Plato’s Account of Falsehood: A Study of the Sophist by Paolo Crivelli (review)

Clarity is a virtue, especially when one considers such a complicated work as Plato’s Sophist. In order to examine Plato’s philosophy of language in this dialogue, this monograph presents a careful, step-by-step analysis of each relevant passage of the central part. The key passages are presented with Greek text, English translation, and some philological footnotes; and then comments and analyses are given.

Crivelli sorts out and clearly classifies various interpretations. For example, concerning “what is not” (to mē on) and “falsehood,” the following four main interpretations are contrasted and examined: the so-called Oxford interpretation, the incompatibility interpretation, the quasi-incompatibility interpretation, and the extensional interpretation. He then examines each interpretation by raising objections and difficulties before clarifying his own position. This examination contributes to the evaluation of each interpretation’s weakness and strength, even if the reader may take a different position than the author’s. His own answer is not formalistic: he sometimes says “both” or hesitates to decide. Concerning the difficulties of falsehood, he even suggests an acrobatic combination of different interpretations by appealing to the sophist’s strategy (64–70).

One main achievement is a clear view regarding how Plato’s arguments are related to modern philosophy of language. Crivelli maintains, against many commentators, that Plato’s purpose is not to distinguish between different uses of the verb ‘to be,’ either between existence and copula, or between identity and predication. He raises several points against the current views (e.g. 154–57) and proposes instead that the dialogue concerns different ways of reading sentences; namely, the distinction between an “ordinary” reading and a “definitional” reading (122–27). The latter has something in common with “self-predication,” “Pauline predication,” or the essential type of predication (cf. Michael Frede, Constance Meinwald, W. R. Mann), but he explains it as being distinct from those.

On the other hand, the passages examined are selective, so that this is not a commentary on the whole dialogue. The author focuses on the problem of falsehood and issues immediately relevant to falsehood, but other issues are ignored. While he mainly examines the central part of the dialogue, which analytic philosophers used to call “philosophical,” the first outer part is briefly visited in Chapter 1, and the second outer part is given no independent consideration (27). Crucial issues in these parts are barely mentioned: for example, Plato’s intention concerning the unwritten dialogue Philosopher (15), and the “sophist of noble lineage” (22).

Even within the central part, some important passages are skipped or mentioned only in passing: for example, the Eleatic visitor’s comment on parricide (241d), the so-called “parity assumption” (250e–251a), and the much discussed passage, 253c–254b, concerning division and dialectic (15, 116). Generally speaking, the author avoids getting into the historical backgrounds, for example, Parmenides or the sophists (though such analysis is not entirely missing). Thus, although his firm grip on the falsehood problem has its advantages, this approach may also frustrate those who want to read the dialogue as a whole.

This highly systematic treatment of Plato’s argument leaves the fundamental question of its validity, namely, the persistent claim that “the kind Change is stable” is true in the ordinary reading. This comes from the assumption that all kinds are stable “in Plato’s ontology” (93); by the distinction between two classes of beings, namely “the kinds and perceptible particulars,” he seems to imply something like the theory of transcendent forms in the middle dialogues. But this assumption leads to an unusual interpretation of the gigantomachia (93), and to some confusion of the passages concerning the combination of kinds. Crivelli forwards an unconvincing argument against the common interpretation of 256b6–c3, where the Eleatic visitor clearly denies that Change is stable by using a counterfactual conditional (162–66). While the Eleatic visitor and Theaetetus maintain throughout the argument that Change and Stability do not mix and use this...