In Print:

LESSON 2 - First Part / Second Part
ACHILLES' GRIEF - From Homer's Iliad 

by George Valsamis

The Greek sentence

 

BACK to our text, let's concentrate on a sentence first. Here is a complete and foundational sentence, just a verb and its subject-noun:

 

Kεῖται  Πάτροκλος

 

Κεῖται means the condition of lying, it is the verb (ῥῆμα) of the sentence. Πάτροκλος is the name of a person, it is a noun (noun comes from the Latin nomen, akin to the Greek ὄνομα).

A noun in Greek, as part of a sentence, is called by the epithet οὐσιαστικόν (substantive, or, better, essential). Nouns are the essential parts of speech.

Plato noted that we can not have complete speech without both a noun and a verb (cf. Plato, Sophist 262c) because a name becomes essential only if a verb describes it. Ἄνθρωπος (man, human being) is just a noun, that becomes essential in a sentence - e.g. in the sentence ἄνθρωπος μανθάνει (a man learns [=all men learn=man is a learning being]), where the verb "I learn" (μανθάνω) regards the οὐσίαν ὄντος (the essence of a being), in this case the essence of man).

Therefore, we can't know what a being is, before we have a verb, before we have a being's proper act. This way language itself indicates that an act (πρᾶξις or ἐνέργεια) is the foundation of the essence of a being.

[To work like this, is an ambition of language, an ambition, however, that can not be fulfilled - as Plato himself demonstrated in Cratylus, where he criticised knowledge attained through etymology and in any way based exclusively on language.]

 

[ Note in this context God's reply to Moses: " Ἐγὼ εἰμὶ ὁ ὤν " (I am the one who is). Εἰμί (I am), the verb upon which the fundamental terms of metaphysics are based (to be=εἶναι, being=ὄν, essence=οὐσία) normally is followed by an identifier: what are you? I am a man, etc. By repeating the verb to be, saying that "He is He who is", God reveals himself as transcendental, pure and genuine being - reveals that His essence is inaccesible to our knowledge and that, properly speaking, only His existence is indeed real, and not that of the creatures. If only God is the one who is, then all creatures are not  ].

Reference address : https://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/lessons/lesson2.asp?pg=8