Book Review Beginning

This book Language, Thought and Falsehood is about how it is possible to think or speak about things that are not so or falsehood, basically making false statements or judgements. It stands as a great introductory tool to these ideas of language in ancient philosopher, and presents a great historic background of philosophers leading up to Plato. During this time period, language was viewed as a tool for naming, and so sentences and words (all these aspects of language) name objects in the world. From the viewpoint of language as ‘naming’ we find it very difficult to accept falsehood as existing. For falsehood can’t be failing to name things correctly, meaning the failure to designate what one was attempting to designate.

We find this is what Euthydemus was getting at with his argument against false speech in Plato’s Euthydemus. False speech does require one to be able to identify the object that the false claims are about. So this is what Plato’s Sophist is getting at with the realization that there is more to language than just naming. With this Denyer is arguing that Plato is able to once and for all solve the question of how falsehood is possible. In this book review I will give a general summary of Denyer’s chapters leading up to his section “The Being of What is Not” and “Names, Verbs and Sentences”. I will analyze Denyer’s interpretations and arguments in detail accompanied by the primary text, Plato’s Sophist, to come to a conclusion about the viability of his thesis.

The book begins with Plato’s Euthydemus presenting how someone might argue against falsehood and illustrates how in the end this argument falls apart. Denyer admits that Euthydemus is right to suppose that speech needs some sort of causal connection with existing things. It is the fact that even when the two possible subject matters( for example: Socrates or Socrates’ wisdom) are considered neither of them fully accept all of Euthydemus’ steps of his argument. So rejecting falsehood can’t work because it is still a huge part of language. The basis for this lies in the fact that Euthydemus’ argument relies on many assumptions such as falsehood is impossible and statements name facts to push the discussion. So from this exploration of Euthydemus we see that by taking away these assumptions he has an argument with no foundation. This is precisely why in the next chapter he presents Plato’s contemporaries and their varied attempts of an explanation of why falsehood doesn’t work. This chapter really provides us with great, illuminating accounts, outside of Plato, against falsehood’s existence leading into the discussion of Plato and Sophist.