Abstract
According to Plato, “Logos, comes to be for us because of the interweaving of Forms with one another” (Sph,. 259e5-6; dia gar tên allêlôn tôn eidôn sumplokên ho logos gegonen hêmin,). This contention has excited and perplexed Plato’s readers: many suppose that he has in one way or another overstated the role of Forms in the generation of logos,—especially if logos, is to be understood in narrow semantic terms, as “statement,” and we are to take Plato’s plurals seriously, so that when he says “Forms,” he means Forms, and not merely a single Form,. After all, one can utter a statement without referring to more than one Form; indeed, one can utter an identity statement (“Paracelsus is Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim”) without overtly mentioning even one Form. This has led some to undertranslate or underinterpret Plato’s dictum. In fact, his point is stated carefully and uncompromisingly. He means, roughly, that logos, is impossible without the existence of a freestanding intensional sense structure. His remark is thus the basis of an indirect existence argument for Forms.
In his stimulating, philosophically adroit exposition of a paradox of knowledge and the mutability of Forms in Plato’s Sophist,, David Keyt (1969, p. 13) comments more fully in a similar vein on the close connection between thought and language in Plato’s thought: “Knowledge, a Platonist might argue, implies thought; thought is simply ‘a dialogue of the soul with itself’ (Sph,. 263D6-264B4); so thought implies language. Language in turn requires general names with fixed meanings; or, to put it another way, it requires fixed concepts to which general names are attached. But this is one of the roles that Forms play in Plato’s philosophy … the Form of horse is the meaning of the word ‘horse’.” Because Keyt’s observation provided the initial impetus for the investigations leading to the present chapter, it is an especially fitting pleasure to offer this essay to him, with gratitude and admiration, in a volume dedicated to his honor. Keyt’s unremittingly philosophical engagement with the works of Plato and Aristotle has served as a model to many—and will, no doubt, continue to do so for many years to come.
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Shields, C. (2013). The Grounds of Logos: The Interweaving of Forms. In: Anagnostopoulos, G., Miller Jr., F. (eds) Reason and Analysis in Ancient Greek Philosophy. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 120. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6004-2_12
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