Γραμματική in plato and aristotle

Daniel W. Graham and Justin Barney

in Plato and AristotleAbstract: The term grammatik appears frequently in Plato and Aristotle as thename of an art or science that can serve as a paradigm of knowledge. It istypically rendered into English by the cognate grammar. A close look at rele-vant passages, however, makes it clear that this translation is inadequate. Theterm never refers to grammar. Rather, grammatik signifies the basic art of as-sociating letters with sounds and connecting letters to represent speech. Theart of letters is the basis of reading and writingthe art of literacy. When theterm is understood correctly, a number of difficult passages become clear.

Keywords: grammatike, Plato, Aristotle, literacy

Daniel Graham: Brigham Young Philosophy, 4086aJFSB, Provo, Utah n/a, United States;E-Mail: [email protected] Barney: Brigham Young Philosophy, United States; E-Mail: [email protected]

, . . . - , .

Some [things] are in a subject but are not said of any subject For example, the indivi-dual knowledge-of-grammar is in a subject, the soul, but is not said of any subject (Aristotle Categories 1a2327, trans. Ackrill)

Here is one of the most difficult passages of Aristotle, right at the beginning ofthe corpus, translated by one of the best scholars and translators of Aristotle. Agreat deal has been said about the metaphysical theory expressed in these lines,but little attention has been devoted to the meaning of the key term in the exam-ple, grammatik. Typically it is rendered by its English cognate grammar with-out reflection (in his commentary on the passage Ackrill has nothing to sayabout the word itself).1 It is our contention that in the classical period the term inquestion, which appears with some frequency in the works of Plato and Aristo-tle, never means grammar, and the term Aristotle regards as derivative from it,grammatikos (1a1415, cf. 10a31) never means grammarian (used substantively)nor grammatical (used adjectivally). Since the terms in question often serve asexamples of rigorous knowledge and knowers, it is important to understandwhat they mean and what kind of conception they are meant to introduce.

1 See Ackrill 1963, 7476.

DOI 10.1515/apeiron-2013-0049 apeiron 2014; 47(4): 513525

Brought to you by | New York University Elmer Holmes Bobst LibraryAuthenticated

Download Date | 10/10/14 9:47 PM

As we shall see, Plato uses the terms in question in precisely the samesenses as Aristotle, and in every case Platos usages are unambiguous. For thisreason we shall turn first to Plato (I), then to Aristotle (II). In the process wehope to illuminate the early philosophical conception of the terms and (III)sketch some implications for understanding this problem passage in Aristotle.

I

In the Cratylus, Plato has Cratylus explain the object of the grammatik techn:

Whenever, by the grammatik techn, we assign these letters the alpha, the beta andeach of the components [of the alphabet] to words, if we remove or add or rearrangeanything, we have written2 the word, not correctly, however indeed, it has not reallybeen written at all. But if the word should suffer any of these changes, it would beentirely different. (431e 9432a 4)

Here we see that the grammatik techn is quite literally about grammata, theletters of the alphabet. What Plato describes here is not a complex system oflinguistic rules and compositional arrangement, but simply the ability to stringletters together to represent words. Plato here calls the letters stoicheia, or com-ponents. The term stoicheion is the same that comes to mean element as inthe four material or chemical elements. This term and its applications have beenstudied considerably more than gramma letter, both philologically and philo-sophically. A stoicheion is best taken as a member of any ordered series or sys-tem, such as the series of letters in the alphabet.3 The stoicheia in question are

2 Bekker supplies before , unnecessarily.3 There are classic but now obsolete studies by Diels 1899 and Lagercrantz 1911. On the mean-ing, see especially Burkert 1959, who defines stoicheion as an Ergnzungsstck der Reihe(189), Glied, das zur Reihe ergnzt (192). Similarly Vollgraff 1949, 104, pice dune range;Schwabe 1980, 90 Reihenglied. Burkert shows that stoicheion has a more general connotationthan letter and suggests it was applied to mathematical propositions before it was applied toletters. Further, the distinction between stoicheion and gramma is not one between the soundand its transcription (pace LSJ, s.v. II.1), that is, the phoneme and the grapheme(17172); cf. Druart 1975, 245. Suggestions by Koller 1955 and criticisms by Lumpe 1962 areunhelpful. Schwabe 1980, 12223, sees the application to letters as arising from consideringletters as components of a line of writing. Crowley 2005 comes to conclusions similar to thoseof Burkert. For philosophical discussions, see Ryle 1960, Gallop 1963. Although recent discus-sions of Platos metaphysics have illuminated his theory of elements and compounds, theyhave not had much to say about the meanings of the terms in question. See McCabe 1994, 158-61, 24349; Harte 2002, 3248, 14357, 199208.

