The Stoics on Lekta: All There Is to Say

by Ada Bronowski

Overview

After Plato's Forms, and Aristotle's substances, the Stoics posited the fundamental reality of lekta - the meanings of sentences, distinct from the sentences themselves. This is the first time in the tradition of Western philosophy that what is signified is properly distinguished from signs and signifiers. The Stoics on Lekta offers a synoptic treatment of the many implications of this distinction, which grants an existential autonomy to lekta: language can only ever express meanings, but what happens to meanings which are there, ready to be said, but which are never actually expressed? It analyses the deep shift in ontological paradigm required by the presence of lekta in reality, and reveals a truly unique, complex, and consistent cosmic view in which lekta are the keystones of the structure of reality. According to this view, we cannot not speak or think in terms of lekta, and for this reason, they are in fact all there is to say. The Stoics' position ignited many fiery debates in antiquity and continues to do so in the modern era: they were the first to be concerned with questions about language and grammar, and the first to put the relation of language to reality at the heart of the enquiry into human understanding and the place of man in the cosmos. Such questions remain central to life and philosophy to this day, and by explicitly comparing and contrasting the themes and topics discussed to twentieth-century treatments of the status of the proposition, propositional structure, speech act theory, and the relation of attribution of the predicate to a subject-term, this volume seeks to demonstrate the enduring value of a direct Stoic contribution to the contemporary debate.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780192580696
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	07/11/2019
Series:	Oxford Classical Monographs
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	496
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Ada Bronowski is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the New College of Humanities, London, having studied at the Universities of Paris, London, and Oxford, where she was awarded her doctorate.

