Platos Sophist on Negation and Not-Being Fabin Mi Parmenides Publishing

Summary
This brief paper develops an interpretation of Platos theory of negation understood as an answer to Parmenides paradoxes concerning not-being. First, I consider some aspects that result from an analysis of Sophist 257b259d, formulating some general theses which I then go on to unfold in more detail in the following section. Finally, I show what exactly Platos so-called overcoming of the Eleatic problem related to negation and falsehood is; and I outline some of the main semantic and metaphysical consequences that are entailed by this overcoming.

1. Platos relocation of not as a solution to Parmenides problem At the end of the passage in Platos Sophist that is dedicated to the analysis of the combination between the greatest kinds emerges the thesis according to which the not-being must be firmly established as something that is not and, like every idea, as something which has its own nature. This may be the main result of the investigation that was meant to examine the problems of the Parmenidean dictum, expressed in the only possible way that fragment 2 of the Poem declares viable, the one in which being is and not-being is not (fr. 2.3). This same wayParmenides Way of Truth in the Poemhad also been clearly judged in the dialogue at 241d7 as paradoxically not viable, since Parmenides theory did not allow us to explain one of our most elementary
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comprehensive abilities, the one that permits us to work with the negation and to admit the possibility of the falsehood. Platos idea is that if not-being were not accepted, falsehood would not be possible (237a34; 241a9b3). The postulation of the idea of not-being as a necessary condition to justify some of our basic linguistic practices as well as the use of negative predicates and the meaning of false statements constitutes, therefore, a first relevant topic of the Sophist. A second one, on which I will also focus in this paper, is an ontological one. It lies namely in the formulation of some Parmenides Publishing metaphysical central tools which introduce clearly anti-Eleatic features in our ontology. The main metaphysical tool of Platos Sophist consists in accepting not-being in its only admissible sense, that is to say, as difference (255b34, c810, d1), and rejecting the ontological monism that Plato considers directly associated with an erroneous semantic that, in the end, does not account for predication and in which there only exist names that would apparently name the only reality of its correlate.

2. Naming and negating Let us now characterize in a loose way some of the main theses that emerge from the aforementioned passage (Sophist 257d259d).
(i) Parmenides thesis arises from a basic misconception of the primary function of language, which he reduces to naming something. In this way, the sophistic thesis about the impossibility of falsehood, which Plato discusses in the Sophist, must be understood as a consequence of Parmenidean exclusion of the not from its original place in language, namely in the predicative statement, and of the erroneous Eleatic assimilation of the function of the negative particle to a negation of the subject-name. Such assimilation, in turn, gives rise to expressions like not-being, in which being appears as the name of an object. The Eleatic rejection of the not is, at the same time, a consequence of comprehending the statements wrongly as if its function were the mere nominal identification of a single or
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atomic object. Therefore, the Parmenidean rejection of not as a meaningful function of language is based on and, at the same time implies, a theory of names, which involves the supposition that names are doing his complete linguistic work in language without any logical relation to other linguistic functions. (ii) Taking loosely Tugendhats1 reconstruction of the argument that Plato would attribute to Parmenides, we obtain the following: (1) s thinks/says that x is not equals Parmenides in (2) implies that the negation operates as negation of the object. Besides, according to the perceptual model, applied to the epistemic operations of thinking/saying, Parmenides would clarify (2) in terms of from which we can infer that (2) is impossible or unacceptable. Parmenides takes the function of not in (1) according to the objectual or nominal sense of the negation of something, of a being. And he does this in the following way: whoever thinks/says that something is not, thinks/says the not-being, since to think/say what is not equals to think/say that something is nothing (fragment 8, 10; fr. 6.2), which in the end is at the same time absurd, because of (3). In this way, not-being is introduced as the absurd specter to which we should commit ourselves if we accepted the negation in our linguistic uses mentioned in (1). Thereafter, the prohibited Way of not-being commits the following absurdity:

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(2) s thinks/says (the) nothing;

(3) s does not think/say,

(4) s thinks/says the not-being,

1

Tugendhat, Das Sein, pp. 3666, 48f.