514 Daniel W. Graham and Justin Barney



components that can make up a written word by standing for the ordered seriesof sounds comprising the spoken word.

Plato further specifies what is entailed by the grammatik techn in theSophist, where he uses the process of combining of letters as an analogy toillustrate the intermingling of forms (252a9253a12). Some forms combine, justas some letters do, and some do not. In order to know which letters combine,one needs an art, namely grammatik (253a812).

Later in the dialogue, Plato moves from his discussion of letter-combinationto a discussion about how to combine words to make a sentence (261d262a).Significantly, whereas Plato had recognized the former as an established art, heintroduces the latter as a speculative study. The Eleatic Visitor tells Theaetetusthat one creates the simplest kind of speech (for instance, Man learns) byweaving together (symplekn) a noun and a verb; precisely this combinationconstitutes a sentence (logos).4 But he has to explain to Theaetetus, a giftedstudent, the difference between a noun and a verb, and how they go together,before he can pursue the analogy (262ac). Evidently, Theaetetus, who knowsthe art of letters, does not know by it the most basic parts of speech or thedistinction between a subject and a predicate. When Plato launches the studyof philosophical grammar by distinguishing between the noun (onoma) and theverb (rhma), he does so through an analogy to the grammatik techn and doesnot include his new discoveries under the same rubric. The combination of let-ters is studied by the art of letters, while the composition of words belongs to anew art of Platos own contrivance. There is no reason to think that the art ofletters here is anything other than the art of reading and writing. This art,furthermore, does not include the most basic of parts of speech and subject-pre-dicate syntax that constitute the core of what we today call grammar.

In the Philebus, Plato explores the art of letters from a historical perspective(18b6d2).

When either some god or divine man there is a story in Egypt claiming that it isTheuth looked into the multitude of utterances, he first observed that the vowels inthe multitude were not one but many; and again that other utterances participate not invoice but in some sound, and there is a certain number of them; and that there remained

4 263c9d6. In d6 surely does not mean speech (N. P. Whites translation) since onecan have a speech act that does not include a noun and a verb but sentence or better state-ment or proposition. Cf. Arist. Cat. 1a1619, 2a410, where characterizes an affir-mation or assertion () capable of being true or false; he gives as examples of state-ments a noun + a verb, though he does not state as a rule that a noun needsto combine with a verb. In Int. 17a24 Aristotle notes that not every is as-sertive, that is, capable of being true or false, as for instance a wish (, usually mistrans-lated prayer) is neither true nor false.

in Plato and Aristotle 515



a distinct third class of letters which we now call mute. Afterwards he divided the voice-less and mutes until each was separate, and he divided the vowels and the semi-vowelsin the same manner until, having determined the number of them, he denominated eachand every one a character.5 Seeing that none of us would understand one individuallyby itself without knowing all of them, and considering that this was the single bondwhich somehow rendered all these things one, after establishing one craft he named itthe grammatik techn. (18b6d2)

Plato credits the inventor Theuth with the creation of an art of letters, includingthe designing of basic marks to represent spoken sounds.6 Those who studiedthe complete set were able to learn and communicate by reading and writing.7

The basic idea is that grammatik involves the construction of meaningfulwords by the ordering of individually inconsequential symbols. To call the artin question grammar is seriously misleading insofar as the English term sug-gests much more than just an ability to use the right letters to express the rightsounds.8 Platos grammatik is an art of letters that is quite literally just an artof mapping letters to sounds and knowing how to combine them to representspeech. Plato does not envisage a morphology, a semantics, or a syntax themain constituents of grammar proper but only the systematic ability to trans-late sounds into letters and letters into sounds.

