Scholars debate whether ‘apeiron’ (unlimited) is univocal or multivocal in Plato’s 'Philebus.' Offering a ‘middle path,’ I argue that the term is univocal, but used with respect to two senses of unlimited continua. The term appears early in two dense passages on ontological structure: the descriptions of the ‘god-given method’ (16b-18d) and ‘the fourfold division of beings’ (23c-27c). I consider each passage and argue that they respectively concern the eidetic continua of being that the knower comes to understand and the (...) fluxing continua of opposed and co-constitutive bodily elements from which spatiotemporal objects derive their natures. They also indicate two major influences on Plato, respectively the Pythagorean and Heraclitean as recorded in Aristotle’s 'Metaphysics,' and I draw on these resources to develop my account. I conclude by considering some important Platonic lessons that we learn from thinking through this distinction between the related senses of the unlimited. (shrink)

En este artículo trato de mostrar la diferencia entre el concepto de tò posón, la cantidad determinada o proporción matemática, válida en el terreno de las realidades cuantificables, y el concepto de tò métrion, la justa medida, válida en el terreno de las acciones humanas, no cuantificables. Argume..

This paper explores the place of evil in Plato’s thought through the lens of the Philebus. I show that the concept of evil in this dialogue is in broad agreement with the classic Christian position which accents metaphysically its privative and derivative character and morally its rebellious and self-oriented character. The entryway into the issue is 29d9–e1, where a “power of dissolution” is proposed in addition and opposition to the power of generation and mixture, and then quickly rejected. Such a (...) power would be both metaphysically and ethically subversive, or in short, evil. Plato appears to suppress the possibility of evil, but in fact, he relocates the power of dissolution within the unlimited genos in order to show its necessary subordination to and dependence on the limiting and causal principles within generated beings. Evil, on a metaphysical level, is subject to good. On an ethical level, however, the possibility of subversion remains and is exemplified in the dialogue in the radical hedonism of Philebus. After showing how hedonism manifests the power of dissolution in human life, I conclude by remarking the ultimate practical proof towards which this dialogue, and others, points in defense of its claims. (shrink)

At the very end of Plato's Philebus Socrates and Protarchus place the goods of a human life in a hierarchy (66a-67b). Previous interpretations of this passage have concentrated upon its relevance to the good human life, including the allowance of (true and pure) pleasures. This view picks up Plato's metaphor of a mixture of reason and pleasure, but the ranking of the goods is emphatically a vertical stratification and not a mixture in which all elements are equally fundamental. In this (...) article I argue that each and all of the higher ranked goods are necessary conditions for the goods of the level immediately below. The ranking represents an attempt to identify as far as possible what is responsible for the characteristics of the good in human life, and therefore to narrow down the definition of the good itself. (shrink)