[lit-ideas] Plato, "Thesis/Antithesis"
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 7 Aug 2004 22:58:01 EDT
I wrote:
>>For Plato, it's the thesis and the antithesis, rather.
M. Chase asks:
>Huh?
and comments:
>Perhaps this occurs only the Argentine edition of Plato's
>Complete Works.
Well, not really. In any standard edition -- e.g. of Sophist, 257e, 258b)
you'll find 'antithesis' best translated as 'opposition'.
e.g.
the online Liddell-Scott:
_http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%
3Aentry%3D%239950_
(http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=#9950)
anti-_thesis_
(http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/morphindex?lang=greek&lookup=a)nti/qesis&bytepos=8687213&wordcount=1&embed=2&doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.00
57) , eôs, _hê_
(http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/morphindex?lang=greek&lookup=h(&bytepos=8687213&wordcount=1&embed=2&doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057)
,
opposition, _Pl.Sph.257e_
(http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:abo:tlg,0059,007:257e&vers=original&word=a)nti/qesis#word1)
,_258b_
(http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:abo:tlg,0059,007:258b&vers=o
riginal&word=a)nti/qesis#word1)
Cheers,
JL
---- Plato on Antithesis. â??Notâ?? and Otherness. Cf. Julius Moravcsik, â??
Logic Before Aristotleâ??, HHPL I, chapter 1.
"This appearing and seeming which we have been talking about and contrasted
with being, and this saying things â?? but things which are not true (legein
men atta alethe de me), is and has always been a matter of great difficulty
and
perplexitiy. It is very difficult to see how without involving oneself in a
contradiction one can really affirm that it is possible to say or think
anything false (236E) [â?¦] For [1] such an affirmation involves positing that
being
of that which is not (to me on einai). Unless there were that which is not
there could no such thing as falsity (237A)â?¦ [But] to what is one to apply
the
designation (poi chre tounomâ??epipherein) that which is not? (237C)â?¦ [2] It
is clear that that which is not cannot be applied to anything among things
which are (237C6)â?¦ In which case it canâ??t be applied to anything (237C10).
[But all the same] [3] anyone who says anything must say something (anagke ton
ti legonta hen ge ti legein, 237D6-7)â?¦ [4] and it is quite undeniable that
one
who says what is not something says nothing at all (ton [â?¦] me ti legonta
pantapasi meden legein, 237C12)â?¦ We cannot allow that such a person does
some
saying but says nothing (legein mengeil en de meden). [5] We must even deny
that someone who attempts to say that which is not succeeds in doing any
saying
at all (oude legein phaeton hos gâ??an epicheirei me on phtheggesthai) Plato.
The Sophist. 237E3-6, translated by Benjamin Jowett. Cited by Wiggins 269.
"When we say not-being, we speak, I think, not of something that is the
opposite of being, but only of something different [â?¦]. When we are told the
negative signifies the opposite, we shall not admit it; we shall admit only
that
the particle â??notâ?? [ou or me] indicates something different from the words
to which it is prefixed, or rather from the things (pragmaton) denoted by the
words which follow the negation. Plato, The Sophist 257B-C The passage is not
only cited by Wiggins (286n11), but by Dunn 1999:9 as â??a hintâ?? of a
definition of â??notâ?? in terms of â??incompatibleâ?? â??- predating the
famous debate
between Russell and Demos over the putative existence of negative facts."
"Through the character of the Stranger, Plato introduces two of the
recurring themes of the history of negation. First, the view that negation is
redundant: it can be eliminated by defining it away in terms of another more
primitive notion, in this case the putatively positive concept of Otherness
(or
difference). Second, the observation that negative statements (or utterances)
are, in some sense, less valuable than affirmative ones -- in being, for
example, less specific or less informative (cf. NHN, p. 1). The Strangerâ??s
proof
(Sophist 257b) that negation cannot be reduced to pure not-being (or
opposition)
hinges on the fact that the Greek expression me mega (literally â??not bigâ??,
â??
not greatâ??) cannot be read as a contrary affirmation: that which is not big
need not therefore be small."