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where the completive grammatical form of the sentence through which not in the predicative part of the statement would be introduced in (1) has disappeared, being replaced in (4) by the nominalized use of the negation. If we accepted (1), we should admit (4) to explain the supposition of (2). (4) clarifies that the nothing of (2) means not-being. The not would lead us, then, to negate the act of thinking/saying, as in (3). And (3) would be taken by Parmenides as a thought (act) Parmenides Publishing without thought (content ), that is, as a meaningless thought containing a senseless expressionthe negative particlewhich does not refer to some being in the world. Parmenides develops such analysis under the perceptual model through which he would understand thinking and saying. Under the powerful influence of this model, thinking or saying something negatively qualified would equal seeing without seeing anything, which implies the elimination of the visual act and the corresponding act of thought as a consequence of having accepted the negation of the content by not having excluded, at the beginning, the use of not as a deceptive resource of human language. If the previous reconstruction of the Parmenidean rejection of negation is right, we can claim to have a plausible explanation of Platos criticism of Parmenides odd and strict philosophical thesis about being, according to which whatever we think of, necessarily is. The monistic thesis, along with which being is the only possible thing, was read by Plato as a consequence of the only form that is accepted by Parmenides as a possible correlate of thinking/saying, that is, a simple and absolute unified object, without any logical relation to any other thing. Parmenides metaphysics was for Plato a coherent but paradoxical result of the prohibition of the not as a non-sense and deceptive expression.
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(iii) To Parmenides, admitting not-being would imply nonsensical terms with the semantic form of the not-real. He arrives at this thesis as a consequence of incorrectly placing the not, conceiving it as if this particle would make a backward movement that would cancel the one made through the mere denomination of something. (iv) Plato correctly transfers the not to the predicative expression. The Platonic negation now does not make such expressions as the not-real, but operates on the assertive place of a statement, that is to say, on the Parmenides Publishing predicate, allowing to make sentences in which what is said about something is not the case and avoiding, thanks to the change of the position of not, that which is being negated would equal zero. (v) In addition, through the negation we can discover what it is as long as the propositional function of not articulates the subject in its own how, and this requires, consequently, a new theory of language, which the Sophist develops by appealing to the combination of being and not-being and clarifying that what it is is expressed through the propositional form ... is ... or ... is not ..., wherein is is used in an incomplete sense. 2

3. The parts of otherness The form of otherness and its parts, a controversial doctrine that the Sophist introduces in 258d5259d7, is postulated to explain that everything that is is... and is not... Let us examine it briefly:
(i) 258e6259a2: The Parmenidean theory of an absolute or nominal not-being (238c912), understood as contrary (258b3) to the absolute being, has been discarded some time ago in the dialogue (237b), because it entails a complete non-sense (259a1). Instead, the theory of the
2

Frede, Prdikation; Brown, Being, pp. 4970.

