REsetting our Understanding of BEing and Language. Dialectical Games and the Meanings of Being in Antiquity
Progetto This project aims at reconstructing the history of the distinction of the many meanings of “being” in Antiquity. Sometimes what is in plain sight remains hidden to the observer, and it is no surprise that there is no book that has systematically linked the introduction of the Aristotelian categories to dialectical discussions aimed at eliminating argumentative fallacies. This project is designed to fill this gap, thereby showing the connection between dialectical practices and ontology in the development of philosophy from Parmenides to Aristotle. In recent years, scholars have paid an increasing attention to the dialectical types of arguments in antiquity (Castagnoli 2015; Dutilh Novaes 2020) against a more traditional narrative that was interpreting syllogisms and other regimented deductions as monological arguments that were conceived of outside of dialectical games (Barnes 2003). Drawing on this increasing consensus about the role of dialectic in the development of ancient thought, I intend to explore the semantic reflections on “being” – from Parmenides up to Aristotle – against the backdrop of ancient
dialectical debates. The working hypothesis of this project is that the idea that “being is said in many ways”, as Aristotle would put it, is a device to avoid dialectical arguments that would rest on the assumption that there is but one meaning of “being”. If this
hypothesis were to be proven true, we could frame again the history of ancient metaphysical debate as a series of dialectical games whereby the notion of “being” and “is” became thicker in order to respond to the possible objections of opponents in the context of dialectical games.