Plato sees in the letters the power to mediate between a single generalityand an infinite plurality. In the Philebus he notes that not by either of thesethings are we by any means wise, neither because we recognize the infinite nat-ure [of sound] nor because we recognize its oneness; but because we know howmany and of what sort [the letters] are. This is what makes each of us grammati-kos (17b69). A system of letters provides the scientific control over the infiniterealm of experience and thus provides an archetype for science.

The understanding of the grammatik techn as the art of letters, takenquite literally, is confirmed by other passages within the Platonic corpus.9

5 Stoicheion. On the meaning, see n. 3 above.6 See also Platos discussion of the art of letters (where he does not use the term grammatik,but does speak of a techn of grammata) discovered by Theuth and its disadvantages, Phdr.274c275b.7 This notwithstanding the early Egyptian writing system was logographic or logophoneticrather than alphabetic.8 McCabe 1994, 248, translates grammatik techn at the end of the passage as grammar andobserves: notice that the context in which they [the letters] are individualized is, for theTheuth example, grammar, the nexus of the relations between the letters. Grammar unifiesthe letters McCabe notes quite correctly that the individuation of the letters depends on asystem of relations. But the system in question is much less than a grammar.9 In addition to the passages cited above, see Tht. 198e3, 207b23; Phlb. 17a8b9; Plt. 285d2;R. 402a7b3.




A passage from Xenophon corroborates this fourth- and fifth-century B.C.E.meaning of grammatikos (Socrates is speaking with Euthydemus):

Do you then judge a man more grammatikos who should write and read incorrectly onpurpose or a man who should do so unwittingly? He who should do so on purpose, Isuppose. For he would be able, whenever he wished, to do these things correctly.Therefore, he who writes incorrectly on purpose is grammatikos, while he who does sounwittingly is agrammatos, illiterate? How could it be otherwise? (Mem. 4.2.20)

The meaning of grammatikos in this passage, as in the previous examples,seems clear, especially in the contrast between the grammatikos and the agram-matos, the lettered and the unlettered.10 As a result, translators of Xenophonsometimes render the Greek correctly.11 The skill in question is the ability torender speech into letters, not necessarily to compose complicated or gramma-tically sophisticated sentences. One might object that the talk of ones beingmore grammatikos in Socrates second speech undermines this interpretationbecause one is either literate or not. But linguists know very well that there aredifferent levels of reading competence. Aristotle, when discussing the categoryof quality, identifies the capacity of qualities to be more or less. He gives as aparadigm example grammatikteros.12 Does he mean more grammatical ormore literate? Let us turn now to Aristotles use of grammatikos and its cog-nates.

II

Although Aristotle often uses his examples of grammatik schematically andwithout explanation, he sometimes clarifies the concept, notably in the follow-ing passage:

, -. , -, , .

10 The LSJ cites the opposition between these terms as though it occurred first in Arrian, ignor-ing its presence in this Xenophon passage it cites as evidence for the former term (s.v. - 1).11 Although Watson translates scholar, Marchant translates literate. This passage providesthe only occurrence of grammatikos in Xenophon.12 Cat. 11a3, cf. 11a1; translated better versed in grammar Edghill, more grammatical Ack-rill.




Again [consider] whether, although the word being defined is spoken of in several ways,[a speaker] does not cover all of them; for example, if he says that grammatik is theknowledge of writing that which is dictated. For he omits to say that it is knowledge ofreading it out. For he who renders it as a knowledge of writing has no more defined itthan he who renders it as the knowledge of reading, so that neither [has defined it ade-quately], but [only] he who says it is both these things, since there cannot be manydefinitions of the same thing. (Top. 142b3035)

This is the plainest explanation of grammatik to be found in the writings ofAristotle. According to this passage, grammatik consists of two complemen-tary abilities: (1) to turn a stretch of spoken language into a string of alphabeticsymbols, and conversely (2) to turn a string of alphabetic symbols into a stretchof spoken language. Aristotle is describing not a high-level theory of descriptiveor transformational grammar, but simply the art of reading and writing. By con-trast, the New Oxford translation renders the beginning, if he defines grammaras the knowledge of how to write from dictation (italics added), obscuring thepoint unnecessarily.