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combination of the greatest kinds allows the Stranger from Elea to establish the reality of not-being (259a2), understood as what supports the predication of something different from what the subject really is. (ii) 259a4b1: The contribution of the theory of the greatest kinds to the Platonic explanation of the negation is stated there in the following way: (a) Being and difference go through all the kinds and they interrelate with each other (259a46), in so far as Parmenides Publishing everything that is delimits their identity differentiating themselves from a multiplicity of other things in which this thing does not participate. Besides, what is not delimits everything that is different from the properties which constitute the identity of something. Consequently, what is not draws up the boundaries of the group of properties, which are equally real among themselves, but different from those in which a specific object participates. (b) Insofar as the not-being participates of being, it is; but, since its own nature consists in delimiting everything that is different from what constitutes the specific identity of a thing, the not-being is not the same as what a thing really is, but precisely different from it. The reality of not-being consists in that it is not (259a6 b1). To make this possible, not-being does not have to be understood in an absolute way, but as something which participates of being (258e67). (iii) 259b16: The apparently paradoxical identity of notbeing is solved if we take into account that being is not, too, since what it is is not, for Plato, something undifferentiated. The bare fact that something is, does not entail that what is lacks relationships with different properties. In other words, the apparent paradoxical identity of the Platonic being, which bears the difference, is explained because being, just as not-being, is not for Plato the sign of an object. The nominal
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grammatical form, the being, does not seem to have deceived Plato, tempting him to postulate an object as the reality apart from the real objects. Being and not-being do not have a nominal sense; the sentences in which they appear mean the identity and the difference, respectively. That is why, everything that is is... and is not... Being and not-being mean neither specific classes, like man or horse, nor its contraries, but they constitute the formal structure through which every specific determination is possible.3 Parmenides Publishing Being and not-being are signs of the combination among ideas that constitute the reality of each object. For this reason, the being of something includes explicitly or tacitly its difference with regard to other things whose definitional properties are different from the ones that constitute the own identity of the object (259b25). (iv) 255c1213: The things which are are identical or different, that is to say, what it is is always articulated whether in an affirmative way with the properties that constitute its identity, or in a negative way with those other properties from which it differentiates. Here, identity and difference are the formal structures that go through every relationship among ideas making them possible, that is to say, making possible the determination of each entity via its participation in ideas. Something participates of the identity in so far as it takes part of those forms that determine its sameness. But the identity, the same as the difference, is not one more form of the same type of which an object participates in the definition of its sameness. Identity and difference are not specific kinds, but ideas that formally structure the determination of any object. Negation is explained, then, through this structural form by which Socrates sameness, in fact, delimits a scope of the incompatible
3

Gill, Method, section 5.2.

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properties and different predicates that are not said of it with truth.4 (v) Plato claims that the nature of otherness is divided in parts (257c5258c5, 258d5e3),5 which is coherent with the formality of this idea, since the parts of the difference are delimited as those which are not the same as those that a certain thing participates in. Each part of not-being has, in this way, a positive reality, since what is not... means only what is not F, G, H, so long as these propertiesPublishing do not constitute the sameness Parmenides of x. However, as what is not is merely a property that is found in an antithetical relationship (258b14), that is to say, it is incompatible with the ones that are the same in relation to x, the properties that are other in relation to the ones that are said to be of x with truth are not, themselves, less real (258a9, b2, c3, e23). In fact, the negative predicates do not introduce not-objects, something contrary to a Parmenidean absolute-being (258b3), but the parts of not-being are the correlates of the negation applied to the assertive function of a statement that predicates certain things of x.6

4. The negation explained in the metaphysical terms of identity and difference Furthermore, the Platonic solution to the Parmenidean problems of not-being and falsehood through a clarification of the use of not is sufficiently general so as to give space not only to contradictory predicates but also to contrary predicates. The contradictory ones are those which can be characterized as members of two statements which, being mutually inconsistent, do not leave room for a third statement that includes a predicate inconsistent with both previous statements. This is the case of the logically exhaustive antithesis, but scarcely informative, between big and not big. On the other hand, contrary predicates are those that belong
4 5 6

For further details on this interpretation, see my book, Dialctica, pp. 47100. Owen, Not-Being, pp. 223267, 232ff.; Lee, Negation, 267303. Szaif, Wahrheit, pp. 436ff., 446453.

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to sentences which can give room to a third statement including a third predicate that is inconsistent with the two initially opposite predicates. This is the case of the antithesis between white and black. There is a mutual relationship of opposition in antithetical terms between what is and what is not (258b1). Plato thinks that the restricted interweaving of the greatest kinds assures the participation between specific forms, and he assumes that this doctrine also allows us to justify the primary predicative function of the language (259e46), saving it from its annihilation. The diagnosis that motivates Platos therapy of Parmenides Publishing not, manifests that if we do exclude the combination among forms, which is useful for giving account of our operation with the negation, we will be deprived of the language (260a89). This, in turn, supposes a frontal rejection to reduce the linguistic functions to naming, as well as to vindicate naming as the primary linguistic function. Finally, the Sophist maintains that identification comes specifically through a method of division, which aims to fix the complex definition of a thing by means of genus and differentiae. Such a theory of definition implies a claim according to which identification entails the articulation of the multiplicity that is comprised within the inner structure of each entity. In this way, the form of the difference plays, in the end, the role of a necessary presupposition, to explain not only predication but also identification. Translated by Marcela Leiva

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