Essays on Being

This volume presents a series of essays published by Charles Kahn over a period of forty years, in which he seeks to explicate the ancient Greek concept of Being. He addresses two distinct but intimately related problems, one linguistic and one historical and philosophical. The linguistic problem concerns the theory of the Greek verb einai, 'to be': how to replace the conventional but misleading distinction between copula and existential verb with a more adequate theoretical account. The philosophical problem is in principle quite distinct: to understand how the concept of Being became the central topic in Greek philosophy from Parmenides to Aristotle. But these two problems converge on what Kahn calls the veridical use of einai. In the earlier papers he takes that connection between the verb and the concept of truth to be the key to the central role of Being in Greek philosophy. In the later papers he interprets the veridical in terms of a more general semantic function of the verb, which comprises the notions of existence and instantiation as well as truth.

ISBN 0199534802   Pages 236 ISBN13 9780199534807 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Oxford University Press   Weight (grammes) 422 Imprint Oxford University Press   Published in Oxford Format Hardback   Height (mm) 222 Publication date 19 Feb 2009   Width (mm) 148 Library of Congress 2008942643   Spine width (mm) 18 DEWEY 111   Academic level Undergraduate, Postgraduate DEWEY edition DC22

		Introduction		1
1		The Greek Verb 'To Be' and the Concept of Being (1966)		16
2		On the Terminology for Copula and Existence (1972)		41
3		Why Existence Does Not Emerge as a Distinct Concept in Greek Philosophy (1976)		62
4		Some Philosophical Uses of 'To Be' in Plato (1981)		75
5		A Return to the Theory of the Verb Be and the Concept of Being (2004)		109
6		The Thesis of Parmenides (1969)		143
7		Being in Parmenides and Plato (1988)		167
8		Parmenides and Plato Once More (2002)		192
		Postscript on Parmenides (2008)		207
		Parmenides and physics. The direction of the chariot ride in the proem. The epistemic preference for Fire
		Bibliography		219
		Index of Names		227

All students of Greek philosophy have to acknowledge the importance of Kahn's work in this area, and it is a valuable resource to have the bulk of it made readily accessible in this volume. C.C.W. Taylor / Phronesis the book is well argued, makes a meaningful contribution to the interpretation of the Greek verb 'einai'... and provides ground and inspiration for future developments Bryn Mawr Classical Review Kahn's Essays on Being are always engaging and often provocative Jonathan Barnes, Mind

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