and being [ajpo; genevsew~ ejp j ajlhvqeiavn te kai; oujsivan].

Here truth and being are set together in stark contrast to becoming. Those of uswho spend our time consorting perceptually and intellectually with objects thatare “rolling around between being and not being” (479d4–5) will fail to get asight of what purely is, viz. the forms, real being, truth. Socrates infamously drivesthe point home later in Book X when he complains that painters and poets “pro-duce work that is inferior with respect to the truth [tw/ faula poiein pro;~ ajlhvqeian

e[oiken aujtw/] and that appeals to a part of the soul that is similarly inferior ratherthan to the best part” (605a9–b1).58

Finally, consider the discussion between Parmenides and Socrates in the “great-est difficulty” passage at Parmenides 134a3–b2:

55 Translation by C. D. C Reeve in The Complete Works of Plato, John Cooper, ed. (Indianapolis, IN:Hackett Publishing Co., 1997). The Greek: “eij ou\n e[sti me;n ”oti mavlista di j ojnomavtwn ta; pravgmatamanqavnein, e[sti de; kai; di j aujtwn, potevra a]n ei[h kallivwn kai; safestevra hJ mavqhsi~; ejk th;~ eijkovno~manqavnein aujthvn te aujth;n eij kalw`~ ei[kastai, kai; th;n ajlhvqeian h|~ h\n eijkwvn, h] ejk th;~ ajlhqeiva~ aujthvn teaujth;n kai; th;n eijkovna aujth~ eij prepovntw~ ei[rgastai . . . ”

56 “ “ecei de; w|de<tolmhtevon ga;r oujn tov ge ajlhqe;~ eijpein, a[llw~ te kai; peri; ajlhqeiva~ levgonta”57 The following Republic translations are by Grube, Plato: Republic, 2nd ed., rev. trans. by C. D. C.

Reeve (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., Inc., 1992).58 See also, Rep. X 597a1–4, e1–8; 598b1–7; 599a1–2; 603a11, among other places.


Then also knowledge itself, what knowledge is, would be knowledge of that itself which istruth.—Certainly.—And again each of the knowledges [say, geometry, mathematics, etc.],what each is, would be a knowledge of each of the things that are [say, a triangle, the numberseven, etc.], what it is, or not?—Yes.—But would not knowledge among us be of the truthamong us? And again would each knowledge among us turn out to be a knowledge of each ofthe things that are among us?—Necessarily.59

Parmenides takes his point about knowledge in two steps. Whether formal oramong us, knowledge in general is of truth in general, and each branch of knowl-edge has its own subject (its own “that which is”) that it is of; in other words, eachbranch of knowledge has its own truth. Truth for mathematicians is number, truthfor geometers is geometrical form, and so forth with the other so-called knowledges.

One way of interpreting these passages is to understand Plato as treating truthas an object of study, as that at which philosophers direct their “sight,” as thatwhich knowledge is of. Truth is not just a property of a certain set of privilegedstatements and beliefs; truth is something to learn about, behold, understand.Plato is suggesting in some of the more ontologically loaded passages that truth(ajlhvqeia) and being (oujsiva), or that which is (to; o[n), all amount to the same thing.And since a close study of passages in dialogues such as the Phaedo and Republicreveals that in one important respect being is forms, it follows that at least one sortof truth philosophers set their sights on is the Truth that is the forms.60

59 “oujkoun kai; ejpisthvmh, favnai, aujth; me;n ’o e[sti ejpisthvmh th`~ ’o e[stin ajlhvqeia aujth~ a]n ejkeivnh~ei[h ejpisthvmh…<Pavnu ge. <‘Ekavsth de; a«u ejpisthmwn, ’h e[stin, eJkavstou twn o[ntwn, ’o e[stin, ei[h a]nejpisthvmh. h [ ou[; <Naiv.<‘H de; par j hJmi`n ejpisthvmh ouj th~ par j hJmin a]n ajlhqeiva~ ei[h, kai; a«u eJkavsth hJ par j hJminejpisthvmh twn par j hJmin o[ntwn eJkavstou a]n ejpisthvmh sumbaivnoi ei\nai; < jAnavgkh.”

