Chair: Kassandra Dugi
Reconstructing the Stoic account of case (ptōsis) is a notoriously difficult problem in the study of Stoic philosophy of language. Situated in the subject position of complete lekta, it is well-attested that cases are arranged or combined with predicates as components of assertibles (axiōmata), so that in the assertible expressed by the sentence “Socrates is walking,” the case corresponds to ‘Socrates’. Unfortunately, not much else can be said about cases that is uncontroversial. The basic features of these peculiar entities are shrouded in mystery owing to conflicting reports in our small pool of surviving evidence. For instance, it is implied at SE M 8.12 that names correspond to a type of lekton, and it is stated by Clement at Misc 8.9.26.5 that cases are incorporeals. At the same time, a handful of reports from Plutarch, Stobaeus, and Galen all suggest that cases are inflected word forms, which are bodies on the Stoic analysis, and hence not lekta or incorporeals at all. That cases are word forms is denied in a Stoic-influenced report at ΣDT 231, 24-8, while at DL 7.57-58, names and appellatives correspond to qualities. Commentators have thus interpreted the evidence on cases in a variety of ways. Some, for example, have argued that cases are indeed incorporeals. Others propose that they are quality instances. Still others maintain that they are, after all, word forms. I reject these interpretations and argue that the Stoics endorse two accounts of cases, and that this helps explain the inconsistencies in our extant source texts without requiring us to discard any precious evidence. One account of cases, I argue, finds its home in Stoic grammatical theory, as an account of declined word forms. In addition to this, I rehabilitate a new account of ‘metaphysical’ cases, on which cases are part of an explanatory framework that helps the Stoics taxonomize the world at varying levels of particularity in relation to concepts without resorting to the hypostatization of generic items.
Workshop in Ancient Philosophy Convenors: Ursula Coope, Simon Shogry and Alexander Bown
