Workshop: "What difference does 'being' make? The role of the verb εἰμί in the clause and its
manifestation in philosophical discourse"
Historians of ancient Greek philosophy often lack the
necessary knowledge to understand the strange expressions of the
philosophers they study. Moreover, ancient Greek philosophers
sometimes use such expressions as technical terms, as is the case
with those that contain the verb εἰμί 'am' (≈ to be).
Following philosophers like Frege and Russell, historians
of ancient philosophy usually approach the semantics of "being"
from a logical point of view, showing more interest in the logical
operations behind εἰμί-sentences than in the function of the verb
εἰμί within the clause. If one surveys the philosophical
literature, one will find countless mentions of the 'is' of
"existence", the 'is' of "predication", or the 'is' of "identity",
but hardly any mention of the difference between lexical verbs and
auxiliary verbs―and copulas are auxiliaries for predication.
To compensate for these deficiencies, we have set out to
bring together nine distinguished experts in Ancient Greek to hear
what they have to say about the verb εἰμί and its role in the
clause. The idea is to learn from them so that we do not overlook
important linguistic matters when we approach ancient Greek
philosophy. For we must not forget that Greek philosophers coined
both logical and ontological terms in natural language, that is,
in Ancient Greek.