"Through the Stranger, Plato argues explicitly that negation is not The
Contrary (to enantion), but The Other (to heteron). The Platonic concept of
negation as a mark of difference assimilates neither to contrariety nor to
contradictory. This approach â?? if it is not entirely circular â?? seems
however quite
insufficient for dealing with the range of negative terms, predications and
propositions available to the native speaker. A different means to the same
end â?? that of eliminating the negative â?? as Parmenides is offered by the
Stranger in Platoâ??s Sophist, who assures us that the Parmenidean swamp of
not-being can be skirted if we take negation to represent not not-being, not
oppositeness (contrariety), but simply otherness or difference. The problem
with
Platoâ??s ploy is that it seems circular."
"First, if difference is a positive entity, it is incapable of accommodating
all the uses to which logical negation is put. Second, if it is
intrinsically negative, we have not really eliminated negation, but merely
relabeled it.
For Platoâ??s Stranger, the putative fact that A is not B is unpacked into the
corresponding positive fact that A is other than (different from, or
dissimilar to) B. But if there is no positive fact, we have been redeposited
into the
nightmare realm of Parmenides (Cf. Gale 1976, Toms, and Pelletier for
extended discussion). Platoâ??s track with negation attracted the attention of
logicians and philosophers since. Thus in Statement and Inference, Wykeham
Professor of Logic John Cook Wilson writes: â??Platoâ??s contribution to the
theory of
negation in the Sophist was pointing out that not-being often means relative
not-being, something that is which has a being of its own but not some other
kind of being [â?¦] This is the familiar modern doctrine Omnis Determination
Est
Negatioâ?? (Wilson 248). A recent revisition is by another Wykeham Professor
of Logic, David Wiggins. Wiggins proposes to reset Platoâ??s polemic in an
analytic-philosophical perspective."
â??We are now, Plato thinks, in a position to explain negation in a way not
patently open to Parmenidean objection. The word â??notâ?? (me or ou),
adjoined to
a predicate G, signifies being other than G (357B-D). In other words if and
only if â??~(Theaetetus)Gâ??, then, provided we concentrate, as Plato seems
to,
on the kind of case when F and G belong to the same range â?? we infer
â??There
is an F such that {((F) Î? (G) ) & (Theaetetus) O[F]}â?? -- where â??Î?â??
stands
for difference (Greek diaphoron) â?? or what might be meant by the same thing,
â??
(Theaetetus) O[some F such that (F) Î? (G)]â??. There are difficulties here.
About not-being Plato: Stranger: For instance, when we say that some object is
not big, then do we seem to express (deloun) small any more than
middling-sized by the predicate (rhema) â??not bigâ???Plato, 257D.
Theaetetusâ??s reply is kai
pos â?? how could we mean small rather than middling- size? â?? which [one
may]
take to mean that â??not bigâ?? no more means â??middling sizeâ?? than it
means â??
smallâ??. What it actually means (rather than otherwise â??implicateâ??] is
â??other
than bigâ??. So [the false sentence] says things which are not as things which
are (ta me onta ara hos onta legei) â?? [i.e. it says] things which are, but
different things which are from the things which are respecting Theaetetus
(onton de ge onta hetera peri sou). For I think we declared that there are
many
things which are respective each individual, and that there are many things
which are not [respecting him or it] (Polla men gar ephamen onta peri hekaston
einai pou, polla de ouk onta). Plato, Sophist 263B12. Wiggins concludes: â??I
do not [â?¦] believe that Plato came near to solving the problem of negation,
or
that he reached any satisfactory understanding of what problem this problem
really is. The little clarity we now have about the nature of the problem of
negation does not lead me to think that Platoâ??s notion of other is of
fundamental importance in solving itâ?? (302). Brann writes: â??A grand and
deliberate form of distinction making is the â??way of divisionâ?? (diairesis)
found
first in Platonic dialoguesâ??.
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