Saturday, December 08, 2007

Aristotle's definition of truth

In Advanced Christian Worldview yesterday, Dr. Boling brought up Aristotle's definition of truth: "To say that what is, is not, or that what is not, is, is false; but to say that what is, is, and that what is not, is not, is true." That prompted me to check Ross's text of the Metaphysics for the original Greek: το μεν γαρ λεγειν το ὀν μη εἰναι ἠ το μη ὀν εἰναι ψευδος, το δε το ὀν εἰναι και το μη ὀν μη εἰναι ἀληθες (Met. 1011b 26ff). It's a difficult sentence for a beginning Greek student like me, but once understood, its elegance reminds me why I wanted to learn Greek in the first place: to read thoughts like these in their original language. After less than a semester of Attic Greek, we can already understand the structure of a basic sentence from Aristotle (not just stuff from Chase and Phillips, the Greek textbook we use, like "Therefore the Greeks stood here," or "When they saw each other, the Greeks were throwing stones"). That's encouraging.

1 comment:

Tori said...

:) you and your greek.