Description
Book SynopsisBlake E. Hestir's examination of passages from Plato's Cratylus, Parmenides, Theaetetus and Sophist sheds new light on Plato's conception of meaning and truth, bringing it into dialogue with contemporary truth theory, metaphysics, and semantics, as well as highlighting new and striking parallels between Plato and Aristotle.
Trade Review'The study is rich in detailed analyses of arguments but never loses sight of the main point: an account of Plato's restricted ontology as the foundation for his thoughts about meaning and truth. To this end, the author introduces a grounding argument, articulated most explicitly at Parmenides 135b–c.' Jakob Leth Fink, Journal of the History of Philosophy
'Blake E. Hestir's scholarship has consistently encouraged readers of Plato and Aristotle to pay closer attention to the rich, sometimes unexpected details of their conceptions of truth and falsity. This book is an accomplished, welcome extension of Hestir's efforts to date. I especially appreciated the impressive engagement with the Sophist's metaphysics and the patient accounting of Plato's conception of truth. For students of Plato's semantics and metaphysics more generally, Hestir's book offers lots of food for thought. I highly recommend it.' Christine J. Thomas, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
Table of Contents1. Introduction; Part I. Stability: 2. Strong Platonism, restricted Platonism, and stability; 3. Concerns about stability in the Cratylus; 4. Flux and language in the Theaetetus; 5. The foundation exposed: Parmenides 135bc; Part II. Combination: 6. Being as capacity and combination: a challenge for the friends of the forms; 7. The problem of predication: the challenge of the late-learners; Part III. Truth: 8. Predication, meaning, and truth in the Sophist; 9. Plato's conception of truth; 10. Truth as being and a substantive property.
