Philosophy and Linguistic Authority

Abstract

This chapter focuses on two particular aspects of the back history of Liddell and Scott (LSJ). First, Plato is, for LSJ, still one of the most important writers of ‘the best’ Attic prose, as he was, for its predecessors, of ‘correct’ Attic; he tends to be one of the benchmarks for Attic usage. But secondly, at the same time LSJ typically treats Plato as belonging to a breed apart: that of the Philosopher, with his own technical or semi-technical vocabulary, his own special ‘philosophical’ ways of thinking, as if these were quite separate from those of non-’philosophical’ authors. The chief purpose of the chapter is to illustrate some of the difficulties attaching to these two approaches, both of which are rooted firmly in earlier editions, stretching back even to the first in 1843.