Table of Contents

0. Introduction
0.1. A brief overview of the main texts
0.2. A summary of the content of the chapters
1. The Invention of the System: A System is a System is a System
1.1. The critique of tripartitioning: three parts do not make a system
1.1.1. Tripartitioning of what?
1.1.2. The analogies for tripartition
1.1.3. A discourse about philosophy vs. philosophy simpliciter: from Plutarch to Hadot
1.1.4. Chrysippus vindicated, or tripartition trivialized
1.1.5. Tripartition: teaching and transmission
1.1.6. Tripartition: of 'philosophy itself'
1.1.7 Philosophy itself: practice and theory in one
1.1.8. Tripartition into parts, topics, or species?
1.2. Historiography and its entanglements
1.2.1. Sextus Empiricus: a historian of philosophy with an agenda
1.2.2. The real debate about tripartition between the Stoics and the Peripatetics: what is a whole?
1.3. The Stoic notion of a syst=ema?
1.3.1. The syst=ema as the structure of arguments
1.3.2. The syst=ema as the structure of knowledge
1.3.3. The syst=ema as the structure of an art
1.3.4. The syst=ema as structure of the cosmos: the cosmic city
1.3.4.1. The local city and the cosmic city
1.3.4.2. The syst=ema, or the logical principle of the cosmic city
1.3.5. The syst=ema as structure of the cosmos: unity and cosmic sympathy
1.3.6. The syst=ema and the parts of philosophy
1.3.7. The syst=ema and lekta
2. Lekta in the Stoic Ontological Framework
2.1. The map of the logical structure
2.1.1. Logos-reason and logos-speech
2.1.1.1. There is no specific question of language
2.1.2 The logical structure of the syst=ema: the distinction between rhetoric and dialectic
2.2. Dialectic
2.2.1. The distinction between signifier and signified
2.2.2. Two kinds of semainomena: impressions and lekta
2.2.3. Rational and irrational impressions
2.2.4. Propositional content
2.2.4.1. Can a dog have logos?
2.2.4.2. Propositional content and propositions: the role of logos-reason
2.2.4.3. Propositional content and propositions: the role of assent
2.2.5. Propositional content and verbalization: Stoics and Epicureans
2.2.6. Lekta and impressions
2.2.7. Why are impressions and lekta both semainomena?
2.2.7.1. Alternative configurations of the logical structure
2.2.7.2. The semainomenon is said in many ways
3. Bodies and Incorporeals
3.1. Being a body
3.1.1. Body as active and passive
3.1.2. On a doxographical tradition of the passivity of body
3.1.3. The Stoic defence of the passivity of body
3.1.3.1. Being conjoined: on Brunschwig's 'graft of corporeality'
3.1.3.2. Being conjoined: active and passive together
3.1.3.3. To act or otherwise be acted upon, is that the question of conjunction?
3.2. The Stoic criterion for corporeality and the place of incorporeals in ontology
3.2.1. The Stoics and the Gigantomachia
3.2.2. Corporealization of being
3.2.3. Incorporeals in reality: what is at stake?
3.2.4. Somethings and not-somethings: in defence of the reality of incorporeals
3.3. The roles of the Platonic Ideas redistributed in Stoic ontology
3.3.1. What is taught: something
3.3.2. What is taught: an incorporeal
3.3.3. Incorporeality: from Plato's Ideas to the Stoic four incorporeals
4. Rationality in Stoic Thought: Grasping Lekta
4.1. Ordinary teaching: an additional note
4.2. What is taught: lekta
4.3. Lekta and the mind
4.4 Where do impressions come from?
4.4.1. The gymnastics' teacher
4.4.2. Epi and Hypo impressions: a difference in kind?
4.4.3. The epi impressions as 'contact from a distance': Schubert's unfinished melody
4.4.4. The epi impression: paying attention to lekta
5. Lekta: All there is to Say
5.1. Lekta and language: distinctions
5.1.1. Saying: lessons from Plato
5.1.2. The modal nuance of the verbal adjective lekton
5.1.3. Saying and uttering
5.1.3.1. Speakers and parrots
5.1.3.2. What is uttered
5.1.3.3. Peri phn=es, on voice: a question of dialectic, not rhetoric
5.1.3.4. Can we always say what we think?
5.2. A lekton is one, and the words are many
6. On the Reality of Lekta
6.1. Lekta as additional items in ontology
6.1.1. Additional is not the same as separated
6.1.2. The kinds of lekta: a question of language or ontology?
6.2. Lekta and speech acts
6.2.1. Lekta and us
6.2.2. Ordinary language: have the Stoics always been misunderstood?
6.2.3. Context and content: the Stoics and the moderns
6.2.4. Actors and fake-talk
6.2.5. Lekta, can't live with them, can't live without them
6.3. Peripatetic perplexities
6.3.1. Ammonius: traditional Peripatetic semantics
6.3.2. Simplicius, On the Categories: the Stoic influence
6.3.3. A certain esprit d ouverture, within bounds
6.4. The Epicureans on what is wrong with lekta
6.4.1. Between words and things, no place for lekta
6.4.2. Ontological status
6.4.3. The intangible or, incorporeal, nature of Epicurean void
6.4.3.1. Lucretius 1.433-440: the distinction between extension and resistance
6.4.3.2. Incorporeality as an Epicurean property: Epicurus vs.Lucretius
6.4.4. Epicureans and Stoics: fundamental incompatibilities
6.4.4.1. Properties and bodies
6.4.4.2. 'Incorporeal' is said in many ways: a question of time
6.5. Conclusion: incorporeality as an ontological status
6.5.1. Stoics vs. Epicureans on the marker of ontological status
6.5.2. The canonical four: on surface and limits
6.5.3. No later additions
7. Causation
7.1. The validation of the ontological distinction between a body and kat=egor=emata
7.1.1. Doctrinal consistency about the foundational reality of kat=egor=emata
7.1.2. What comes first: the kat=egor=ema or the cause? Answer: wrong question
7.1.3. From kat=egor=emata to lekta: a developmental story?
7.2. A cause causes a kat=egor=ema to obtain
7.2.1 The fuzzy consensus on causes being that because of which
7.2.2. Beyond consensus: the only active cause is a specific body
7.2.3. The one cause, and the others
7.3. What a cause is of: Stoics vs. Peripatetics
7.3.1. The kat=egor=ema is un-categorizable for the Peripatetics
7.3.2. The distinction between wisdom and being wise
7.3.3. A category distinction
7.4. Complexities and relations: the kat=egor=ema and the conjoined pair
7.5. The causal schema
7.5.1. A structural principal of ontology
7.5.2. Action and causation
7.6. To be real
7.6.1. The causal relation as revelatory, but not generative of ontological distinction
7.6.2. The dependence theory
7.6.3. To obtain and to subsist
7.6.4. Conclusions
8. Lekta and the Foundations of a Theory of Language
8.1. From kat=egor=ema to axima
8.1.1. Being said of something: an ontological structure
8.1.2. The axima
8.1.3. In language, 'three things are yoked together', S.E. M. 8.11-12
8.1.3.1. A tunchanon: a peculiar term
8.1.3.2. The tunchanon and the external object
8.1.3.3. The tunchanon is dependent on the lekton
8.1.3.4. S.E. M. 8.12: a grey area
8.1.3.5. Language, states-of-affairs, and the place of man
8.1.3.5.1. Is translation possible?
8.1.3.5.2. Is a language limited?
8.2. The unity of the lekton
8.2.1. Incomplete and self-complete
8.2.2. How to express a kat=egor=ema
8.2.2.1. The infinitive form and the conjugated form
8.2.2.2. Clement's testimony: a misleading account of ptsis
8.2.2.3. Conclusion: the pivotal role of the kat=egor=ema for the unity of the lekton
9. The Syntax of Lekta
9.1. The sentence: the Platonic tradition vs. the Stoics
9.1.1. On the notion of 'the finished sentence'
9.1.2. The Platonic-Peripatetic tradition vs. the Stoics on the parts of speech
9.1.3. The parts of speech and lekta
9.1.4. The syntax of the lekton: the Stoic notion of completion
9.1.5. The aximatic structure as ontologically constitutional
9.1.6. The incomplete lekton: trivial or special?
9.1.7. Minimal parts and the invention of syntax: the Stoic incomplete lekton vs. Frege's unsaturated concept
9.2. Grammar on the Stoics' terms
9.2.1. The kinds of aximata and the right combination
9.2.2. The external object
9.2.3. The case-ptsis and its counter-part, the tunchanon
9.2.4. Bearing the case-ptsis, and constructing the concept
9.2.5. The tunchanon's double requirement
9.2.6. RIP Dion
9.2.7. The case-ptsis: the particular case of a generic concept
9.2.8 The case-ptsis: neither body nor lekton
9.2.9. Oblique cases: surface grammar after all?
9.2.10. The verb and the (un)combined kat=egor=ema
Endmatter
Appendix: Dance and Lekta
Bibliography
Index