Book Reviews

811

Essays on Being, by Charles H. Kahn. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Pp. 227. H/b 30. A subtitle might have read: Some uses of the verb ei^nai and their pertinence to early Greek philosophy. For of the eight papers which make up the volume, four are general in nature and give what Kahn calls his theoretical account of einai , and four are exegetical, discussing bits of Parmenides and of Plato. Taken together, they do not make a consistent whole (for they were written over a period of some forty years, and Kahn has more than once modied his views); but they do make a coherent book a book which complements Kahns The Verb Be in Ancient Greek. The chief thrust of the work may perhaps be described like this. First, the verb ei^nai had a multitude of values or functions it is a mistake to invoke the copulaexistence dichotomy and a simple ambiguity. Secondly, the different values of the verb are mutually dependent, and they t together to produce a network or system. Thirdly, it was those linguistic facts about the verb ei^nai which enabled Parmenides to construct and Plato to perfect a certain concept of Being and which therefore permitted the metaphysicians to state the problem of truth and reality in its most general form (p. 37). Fourthly, if the problem of truth and reality is a question worth asking, then the ontological vocabulary of the Greeks, which permitted and encouraged them to ask it, must be regarded as a distinct philosophical asset (ibid.). How many values or functions does ei^nai possess? Perhaps eight or nine: it is copulative, existential, veridical, stative-durative, locative, instantiational, identicational, potential and then there is the is of whatness. The functions are not all on the same level: the rst three in my list are the most important; and since the existential and the veridical functions may be regarded as transformations (in the technical jargon of the linguisticians) of the copulative function (pp. 13740), the primary or fundamental use, linguistically speaking, of the verb ei^nai is that of linking a subject to a predicate in a 1 simple sentence of the form S estin P. Kahn at one point suggests that the copula is a strictly syntactic notion (p. 122); but in his considered judgement the copulative ei^nai does have a sense. For the basic meaning of the verb is to be present, to be available (p. 136; cf p. 134), and in the copula there is a kind of shadow of the local sense in what linguists recognize as the stative aspect of einai (p. 135). So Kahn will speak of the fundamental lexical value of einai as a verb of state or station (p. 135): it is not just that ei^nai links a subject and a predicate it marks a state of affairs, rather than a process (which might, I suppose, be marked by the copulative function of gi#gnesuai or become). In addition though Kahn does not discuss the matter the copulative ei^nai is tensed, and tenses sometimes signify times. If the copulative function of ei^nai is linguistically central, philosophically speaking the decisive use of the verb in the creation of Greek ontology is the veridical use (p. 67). Or rather, these three features which I
Mind, Vol. 119 . 475 . July 2010 Mind Association 2010

