Some Philosophical Uses of "to be" in Plato

Abstract

I here discuss two sets of passages where Plato uses the verb rIvcu (and its nominal forms ov and ovcaia) in a philosophically loaded way, in connection with the notion of truth. I suggest that the systematic nature of this connection has not been recognized and hence its philosophical significance has not been properly understood. Syntactically, the passages in question are a mixed bag. In a few cases we have what I call the veridical construction with a subject of sentential rather than nominal form: the verb construed absolutely (no further predicate expressed or understood), and it syntactically linked to a clause of thinking or saying.' In other cases where the subject (or implied subject) a noun phrase, an absolute construction of the verb may bear an existential sense. Most often, however, EIvaL will function as copula with predicate adjective, noun, or prepositional phrase. In cases where no predicate expressed, there has been a tendency of late to describe the use of the verb as incomplete and to construe it as an elliptical copula, i.e. to interpret an expression of the form X as elliptical for X Y, where the value of Y either specified by the context or left quite general.2 I do not want to deny the appropriateness of such an interpretation in many cases, perhaps in most. But I want to insist that the uses of EdVaL in Plato (as in Greek generally) are often overdetermined: several grammatical readings of a single occurrence are not only possible but sometimes required for the full understanding of the text. (Whether or not fallacy arises from such ambiguity a question that must be considered separately for each case.) Even where the syntax unambiguous, a copula use of the verb may bear a veridical value, that to say, it may serve to call attention to the truth claim that implicit in every declarative sentence. This function of the verb, which I have elsewhere called the veridical nuance or veridical lexical value, not so clearly defined a notion as the veridical construction. It unmistakable in those cases where a use of ErvaL naturally translated as is true, is or is the case; but these are typically not copula constructions. In the copula use a veridical nuance emerges whenever there any contrast between being so and seeming so, between being really such-and-such and being only called such-and-such or believed to be such-

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