The reference to dictation recalls another passage of Xenophons:

For instance, you might say that one would have to learn his letters if he was to be ableto write from dictation ( ) and read back what was written.(Oec. 15.7)13

Xenophons point in the context is that knowing that one needs a skill is notthe same as acquiring the skill. For our purposes, the passage illustrates the factthat the basic skill the scribe needs is literacy, not grammar. And Xenophonagrees with Aristotle that there are two complementary skills involved, that oftranscribing dictation and that of enunciating the transcription.

In a subsequent passage Aristotle (Top. 6.8) stresses the point that sincesome things are relative to others, a proper definition of such a thing specifiesthe relatum. For instance, a kind of knowledge is always of some subject matter.Thus a proper definition of grammatik would be epistm grammatn, ascience of letters (146b67).14 He makes no reference to grammatical construc-tions. These two passages from the Topics teach us that Aristotle viewed gram-

13 In the Euthydemus (277ab), the eponymous practitioner of eristic gets Clinias to assent toknowing all his letters and hence being able transcribe anything anyone dictates (-), whence Euthydemus draws the sophistical conclusion that Clinias knows everything.14 Prencipe 2002, 3140, examines in detail the problem of whether grammatik is a techn oran epistm, but on the assumption that she is dealing with grammar. If we are speaking ofliteracy, we are dealing with a fairly rudimentary form of either art or science, but one which,as Plato in the Philebus indicates, can serve as a paradigm of other kinds of knowledge. Xeno-phon implies the same connection between the episteme grammatn and grammatik in thepassage cited above.




matik as knowing how to render sounds into letters and how to transform let-ters into sounds. In sum, he also defines grammatik as the complementaryskills of writing and reading: literacy.

Aristotle recognizes that the two activities that constitute literacy are immedi-ate and intuitive. In the Eudemian Ethics, he discusses the requirements of volun-tary behavior and deliberation (1226a33b2). In order to clarify what deliberationis, Aristotle explains which kinds of actions involve the process and which do not.As an example, he explains that a doctor deliberates about his science whereas agrammatikos does not. Because deliberation only occurs while reasoning, actionswhich are done extemporaneously must be accomplished without deliberation.Now people can err in two ways: in reasoning and in perception at the moment ofaction (EE 1226a378). A doctor, then, can err both in his reasoning (while diag-nosing an illness) and at the moment of action (while performing surgery). Agrammatikos, by contrast, only errs in perception and in action (1226b1).

Rackham renders grammatikos here as scholar.15 Translated in this way,Aristotles example is muddled and unhelpful. For just as medical doctors,scholars may easily fall victim to errors in reasoning and applying knowledge.By grammatikos, Aristotle must have in mind one possessed of a fundamentaland intuitive knowledge and ability. A literate individual possessing an intui-tive capacity rather than a theoretical skill only errs in perception and action,that is, only in recognizing and pronouncing letters (or in recognizing soundsand producing the corresponding letters) and does not consciously reasonabout his performance. There is no room, in other words, in grammatik forsubtle hermeneutical skills. This is not to say that reading and writing do not infact involve complex cognitive abilities and motor skills, only to say that Greektheory of the fourth century BCE stresses the performative aspects of the skill.

A passage in Xenophon brings out the kind of response expected in the artof letters. Hippias of Elis criticizes Socrates for always saying the same things,whereas Hippias finds new things to say. Socrates then asks, If, for example,someone asks you concerning letters, how many and what kind are those thatmake up Socrates, do you try to give a different answer now than before? Or ifhe asks you about numbers, if two times five is ten, dont you give the sameanswer now as before? Concerning these things, Socrates, Hippias replies,just like you, I always say the same things (Mem. 4.4.7). In the skill of read-ing, as in that of arithmetic, the relevant virtue is not novelty, creativity, or lit-erary insight, but simple, invariant accuracy. Socrates goes on to recommend tothe sophist the same virtue for complex tasks such as defining justice. As Plato

15 Woods translates scribes and gets the contrast right. Solomon gives grammarians.




points out, it is precisely the ability to give the one and only right spelling oneach occasion that makes one literate.16

In the Categories Aristotle notes that in the demonstrative sciences someelements are prior to others, for example, in grammatik the components areprior to the syllables (14b12). His remark makes perfect sense in light of otherpassages we have studied. The characters are prior to the syllables as compo-nents are to compounds in the art of letters, taken quite literally as the ability tostring letters together into written syllables. There is no reason to invoke gram-mar as translators have it.17 We are now in a position to understand better anumber of passages in Aristotle where the context by itself might not make themeaning clear. In some of these passages, understanding grammatik as literacyelucidates Aristotles philosophical theories.18

One example occurs in the De anima. Aristotle wishes to distinguish differ-ent levels of knowledge, and to do so, he speaks of a person being a knower:

.

