Different reasons give rise to the question, what philosophy really is, and by tradition we know many answers. Plato’s answer can be found by examining his explicit statements about philosophy in his dialogues, or by analyzing his representation of Socrates – philosophy become fl esh. But an other way to fi nd an answer to the question lies in examining the things which – according to Plato – we cannot do without. There are three of them, namely the idea, logos (...) and aporia. These three taken together – the insight that we orient ourselves according to some unity in our different fi elds of life; that we cannot dismiss dialogue and debate; and questions outlive answers – paint a picture of philosophy as «unbehauptendes Denken»1 [undogmatic thought]. Such «unbehauptendes Denken» does not aim to insist on new claims against old ones, but instead seeks to analyze and to refl ect upon old views. (shrink)

Note: "Next to Godliness" (Apeiron) is an expanded version of this paper. -/- According to Plato's successors, assimilation to god (homoiosis theoi) was the end (telos) of the Platonic system. There is ample evidence to support this claim in dialogues ranging from the Symposium through the Timaeus. However, the Philebus poses a puzzle for this conception of the Platonic telos. On the one hand, Plato states that the gods are beings beyond pleasure while, on the other hand, he argues (...) that the best human life necessarily involves pleasure. In this paper, I argue that the solution to this puzzle lies in the fact that the processes by which we assimilate to god, learning and becoming virtuous, are restitutive and hence pleasant. Thus, the reason why the best human life necessarily involves pleasure is that we can never become fully divine and perfect, but must constantly strive to become like the divine, through pleasureful restitutive processes. In this paper, I also provide a close examination and taxonomy of the different models that Plato presents throughout his corpus of assimilation to god. (shrink)

In his rich and suggestive paper, Alvaro Vallejo argues for the novel thesis that Plato posits a form of pleasure in the Republic and the Philebus. Vallejo argues that the notion of a Platonic form of pleasure best explains other things that Plato says about pleasure. First, Plato draws a distinction between true pleasure and the appearance of pleasure. Second, Plato uses the same language to describe the relationship between forms and their inferior instantiations as he uses to describe (...) the relationship between true and false pleasures. In these comments, I argue that we do not need to posit a form of pleasure to explain these features of the text. Moreover, I argue that on Vallejo’s account of the form of pleasure, the form could not do the job required of it, namely, it could not explain the problem with false pleasures. (shrink)

According to Plato's successors, assimilation to god (homoiosis theoi) was the end (telos) of the Platonic system. There is ample evidence to support this claim in dialogues ranging from the Symposium through the Timaeus. However, the Philebus poses a puzzle for this conception of the Platonic telos. On the one hand, Plato states that the gods are beings beyond pleasure while, on the other hand, he argues that the best human life necessarily involves pleasure. In this paper, I argue (...) that the solution to this puzzle lies in the fact that the processes by which we assimilate to god, learning and becoming virtuous, are restitutive and hence pleasant. Thus, the reason why the best human life necessarily involves pleasure is that we can never become fully divine and perfect, but must constantly strive to become like the divine, through pleasureful restitutive processes. In this paper, I also provide a close examination and taxonomy of the different models that Plato presents throughout his corpus of assimilation to god. -/- Note: "Fleeing the Divine" (Philebus: Selected Papers from the VIII Symposium Platonicum) is an earlier, shorter version of this paper. (shrink)

Under semantic monism I understand the thesis “The Good is said in one way” and under semantic pluralism the antithesis “The Good is said in many ways”. Plato’s Socrates seems to defend a “semantic monism”. As only one sun exists, so the “Good” has for Socrates and Plato only one reference. Nevertheless, Socrates defends in the Philebus a semantic pluralism, more exactly trialism, of “beauty, symmetry and truth” . Therefore, metaphorically speaking, there seem to exist not only one sun, (...) but three suns. If the platonic Socrates defends a semantic monism on the one hand and pluralism on the other, how can we unite his pluralism with his monism? My thesis is that the three references are “qualities” of the one single reference, or again, speaking metaphorically, “side suns” of the single sun. In the following, I propose first an exegesis of Plato’s last written word on the Good in Phil. 65 A 1-5 by dividing it into five sentences. Second, I ask a philosophical question on this monism and the corresponding hierarchy of values. (shrink)

