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Kahn - Wikipedia

Charles H. Kahn
Charles H. Kahn (born May 29, 1928) is a classicist and professor emeritus of philosophy at the
University of Pennsylvania. His work is focused on early Greek philosophy, up to the times of Plato.
His 1960 monograph on Anaximander was still as of 2020 the most important reference work on the
subject, and his 1979 edition of the Heraclitus fragments likewise remained the most widely cited
English translation of Heraclitus, more or less representing the 'standard interpretation' for non-
expert scholars.

Contents
Work
Reflections
Awards
See also
Bibliography
References

Work
Charles H. Kahn presented in 1965 to the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy at its meeting with the
Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association a notable work under the title “The Greek
Verb ‘To Be’ and the Problem of Being”. It was printed the following year in Foundations of
Language.[1] and became the topic of a book published in 1973 and reprinted later.[2]
He also wrote
historical studies on Anaximander and the Pythagoreans. A collection of his various essays has been
published by the Oxford University Press in 2009.

Reflections

In Greek philosophy, Kahn identified predication as one of the three concepts - along with truth and
reality - that ontology connected.[3] His work on Why Existence does not Emerge as a Distinct
Concept in Greek Philosophy[4] is remarked 24 years after its appearance by Allan Back in his book on
Aristotle's Theory of Predication. Kahn sees that Aristotle does not isolate existence as a separate
topic or as a "central and implicit theme" of his philosophy. Aristotle, says Kahn, starts "from the
reality of the world." For Back, Kahn treats as anachronism any distinction of "the 'is' of predication"
from "the 'is' of existence".[5]

In terms of the nature of Being, Kahn maintains that notions in the contemporary analytical
philosophy appear to form a heterogeneous bundle with no focal concept of "be" to hold them
together.[6] On the other hand, he cited medieval philosophy for its introduction of interrelated

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conceptions of existence and creation, which established a particular view, which involved a
superadding of a matter to a form instead of further forming or reforming a matter that already
stands in relation to a form.[7]

Kahn's work on Plato and the Socratic Dialogue presents the Platonic dialogues as collectively
constituting a meaningful philosophical program.[8] He argued for psychagogia (leading of the soul)
to conduct the reader from one dialogue to another.[8]

Awards
Kahn has twice been the recipient of an award by the American Council of Learned Societies and twice
been the recipient of an award by the National Endowment for the Humanities.[9]

Kahn won a Guggenheim Foundation award in 1979/80 and in 2000 he was elected Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[9]

In 2009, Kahn was feted with a festschrift, the collected papers of which were gathered into a
celebratory volume of this author of whom it is said that "in these subject areas (Presocratics and
Plato) that the distinction of his scholarship has come to be regarded as virtually unrivaled".[9]

In 2014, Kahn was the inaugural winner of the Werner Jaeger Award, given by the German
Gesellschaft für antike Philosophie.[10]

See also
Sisyphus fragment

Bibliography
Kahn, Charles H. (1960). Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology. Hackett.
(1973) The verb "be" in ancient Greek, Dodrecht: Reidel; (2003) Rev. 2nd ed., Indianapolis, IN :
Hackett Pub. Co.
Kahn, Charles H. (1979). The Art and Thought of Heraclitus: An Edition of the Fragments with
Translation and Commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kahn, Charles H. (1996). Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: The Philosophical Use of a Literary
Form. Cambridge University Press.
Kahn, Charles H. (2009). Essays on Being. Oxford University Press.
2001 Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans: a brief history, Indianapolis, IN : Hackett Pub.,

References
1. Kahn C., “The Greek Verb ‘To Be’ and the Concept of Being”, Foundations of Language 2.3
(1966) 245-265.
2. Kahn C.,The verb "be" in ancient Greek, Dodrecht: Reidel; (2003) Rev. 2nd ed., Indianapolis, IN :
Hackett Pub. Co.
3. Reding, Jean-Paul (2017-03-02). Comparative Essays in Early Greek and Chinese Rational
Thinking. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-351-95005-3.

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4. Kahn, Charles H. (1976). "Why Existence does not Emerge as a Distinct Concept in Greek
Philosophy". Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie. 58 (4): 323.
5. Bäck, Allan (2000). Aristotle's Theory of Predication (https://books.google.com/books?id=LbG1v0
RAtRwC&pg=PA29). BRILL. p. 29. ISBN 9004117199.
6. Rijk, L. M. de (2002). Aristotle: Semantics and Ontology: Volume I: General Introduction. The
Works on Logic. Leiden: BRILL. p. 24. ISBN 90-04-12324-5.
7. Miguens, Sofia (2020). The Logical Alien. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. p. 385.
ISBN 978-0-674-33590-5.
8. Clay, Diskin (2010). Platonic Questions: Dialogues with the Silent Philosopher. University Park,
PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press. p. 285. ISBN 978-0-271-02043-3.
9. Patterson, Richard; Karasmanēs, Vasilēs; Hermann, Arnold, eds. (2012). Presocratics and Plato:
Festschrift at Delphi in Honor of Charles Kahn : Papers Presented at the Festschrift Symposium
in Honor of Charles Kahn Organized by the Hyele Institute for Comparative Studies European
Cultural Center of Delphi, June 3rd-7th, 2009, Delphi, Greece. Parmenides Publishing.
10. "Penn's Charles Kahn receives the inaugural Werner Jaeger Award in ancient philosophy" (https://
leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2014/08/penns-charles-kahn-receives-the-inaugural-werner-jaeger
-award-in-ancient-philosophy.html). Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog. Retrieved 29 June 2020.

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