Thus there is a knower in the sense we might call a man a knower because he belongsto a class of those who know and have knowledge. Then there is the one we call aknower because he already has grammatik (techn).19 (417a2225)

Aristotle distinguishes between (a) the potential and (b) the actual knower, andgoes on to distinguish two senses of the latter, (i) one who has the skill and (ii)one who is actually using the skill. On this model the highest level of knowl-edge is manifested at level (bii), where the knower is employing his ability. Andhe gives this example:

, .

He who is now cognizing, actually and in the proper sense knowing this alpha. (a2829)

Suddenly we grasp the importance of the example. By distinguishing the stagesof this simple everyday cognitive skill, we see how knowledge articulates itself.Indeed, Aristotle continues by pointing out that the transition from stage (a) tostage (b) takes repeated practice, while the transition from (bi) to (bii) is instan-taneous. The reading example makes this clear: it takes years to learn to readto go from (a) to (b)but to go from the state of being able to read to actually

16 Tht. 207e208a, and see 202e ff.17 In grammar the sound-elements are prior to the syllables (Ackrill).18 Translating as literacy clarifies other, albeit less philosophically significant,passages. For example, cf. Phys. 199a3334 and Met. 1003b1921.19 knowledge of grammar (Hamlyn).




reading ( , a32b1)20 (from (bi)to (bii)) is instantaneous. So we get a clear hierarchy of abilities and skills: ahuman being is literate in the purely potential sense of belonging to a specieswith the right cognitive capacities to learn to read and write; is actually literateupon learning letters in school; and is fully active when using the acquired skillto read or write. Aristotles explanation of the levels of ability helps to clarifythe point made in the Eudemian Ethics (cited above) that the ability to read isimmediate and non-deliberative: it is the activation of an acquired proficiency.

Also note that in the example, to recognize this letter as an alpha does notentail having any knowledge of grammar whatsoever.

The case studies above indicate that to read grammatik as literacy pro-vides perspicuous interpretations of the arguments discussed.21 We have foundthat the art in question involves (a) the ability to represent sounds by lettersand to connect them together in the proper order so as to express words; (b) thecomplementary skills of transcription and enunciation; (c) the ability to groupthe elements of sound into a system (d) so as to represent an unlimited numberof utterances, (e) enabling an immediate cognitive response rather than a com-plex interpretation and (f) ensuring a reliable production of correct results. Allof these skills characterize reading and writing in the basic sense of comprehen-sion and production rather than high-level interpretation, sentence construc-tion, analysis, synthesis, evaluation, or scholarship. They also suggest a power-ful model for explanation that promises to lead from the basic components of astudy to an invariable outcome. If that is so, reading is not a trivial skill but aparadigm of human rationality. To grasp the elements of the world and theirconnections, by implication, is to be able to read the book of nature.22

III

Let us now return to the passage with which we began, Categories 1a2327.What is h tis grammatik that serves as an example of what is in a subject but

20 Not: from the inactive possession of grammar (J. A. Smith) or from the state of having grammatical knowledge (Hamlyn).21 For the other passages in Aristotle containing grammatik or grammatikos, see Cat. 1a14,1a26, 1b3, 1b8, 1b29, 3a45, 10a31, 11a1, 11a2730; Top. 102a 201, 104a1819, 104b26, 109a18,111a37111b3, 124b19, 126a5, 126a19, 146b6; Metaph. 1026b179, 1064b236, 1087a20; EE1246b28; EN 1105a205.22 This relationship is hinted already in Heraclitus B1; Leucippus 67A9 = Arist. GC 315b615,A6 = Arist. Metaph. 985b1319; Plato Tht. 202eff.




not said of a subject? At the end of Metaphysics M, Aristotle discusses twosenses of knowledge, the potential and the actual. He goes on to say that poten-tial knowledge concerns the universal, but actual knowledge the individual(1087a1518) and uses sight to illustrate his point:

, .