What is the origin and goal of man? In this lecture to a small audience I will pursue this question by comparing passages from Platonic Philebus with those from Aristotle's Nicomachian Ethics and comparing both together with a passage from the Letter to Menoikeus. It turns out that the Aristotelian idea of eudaimonia (happiness) is not so far removed from Epicurus, since eudaimonia also includes hedone, lust.

Plato is known to have given only one public lecture, called "On the Good." We have one highly reliable quotation from Plato himself, stating his doctrine that "the Good is one." The lecture was a set of ideas that existed as an historical event but is now lost--and it dealt with ideas of supreme importance, in brief form, by the greatest of philosophers. Any reading of the lecture is speculative. My approach is philosophical rather than historiographic. The liminal existence of (...) the lecture is taken as an exemplar of the retrieval of what is lost in historical time. Through the lecture-event I examine several major schools of Platonic interpretation--the esotercists of the 1950's, and after, and Hans-Georg Gadamer and the "aporetic" reading--and reject most of it. My method is to establish in tandem an explanation of the lecture doctrine, especially by a reading of issue of normative ethics in the Philebus, and an account of how we are to understand Plato's way of teaching. Plato affirms the existence of the Good itself and was concerned with explaining its relation to persons as moral agents, which includes teaching, amidst the determinants of moral life and in transmission across time. The tension between universal good and plural goods suggests a fruitful relationship between normative ethics and historical theory. I apply this especially to the viability of intellectual history, to material culture studies, and to our understanding of the way in which history "lives." For this I suggest "a moral turn" in historiography in support of cultural theory. (shrink)

From Gadamer's Habilitation thesis, “Plato’s dialectical ethics. Phenomenological Interpretations Relating to the Philebus” (1928), this article seeks to highlight the fundamental lines of Plato’s image, outlined in that author’s first philosophical publication (1931). The confrontation with the themes of ethics and dialectic, in the current state of Platonic studies, indicates that in Plato’s image drawn in the early confrontation with the Philebus, clearly influenced by the phenomenological notion of Dasein, one already finds the fundamental features of what will (...) become Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, fully emancipated from Heideggerian tutelage. (shrink)

Must the interpreter of the Platonic dialogues choose between the so-called "unwritten teachings" reported by Aristotle in Metaphysics A6 and the dialogues? I argue, on the contrary, that a reading of the dialogues that is sensitive to their pedagogical irony will find the "unwritten teachings" exhibited in them. I identify the key teachings in Metaphysics A6, show how the Parmenides and the Philebus point to them, and explicate a full exhibition of them in the Statesman.

This book offers inter alia a systematic investigation of the actual argumentative strategy of Socratic conversation and explorations of Socratic and Platonic morality including an examination ofeudaimonia and the mental conception of health in the Republic as self-control, with a view to the relation of individual health/happiness to social order. The essays cover a period from 1968 to 2012. Some of them are now published for the first time. Self-motion in the later dialogues involves tripartition and tripartition in turn involves (...) embodiment. The Philebus psychology too anticipates Aristotle. The Forms of the Timaeus are patterns, but the two-world picture is abandoned: there is one world constituted by Forms and Place. The Epinomis is arguably genuine. More generally, denying that Plato develops, e.g. exegetically and psychologically, is absurd. There are too many contradictions in the Corpus. The dialogues are artistic wholes and the author's message must be interpreted accordingly: hence in a sense every character is Plato's mouthpiece. Aristotle's idea of the human good or quality of life as optimal mental activity according to the special human capabilities is the root of the modern selfactualization projects. Panaetius (free reason) and Posidonius (science) mark the end of the older Stoa's hard-core materialism and the beginning of a new more 'modern' era. -/- . (shrink)

