Abstract

In this paper, I examine Antisthenes’s conception of truth in order to better understand the relation between ontology and language in his thought. I intend to show that it presents a sharp contrast to Plato’s account of the problem of truth, which relies on an affirmative conception of ontology that involves both the concepts of correspondence and of predicative attribution. While for both philosophers the problem of truth is central, Antisthenes develops a peculiar perspective that subverts Plato’s attempt to sort, through dialectics, the interferences that permeate language, in order to gain access to an essential instance that warrants a truthful discourse. For Antisthenes, truth cannot be understood in terms of correspondence, since, properly speaking, there are only true propositions.