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call the veridical, the durative, and the locative (or locative-existential) values of einai although they do not directly account for every particular usage of the verb, seem to point to what is most fundamental for its use in philosophy (p. 34). At one point indeed, Kahn was inclined to make the veridical value linguistically fundamental too; for both predication (with a copula use of to be) and statements of existence (with an existential use of the verb) may be regarded as special cases of the more general and more fundamental use of to be to express the content of a truth claim as such: the so-called veridical use to afrm a propositional content or an objective state of affairs (p. 68). Or more 1 simply, the veridical esti# may be understood as a conjunction of X exists and X is F , for unspecied values of X and F (p. 86, n. 18) something which anticipates in a rather striking way the contemporary standpoint which takes the notion of truth for sentences as basic in any theory of meaning and knowledge (pp. 734 with references to Tarski and to Davidson). However that may be, the veridical value is derived from something Kahn calls the veridical construction. In its full form (p. 75, n. 1), the construction may be illustrated by the sentence: ! 2 2 esti tay' ta oy tv o pv sy; le# gei tay' ta ei^nai Roughly: These things are thus as you say that these things are (Things are as you say they are.) That gets abbreviated to ! 2 2 esti tay' ta oy tv o pv sy; le# gei (Things are as you say.) And from that, with further abbreviation (see p. 170), there comes the canonically veridical formula ! esti tay' ta ! in which we may take the esti to mean is so, is the case, or is true. (Thats so, Thats true.) Kahn says that the veridical ei^nai is statistically rather rare (p. 123); but he also holds that all uses of ei^nai are in a way veridical. Aristotle had said ! that ei^nai sometimes means is true. His illustrative example was not esti ' ta but rather tay 1 esti vkra# th leyko# Socrates is pale. (See Metaphysics 7, 1017a315; cf. E 4 and 10, where however there are no examples.) And in Aristotelian vein, Kahn claims that this sense of verity is actually implicit in every assertion, latent in every predicative use of to be for a statement of fact (p. 26), so that even where the syntax is unambiguous, a copula use of the verb may bear a veridical value (p. 76). To be sure, there is a truth claim implicit in every declarative sentence, whatever its main verb may be; but the verb ei^nai is a privileged signal for the truth claim (p. 77). So although the veridical construction of ei^nai is rare, the veridical value of the verb is ubiquitous.
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I wonder. First, I doubt if the point can have anything to do with 1 the peculiar genius of the Greek verb ei^nai: if esti vkra# th leyko# makes a truth claim, then so too, I should think, do Socrates is pale and Socrate est pale. Nor, secondly, can the sense of verity be particularly 1 connected to the declarative use of the verb: if esti vkra# th leyko# 1 makes a truth claim, then surely esti vkra# th leyko# ; asks a truth question, and so on. 1 1 And thirdly, I am not sure that S esti P means the same as S truly esti P 1 or It is true that S esti P and neither is Kahn. For he says that the veridical ei^nai is ambiguous (pp. 25, 105): sometimes it means is true, sometimes it means is so or is the case and those are two different meanings. But why speak of ambiguity within one value of ei^nai? Why not rather distinguish between a genuinely veridical value (is true) and a factual value (is the case)? Then instead of saying say that the primary veridical notion is that of fact or state of affairs (p. 198), we might suggest that veridical ei^nai is derivative from factual ei^nai. Or we might wonder whether veridical ei^nai is not a phantom. After all, 1 # you cannot say, for example, oy| to o& my' uo estin and thereby mean This story is true; and neither of the occurrences of the verb ei^nai in the full veridical construction 2 2 e! sti tay' ta oy tv o pv sy; le# gei tay' ta ei^nai is veridical. Nor, come to that, is the verb used factually in that construction; 1 1 2 and what answers there to the English is so is not esti# but oy tv esti#n. ^nai does not exist, factual ei^nai is (I suspect) rare Indeed, if veridical ei ; ' and limited to a small range of idioms (kata to; o! n, tv/ o! nti, le# gein to; o! n, ). But the factual function may nonetheless have been of fundamental philosophical importance. Kahn says that Parmenides developed a philosophical conception of Being for the rst time, and that what he started from was the pretechnical use of to be (p. 169) and in particular, from the veridical or factual use of the verb. When Parmenides claims that only one of the ways of inquiry is walkable, namely the way that it is and cannot not be, he designates the way of truth or of fact the way according to which things are so and cannot not be so. To be sure, that is only Parmenides starting-point (see p. 170), or his entering wedge (p. 176); and when we get to the heart of the matter, the verb ei^nai takes on an existential value (p. 176), so that Parmenides is centrally concerned with the question of what must hold of any entity or existent thing whatsoever. But the verb can move from the factual to the existential value without any equivocation 1 or fallacious glissando; for the veridical esti# of B 2 directly entails both existential assertion and predicative construction (p. 181). Those matters are nothing if not controversial. For my part, I continue stubbornly to opine that Parmenides entering wedge is the existential and
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not the factual value of ei^nai. Moreover, although the factual function certainly needs to be recognized in a number of philosophical texts, and notably in a number of Platonic texts, I cannot see that it is philosophically fundamental nor that we poor anglophones should lament patrii sermonis egestatem. Kahns Essays on Being are always engaging and often provocative. It is both instructive and entertaining to argue with them; and if sometimes they seem to me to advance questionable claims, I am far more often inclined to make use of the full veridical construction: These things are thus as he says these things are. Ceaulmont France
doi:10.1093/mind/fzq054
JONATHAN BARNES

Advance Access publication 11 October 2010

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The Nature and Structure of Content, by Jeffrey C. King. Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 2007. Pp. 240. H/b 37.50, P/b 17.99. In The Nature and Structure of Content, Jeff King presents a view of propositions as worldly facts whose structure derives from the structure of sentences. A lot of the discussion about propositions by semanticists in recent years has revolved around whether objects can or cannot be propositional constituents, as part of a general debate in semantics between the proponents of theories of direct reference and the proponents of some form of descriptivism. Although King assumes a Russellian approach to propositions, the view he defends is intrinsically neutral as regards what kinds of entities propositional constituents are. After an introductory and partly historical chapter, King devotes chapters two and three to the presentation and defence of his approach. In chapters four and ve King addresses some objections to structured propositions, and some arguments against the existence of propositions. Those chapters do not depend on the peculiarities of Kings account and can be read as an independent defence of the existence of propositions qua non-Platonic structured entities. In chapter six King turns his attention to a purely semantic issue: the treatment of tense, location, and modality. The last chapter takes up again the thread of chapters two and three, to argue that one of the features of the proposed conception of propositions provides the basis of a solution to the paradox of analysis. Throughout the book the writing is extremely clear and the level of detail in the presentation of the view and the treatment of potential objections remarkable. According to King the proposition expressed by a sentence such as (1) Julia is two inches taller than Paul is the fact that Julia, the number two, whatever
Mind, Vol. 119 . 475 . July 2010 Mind Association 2010