Letters and Syllables in Plato

Abstract

IN HIS later dialogues Plato makes a lot of use of the notions of letters of the alphabet and the spelling of syllables out of these letters. He frequently uses these notions for the sake of analogies which help him to expound some more abstract matters. There is one of his uses of the letter-syllable model which is not of special interest to me, namely, for the exposition of some merely chemical theories about the combinations of a few material elements into multifarious compounds. Plato employs this model in this way in the Timaeus (48 B-C), though he says that the analogy is not a good one. Here he is stating what is essentially an Empedoclean theory. Sextus Empiricus says that stoicheion, used thus to denote an ultimate material element, was a Pythagorean term. My interest is in Plato's use of the alphabet model in expounding his logical or semantic views, namely his views about the composition of the thoughts, that is, the truths and falsehoods that we express or can express in sentences (logoi).