Abstract
Since permission to publish longer excerpts of this material was not given, a lengthy essay introduces the philosophy of language of the ancient commentators. These ancient philosophers – the Greek Proclus and Ammonius, and the Latin Boethius – commented on the writings of Plato and Aristotle, and broadly identified themselves as belonging to the Platonic school. Common issues are outlined: (1) whether language is natural or conventional; (2) the theoretical order between words, thoughts and things; and (3) the relationship between linguistic signification and truth and falsity.
Text by Boethius excerpted from: Smith, A. (trans.) 2010. On Aristotle On Interpretation 1–3. London: Duckworth.
Text by Ammonius excerpted from: Blank, D. (trans.) 1996. On Aristotle On Interpretation 1–8. London: Bloomsbury.
Text by Proclus excerpted from: Duvick, B. (trans.) 2007. Proclus: On Plato, Cratylus. London: Bloomsbury.
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Notes
- 1.
The lowest entities (eskhata) which Proclus mentions here refer to the intracosmic region which belongs to the soul. Proclus uses the terms arkhe-meson-telos or proton-meson-eskhaton (first-middle-last/lowest) to describe the relations between both huparxes and entire orders (diakosmoi) within the universe.
- 2.
In the Platonic Theology, Proclus explains that the … ability to produce likenesses [or the] power of assimilation … is a consequence of the reversion of all things first to their proper monad but ultimately to the Good and to the transcendent One.
- 3.
Taken together, [these sections] suggest that natural names belong to things with the least motion, conventional to those with the most. Names laid down among eternal entities or the gods, the Form of names and those related to Realities (pragmata) correspond to things with the least motion; those laid down among the corruptible and souls, the matter of names and what is arbitrary in them correspond to those with the most motion.
- 4.
Proclus may here be poking subtle fun at the fourth-century Christian bishops Ambrose and Athanasius. Polychronius is added in parody.
- 5.
The excerpter here traces the first dissemination of divine signs back to the intelligible Father of the Chaldaean system. For the power by which this Father proceeds is equated with celestial revolution and is called Aeon, the invisible heaven after which the visible heaven is modelled. … Like the Demiurge, Aeon is … responsible for both the periodic regeneration of the cosmos and the communication of divine signs from the higher to the lower realms.
- 6.
This reference is unclear. The word idiographos usually refers to autographic documents; possibly it refers here to secret, encoded writing or to tachygraphic writing. All that is required, however, would be a reference to the different characters used to represent different languages ….
- 7.
The reference is to a wooden tablet with a wax surface which can be inscribed with a stylus. …
- 8.
The four items (separate forms, non-separate forms, matter, mirror-images) are distributed among three types of being: truly being, not truly being, falsely being. …
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Cameron, M. (2017). Neoplatonists. In: Cameron, M., Hill, B., Stainton, R. (eds) Sourcebook in the History of Philosophy of Language. Springer Graduate Texts in Philosophy, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26908-5_9
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