False
means: (i) false as a thing ; (a) because it is not or cannot be substantiated; such are the statements that the diagonal of a square is commensurable, or that you are sitting. Of these one is false always, and the other sometimes; it is in these senses that these things are not facts.
(b) Such things as really exist, but whose nature it is to seem either such as they are not, or like things which are unreal; e.g. chiaroscuro and dreams. For these are really something, but not that of which they create the impression. Things, then, are called false in these senses: either because they themselves are unreal, or because the impression derived from them is that of something unreal.
(2.) A false statement is the statement of what is not, in so far as the statement is false. Hence every definition is untrue of anything other than that of which it is true; e.g., the definition of a circle is untrue of a triangle. Now in one sense there is only one definition of each thing, namely that of its essence; but in another sense there are many definitions, Footnote 1Here Aristotle is using the word λόγος not in the strict sense of definition
but in the looser sense of a statement about something.
since the thing itself, and the thing itself qualified (e.g. Socrates
and cultured Socrates
) are in a sense the same.
But the false definition is not strictly a definition of anything. Hence it was foolish of Antisthenes Footnote 2The Cynic; contemporary and renegade disciple
of Socrates. He taught that definition, and even predication, are strictly speaking impossible. A simple entity can only be named; a complex entity can only be defined
by naming its simple constituents. Cf. Aristot. Met. 8.3.7, 8; Plat. Theaet. 201d-202c, Plat. Soph. 251b, c. to insist that nothing can be described except by its proper definition: one predicate for one subject; from which it followed that contradiction is impossible, and falsehood Footnote 3Cf. Plat. Euthyd. 283e-284c, 286c, d. nearly so. But it is possible to describe everything not only by its own definition but by that of something else; quite falsely, and yet also in a sense truly—e.g., 8 may be described as double
by the definition of 2.
Such are the meanings of false
in these cases. (3.) A false man is one who readily and deliberately makes such statements, for the sake of doing so and for no other reason; and one who induces such statements in others—just as we call things false which induce a false impression. Hence the proof in the Hippias Footnote 4Plat. Hipp. Min 365-375. that the same man is false and true is misleading;
for it assumes (a) that the false man is he who is able to deceive, i.e. the man who knows and is intelligent; (b) that the man who is willingly bad is better. This false assumption is due to the induction; for when he says that the man who limps willingly is better than he who does so unwillingly, he means by limping pretending to limp. For if he is willingly lame, he is presumably worse in this case just as he is in the case of moral character.