The Old Stoa on the Truth-Value of Oaths

Abstract

Recent works on Stoic logic report that among complete λεκτά only a sub-class was regarded as capable of being true or false: by contrast with statements (ἀξιώματα), such other sentences as questions, orders and oaths do not bear a truth-value. But the situation is a good deal more complicated than that, at least in the case of oaths, which I propose to examine. In characterising all such utterances as ‘sentences’ I do not wish to beg questions which will be discussed below. Surface grammar, with its distinctions of indicative, imperative, interrogative and optative, can mislead us as to the real force of an utterance. In the case of oaths there seems to be no preferred form of expression; and it is a matter for deeper philosophical probing to determine their true relation to other speech-acts.

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