Incidentally sight sees color in general because this particular color which it sees is acolor, and [the mind perceives letters in general because] this alpha which the grammati-kos regards is an alpha. (1087a1921)

Aristotle makes the point that we can only claim to understand universals be-cause of our familiarity with particulars. In doing so, he sets up an analogy: thiscolor: color :: this A: letters. When the reader recognizes this alpha as an in-stance of a certain letter, he incidentally understands letters. In the Categoriespassage Aristotle gives a similar example parallel to h tis grammatik, namelyto ti leukon (1a27), this particular white he seems to have in mind a specificpersons complexion which is an individual instance of color.23 We are re-minded of the passage in the De anima, discussed above, in which fully actualknowledge was exemplified by a reader who was presently reading this alpha(417a2829). Likewise, the seers ability to see is fully actualized when viewingthis instance of color. What Aristotle has in mind with h tis grammatik is evi-dently not some complicated grammatical transformation, but a simple recogni-tion of these marks on the papyrus as an alpha. This for him is an indivisible(atomon) piece of knowledge (1b6).

The philosophical problem of the Categories passage arises because of anambiguity. Is Aristotle talking about this piece of knowledge, this color, in thesense of a fully determinate sort of thing (this fully specified type of knowledgeor color), which is universal; or in the sense of a particular occurrence of thething (this token of knowledge or color), which is individual or particular? Thelarger question is: does Aristotle recognize particular properties or attributes aswell as particular substances, or only completely determinate universal attri-butes?24 Understanding what h tis grammatik means does not address the phi-losophical issues concerning the ontological and epistemological status of theclass in question. But the fact that Aristotle cites parallel examples in terms ofthe perception and cognition of a particular letter at a particular time, this spe-cific alpha on the page, seems to tilt the evidence in favor of the token of knowl-

23 See Cat. 9b914.24 The former is the traditional view; the latter is defended by Owen 1965a, Moravcsik 1967b,14243; Frede 1978; Matthews 1989. To the contrary, Heinaman 1981; Wedin 1993.




edge and the token of color. The passages cited above seem to constitute a com-mentary on what Aristotle had in mind when he talked about an instance ofknowing ones letters, and this instance is all about a singular application ofknowledge.

Aristotle is not discussing the individual knowledge-of-grammar,25 what-ever that might mean, but an individual act of literacy, the recognition of thismark here as an instance of a certain letter. Aristotle is talking about tokens ofknowledge (and color), not types.26 His second class of things that are, then,must consist of particular instances of a type, in modern terms of tropes ormodes.27 They are individual properties that are attributes of particular sub-stances and that fall under universal properties. A full defense of this readingwould require a philosophical vindication of the theory, which lies beyond thescope of this paper.28 But the philological evidence has its own tale to tell.

Conclusion

If this study is right, the current understanding of grammatik and grammatikosin classical usage is confused at best. The entries in the LSJ must bear someresponsibility for the confusion. The adjective grammatikos, -, -on is defined asknowing ones letters, a good scholar (def. 1), as if the former definiens some-how entailed or were the etymological basis for the latter, and leaving the for-mer ambiguous as to what sort of letters are meant. But in fact the former iscorrect (taken sensu stricto) and the latter incorrect, as a close look at the exam-ples cited by the LSJ shows. As substantive uses we get (II.1) teacher of therudiments, with Hippocrates as source; and (2) one who occupies himself withliterary texts, grammarian, critic, with Polybius as source. These definitionsare correct for their times but should cast doubt on scholar. For grammatik(sc. techn) (III) the first and main definition (a) is grammar, citing Plato Cra-tylus 431e, Sophist 253a, and Aristotle Topics 142b31, precisely the texts thatshow that the term does not mean that.29 Literacy is nowhere given as a defini-

25 Ackrills translation; see quotation at beginning of this paper.26 The object [of contemplation] is a particular individual (this particular A). Cf. Metaphysics1087a15 ff. (Hamlyn 1968, 101, commenting on de An. 417a21 ff.).27 See Lowe 2006, 14 et passim. Trope theory typically makes individual properties the basicreality, whereas Aristotles modes are ontologically dependent on (in) primary substances.28 See Lowe 2006.29 Other definitions concern special uses.




tion. This error is repeated in such learned works as Chantraine (1968, 236),who has the term meaning grammaire in Plato.

