Note 146 — Chapter XXIX · SOPHISTES — POLITIKUS. (continued 2)

Plato, Sophist. p. 262 E. Λόγον ἀναγκαῖον, ὅταν περ ᾖ, τινὸς εἶναι λόγον, μὴ δέ τινος, ἀδύνατον … Οὐκοῦν καὶ ποιόν τινα αὐτὸν εἶναι δεῖ; Compare p. 237 E.

In the words here cited Plato unconsciously slides back into the ordinary acceptation of μή τι: that is, to μὴ in the sense of negation. If we adopt that peculiar sense of μή, which the Eleate has taken so much pains to prove just before in the case of τὸ μὴ ὂν (that is, if we take μὴ as signifying not negation but simply difference), the above argument will not hold. If τίς signifies one subject (A), and μή τις signifies simply another subject (B) different from A (ἕτερον), the predicate ἀδύνατον cannot be affirmed. But if we take μή τις in its proper sense of negation, the ἀδύνατον will be so far true that οὐκ ἄνθρωπος, οὐ Θεαίτητος, cannot be the subject of a proposition. Aristotle says the same in the beginning of the Treatise De Interpretatione (p. 16, a. 30).