60 This section by no means contains an exhaustive list of texts which are pertinent to the viewthat, in at least one important respect, Plato conceives of truth as being (oujsiva, to; o[n), or in otherwords, truth as forms (ei[dh, ijdevai). In other places (Blake E. Hestir, “A Conception of Truth in RepublicV,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 17 [2000]: 311–32), I have discussed a different set of texts andargued for this interpretation of truth as object, but there is certainly more to be said on the subject.Nor do I have the space to discuss those passages which outwardly seem to conflict with this interpreta-tion. In a forthcoming paper on the dual use of ‘oujsiva’ in Plato, I argue that in places such as Rep. VI508d ff., where Socrates claims that the form of the Good provides (parevcon) truth to the things known(presumably the forms), Plato appeals to two different ways of treating truth as an object: one way issimilar to what Aristotle calls the “to; tiv h\n ei\nai” or “oujsiva” of a thing, and the other is similar to whatAristotle calls the “oujsiva” (simpliciter). (See, for example, Aristotle’s discussions of ‘oujsiva’ at Met. D 81017b21–6, in particular, and throughout Z.) Neither of these two ways of treating truth conflicts withwhat I am claiming in the present section of this paper. For another view of the relation betweenbeing, forms, and the Good, cf. Gerasimos Santas, “The Form of the Good in Plato’s Republic,” Philo-sophical Inquiry (1980): 374–403; repr. in Plato 1: Metaphysics and Epistemology, Gail Fine, ed. (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1999), 247–74.

Furthermore, a related conception of “object” truth can be found in later dialogues such as theTheaetetus, which I am supposing precedes the Sophist, and the Philebus. At Theaetetus 184b3 ff., Socratesand Theaetetus offer a final attack on the definition of knowledge as perception which includes thefollowing remark at 186c9–d5:

Socrates: And if a man fails to get at the truth of a thing (ou| de; ajlhqeiva~ ti~ ajtuchvsei), will he ever be aperson who knows that thing?Theaetetus: I don’t see how Socrates.Socrates: Then knowledge is to be found not in the experiences but in the process of reasoning aboutthem; it is here, seemingly, not in the experiences, that it is possible to grasp being and truth (oujsiva~ . . .kai; ajlhqeiva~). (Translation Levitt, op. cit.)

It is unclear whether or not Plato has forms on his mind here, but this passage does contain an ex-ample of truth associated with being which is different from linguistic truth. But note also that in the


context of this final argument against Theaetetus’s definition, Plato seems to vacillate between objecttruth and linguistic truth, so interpreting this passage is tricky business. At Philebus 65a1–5, Socratesclaims, “Well, then, if we cannot capture the good in one form, we will have to take hold of it in aconjunction of three: beauty, proportion, and truth (kavllei kai; summetriva/ kai; ajlhqeiva/). Let us affirmthat these should be treated as a unity and be held responsible for what is in the mixture, for itsgoodness is what makes the mixture itself a good one” (translation by Dorthea Frede, Plato: Philebus,trans. with introduction [Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., Inc., 1993]). Here, truth is one ofthree things, including beauty and proportion, that Plato thinks form a unity he calls the good. The useof ‘ajlhvqeia’ here suggests something like being (with overtones of stability and purity), a characteris-tic Plato also ascribes to forms. I think it is likely that the use of ‘ajlhvqeia’ in these later dialogues isdifferent but not incompatible with the use in the earlier works, and this is not to deny that Plato’sontology of being and truth evolved from the earlier works into the later. See also, Phil. 58a1–6, c8–e3;59c2–6; 64b2–3.

If Plato were to offer us a “theory” of truth in the Sophist, it is possible that hewould risk establishing a theory of truth that competes with his theory of forms.One possible way to resolve such a conflict would be to claim that one is a theoryof ontological truth, the other a theory of “linguistic” truth, but such a responseseems to take much of the punch out of the fundamental nature of truth forPlato. So, I propose that one reason Plato does not commit himself to a full-blowntheory of truth is that the fundamental nature of truth is something different forPlato. Surely Plato thinks there is only one sort of Truth and it lies in the directionhe is pointing while he stands with Aristotle at the center of Raphael’s School ofAthens.

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