The passages we have studied show that the primary definition for gramma-tik should be literacy and the primary definition for the adjective grammati-kos should be something like, knowing ones letters, literate, with a second-ary sense as a substantive, a reader.

In the fourth century B.C.E. the art of letters, which today seems an elemen-tary and insignificant accomplishment, retained a certain prestige as the gate-way to learning and culture, and sparked a far-reaching social transformation.Further, it offered a model for the application of cognitive powers to the world.Letters were correlated with sounds; groups of letters composed syllables;groups of syllables words, groups of words a sentence. To be literate demon-strated the internalization of a cognitive skill of great value. The study of lettersoffered a paradigm of knowledge, and even a model of how elements and theircombinations could explain higher-level complexities. Indeed, the transitionfrom orality to literacy seems to mark the first great intellectual revolution.30

The subsequent extension of the art of literacy in Greece seems to have been inthe direction of gathering skills for a critical reading of texts. Henceforth, to belettered was not only to be able to pronounce but to comprehend the literarycontent of a text. The rules for combining letters led to rules for analyzingwords, then phrases and sentences, and at some point the art of learned readingturned into the art of linguistic analysis. But not in the classical age, when hav-ing the art of letters always meant simply knowing ones ABCs.31

Bibliography

Ackrill, J. L. 1963. Aristotles Categories and De Interpretatione. Oxford: Clarendon.Burkert, Walter. 1959. : Eine semasiologische Studie." Philologus 103.3: 16797.

30 More than any other single invention, writing has transformed human consciousness(Ong 2002, 77; see anthropological evidence in ch. 3). See Havelock 1963, 1982; in the contextof information theory, Gleick 2011, 3241. On the spread of literacy in Greece, see Harris 1989,chs. 34. Halverson 1992a, b argues against some of the extreme claims made for the impact ofliteracy on culture, but when all is said and done alphabetic writing immediately and perma-nently changed the way information could be preserved, accessed, and shared.31 We read versions of this paper to the department of philosophy at Brigham Young Univer-sity and to the Intermountain Philosophy Conference at Utah Valley University, Nov. 22, 2013.We are grateful for comments from our colleagues, especially to Roger Macfarlane and RyanChristensen. Simon Trpanier read an early version of the paper and gave us helpful detailedcomments.




Chantraine, Pierre. 1999 [1968]. Dictionnaire tymologique de la langue grecque. New ed.Paris: Klincksieck.

Crowley, Timothy J. 2005. On the Use of Stoicheion in the Sense of Element. Oxford Stu-dies in Ancient Philosophy 29: 36794.

Diels, Hermann. 1899. Elementum: Eine Vorarbeit zum griechischen und lateinischen The-saurus. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner.

Druart, Thrse-Anne. 1975. La stoicheologie de Platon." Revue Philosophique de Louvain,ser. 4, 73: 24362.

Frede, Michael. 1977. The Origins of Traditional Grammar."Historical and PhilosophicalDimensions of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science. Ed. Robert E. Butts andJaakko Hintikka. Vol. 12. Boston: D. Reidel, 5180.

Gallop, David. 1963. Plato and the Alphabet. Philosophical Review 72: 36476.Gleick, James. 2011. The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. New York: Pantheon.Halverson, John. 1992a. Havelock on Greek Orality and Literacy. Journal of the History of

Ideas 53.1: 148163.Halverson, John. 1992b. Goody and the Implosion of the Literacy Thesis. Man 27.2:

301317.Hamlyn, D. W. 1968. Aristotles De Anima, Books II and III (with Certain Passages from Book I).

