Hellenistic Philosophy Introductory

(Marvins-Underground-K-12) #1

118 //-3



  1. An imperative is an object which we say when we give an order,
    for example, u


'You, go to the streams of Inachus.'

An oath is an object ..... [There is a lacuna here.] <and an address is
an object> which, if one were to say, one would be addressing [someone];
for example,^12


'Noblest son of Atreus, lord of men Agamemnon!'

[An object] similar to a proposition is what has a propositional [form of]
utterance, but because of the excessiveness or emotional quality of one
part of it falls outside the class of propositions; for example,


'Fair is the Parthenon!'
'How similar to Priam's sons is the cowherd!>t^3


  1. There is also a dubitative object which is different from a proposition,
    and if one were to say it one would be expressing puzzlement:^14


'Are pain and life somehow akin?'

Questions, enquiries and things like these are neither true nor false,
while propositions are either true or false.
Of propositions, some are simple, some not simple, as the followers
of Chrysippus and Archedemus and Athenodorus and Antipater and
Krinis say. So, the simple are those which are composed of a proposition
which is not doubled,^15 such as 'It is day'. The not simple are those
composed of a doubled proposition or of propositions. 69. From a doubled
proposition: for example, 'If it is day, it is day'; from propositions, for
example, 'If it is day, it is light'.
Among simple propositions are the contradictory and the negative and
the privative and the predicative and the predicational and the indefinite;



  1. A fragment of an unknown Greek tragedy, 177 N auck 2.

  2. Iliad 2.434.

  3. A fragment of an unknown Greek tragedy, 286 Nauck.

  4. Kock iii, Men. 281 v. 8

  5. The reading diphoroumenoi which yields this sense is found in Alexander of Aphrodisias
    (SVF 2.261, 263).

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