Plato, Euthydemus, section 284c

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[284c] they also make?

Yes.

Now, is speaking doing and making?

He agreed that it is.

No one, I suppose, speaks what is not—for thereby he would be making something; and you have agreed that one cannot so much as make what is not—so that, by your account, no one speaks what is false, while if Dionysodorus speaks, he speaks what is true and is.

Yes, in faith, Euthydemus, said Ctesippus; but somehow or other he speaks what is, only not as it is.¹

How do you mean, Ctesippus? said Dionysodorus.

1 The quibbling throughout this passage is a willful confusion of the two very different uses of the verb “to be” (εἶναι), (a) in predication, where it has nothing to do with existence, and (b) by itself, as stating existence.

Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 3 translated by W.R.M. Lamb. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1967.

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