Oxford: Clarendon Press.Havelock, Eric A. 1963. Preface to Plato. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap.Havelock, Eric A. 1982. The Literate Revolution in Greece and Its Consequences. Princeton:

Princeton University Press.Harris, William V. 1989. Ancient Literacy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Harte, Verity. 2002. Plato on Parts and Wholes: The Metaphysics of Structure. Oxford: Clare-

don Press.Heinaman, Robert. 1981. Knowledge of Substance in Aristotle." The Journal of Hellenic Stu-

dies 101: 6377.Koller, Hermann. 1955. Stoicheion. Glotta 34: 16174.Lagercrantz, Otto. 1911. Elementum. Uppsala: Akademiska Bokhandeln.Lowe, E. J. 2006. The Four-Category Ontology: A Metaphysical Foundation for Natural Science.

Oxford: Clarendon Press.Lumpe, Adolf. 1962. Der Begriff Element im Altertum. Archiv fr Begriffsgeschichte 7:

28593.Matthews, Gareth B. 1989. The Enigma of Categories 1a20ff and Why It Matters." Apeiron

22.4: 91104.McCabe, Mary Margaret. 1994. Platos Individuals. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Moravcsik, Julius M. 1967. Aristotle on Predication. The Philosophical Review 27.1: 8096.Ong, Walter J. 2002. Orality and Literacy. London: Routledge.Owen, G.E.L. 1965. Inherence." Phronesis 10.1: 97105.Prencipe, Vittoria. 2002. Statuto epistemologico della grammatica nellantichit greca.

Grammatical Theory and Philosophy of Language in Antiquity. Ed. Pierre Swiggers andAlfons Wouters. Vol. 19. Leuven: Peeters, 2369.

Ryle, Gilbert. 1960. Letters and Syllables in Plato. Philosophical Review 69: 43151.Schwabe, Wilhelm. 1980. Mischung und Element im Griechischen bis Platon. Bonn: Bouvier

Verlag.Vollgraff, W. 1949. Elementum. Mnemosyne, ser. 2, 4: 89115.Wedin, Michael V. 1993. Nonsubstantial Individuals." Phronesis 38.2: 13765.




/ColorImageDict > /JPEG2000ColorACSImageDict > /JPEG2000ColorImageDict > /AntiAliasGrayImages false /CropGrayImages false /GrayImageMinResolution 300 /GrayImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleGrayImages true /GrayImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /GrayImageResolution 150 /GrayImageDepth -1 /GrayImageMinDownsampleDepth 2 /GrayImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000 /EncodeGrayImages true /GrayImageFilter /DCTEncode /AutoFilterGrayImages true /GrayImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /GrayACSImageDict > /GrayImageDict > /JPEG2000GrayACSImageDict > /JPEG2000GrayImageDict > /AntiAliasMonoImages false /CropMonoImages false /MonoImageMinResolution 1200 /MonoImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleMonoImages true /MonoImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /MonoImageResolution 800 /MonoImageDepth -1 /MonoImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000 /EncodeMonoImages true /MonoImageFilter /CCITTFaxEncode /MonoImageDict > /AllowPSXObjects false /CheckCompliance [ /None ] /PDFX1aCheck false /PDFX3Check false /PDFXCompliantPDFOnly false /PDFXNoTrimBoxError true /PDFXTrimBoxToMediaBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXSetBleedBoxToMediaBox true /PDFXBleedBoxToTrimBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXOutputIntentProfile (U.S. Web Coated \050SWOP\051 v2) /PDFXOutputConditionIdentifier (CGATS TR 001) /PDFXOutputCondition () /PDFXRegistryName (http://www.color.org) /PDFXTrapped /False

/CreateJDFFile false /Description > /Namespace [ (Adobe) (Common) (1.0) ] /OtherNamespaces [ > /FormElements false /GenerateStructure false /IncludeBookmarks false /IncludeHyperlinks false /IncludeInteractive false /IncludeLayers false /IncludeProfiles false /MarksOffset 6 /MarksWeight 0.250000 /MultimediaHandling /UseObjectSettings /Namespace [ (Adobe) (CreativeSuite) (2.0) ] /PDFXOutputIntentProfileSelector /UseName /PageMarksFile /RomanDefault /PreserveEditing true /UntaggedCMYKHandling /LeaveUntagged /UntaggedRGBHandling /UseDocumentProfile /UseDocumentBleed false >> > ]>> setdistillerparams> setpagedevice

Γραμματική in plato and aristotle

Documents