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. and became the topic of a book published in 1973 and reprinted later. 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. His work on
Why Existence does not Emerge as a Distinct Concept in Greek Philosophy 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". 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. On the other hand, he cited
medieval philosophy for its introduction of interrelated 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. Kahn's work on
Plato and the Socratic Dialogue presents the Platonic dialogues as collectively constituting a meaningful philosophical program. He argued for
psychagogia (leading of the soul) to conduct the reader from one dialogue to another. ==Awards==