Plato on the Grammar of Perceiving

Abstract

The question contrasts two ways of expressing the role of the sense organ in perception. In one the expression referring to the sense organ is put into the dative case (let us call this the ‘with’ idiom); the other is a construction with the preposition δiá (‘through’) governing the genitive case of the word for the sense organ (let us call this the ‘through’ idiom).