ABSTRACT
While we cannot infer from the Cratylus that Plato is in fact in difficulties as a result of treating statements as complex names, it is of course perfectly possible that he is. It may still be that the only way of making sense of the Sophist is as an attempt to extricate himself from these difficulties. If he does think of statements as names, then it is likely that he has a bias towards interpreting any strict ‘is’ as one of identity (or perhaps of identification). It is the bearer of the name, Socrates, who is Socrates. At the same time this raises a problem about common statements if all terms are treated as names. For ‘snub-nosed’ and ‘Socrates’ now emerge as two names, and strictly only ‘Socrates is Socrates’ and ‘snub-nosed is snubnosed’ ought to be allowable, with the further possibility, of course, of ‘snub-nosed Socrates is snub-nosed Socrates’. ‘Socrates is snub-nosed’, by contrast, must be false, strictly taken. To escape this difficulty a clear distinction between the ‘is’ of identity and the copula is needed. If it is also true that he thought that it was only possible to name what exists and was inclined to interpret the copula as having existential import, then one would expect some motion towards distinguishing denials of existence from denials of attribution. This would involve at least a move towards isolating the existential use of ‘esti’. It has in fact become quite common to suppose that Plato makes some distinctions at least (cf. Ackrill, 1965, Crombie, 1962, Runciman, 1962, Moravcsik, 1962). Commentators vary in the number of distinctions they hold are made or intended, on the tools used to draw them and in their views on the degree of success. That he is making some distinctions is not in doubt. It seems to me a mistake to suppose that Plato succeeds or even intends to make any of these distinctions. He is neither so sophisticated in his problems nor so clear in his solutions as some of these interpretations suppose. To show this I shall consider and criticise the thesis that Plato succeeds in distinguishing between the existential, identity and attributive uses of ‘esti’, and hope to emerge with a clearer view of what he does and does not succeed in doing.