By the absolute Good, I understand the Idea of the Good; by the human goods, I understand pleasure and reason, which have been disqualified in Plato's "Republic" as candidates for the absolute Good (cf.R.505b-d). Concerning the Idea of the Good, we can distinguish a maximal and a minimal interpretation. After the minimal interpretation, the Idea of the Good is the absolute Good because there is no final cause beyond the Idea of the Good. After the maximal interpretation, the Idea of (...) the Good is the One. The maximal and the minimal interpretation go beyond the textual evidence. I will defend two theses: (1) Since the platonic Socrates deliberately gives no more information, it seems wise to stop with Socrates and to give only a formal, not a substantive, interpretation: The absolute good is the third item between and above knowledge and the known. (2) To mediate between the absolute Good and the human goods, Plato’s Eleatic Stranger introduced in the "Politicus" and "Philebus" an intermediate principle: "the appropriate" (to metrion). For more information concerning "the appropriate" cf. Ferber, Rafael (2010). Plato's Side Suns: Beauty, Symmetry and Truth. Comments concerning semantic monism and pluralism of the "Good" in the Philebus (65A 1-5). Elenchos, 31, p. 51-76, esp. 64-67. (shrink)

Federico Pendasio was a highly esteemed professor at the universities of Padua and Bologna. His contemporaries as well as modern scholars have recognized his commitment both to Aristotle and Plato. The aim of this paper is to provide a contribution to the study of the dissemination of Platonism in sixteenth-century university teaching by examining Pendasio’s Platonic sources, in particular Olympiodorus’s and Damascius’s commentaries on Plato’s Phaedo, Damascius’s commentary on the Philebus and Hermias Alexandrinus’s Scholia on the Phaedrus. These works (...) are used in two of Pendasio’s most representative works: his De animae immortalitate and Lectiones dictatae in librum De anima. In order to assess Pendasio’s interests in Platonism, a general survey of most of his university lectures and quaestiones will also be provided. (shrink)

This paper proposes a unified reading of pleasure's nature and value in Plato's _Philebus_. It also explains how the proposed reading illuminates certain claims about pleasure across the corpus that initially seem to be in some tension: (i) that pleasure is not the good; (ii) that pleasure is choiceworthy and an aspect of the best human life; and (iii) that pleasure is dangerous and tends to make us into bad people who live badly.

In the Philebus, Socrates argues that some anticipatory pleasures can be false. The main argument at 38b6-41a4 has perplexed readers, however, and scholars have developed several different ways to understand the falsity of false anticipatory pleasures. I argue that the anticipation argument should be read in conjunction with a later distinction in the Philebus between intense pleasures mixed with pain and pure pleasures free from pain. I suggest that anticipatory pleasures taken in intense pleasures are false because they (...) misidentify an intense pleasure as a genuine pleasure when in fact intense pleasures are inferior and non-genuine due to being mixed with pain. I contend that the example of a false anticipatory pleasure supports recognizing this kind of falsity, and that doing so helps to resolve several challenges that face existing interpretations. (shrink)

I contend there exists a platonistic good that all other good (excellent) things must resemble, supplementing this theory with Aristotelian features. Something’s goodness holds in virtue of the thing’s own properties being such as to satisfy its kind-based standards, and those K-standards resembling the platonic good. As for the latter condition, the K-standards resemble it firstly with respect to requiring activities, and secondly also at the level of what teleology those activities are directed towards.

In Plato’s Philebus, Socrates’ second account of ‘false’ pleasure (41d-42c) outlines a form of illusion: pleasures that appear greater than they are. I argue that these pleasures are perceptual misrepresentations. I then show that they are the grounds for a methodological critique of hedonism. Socrates identifies hedonism as a judgment about the value of pleasure based on a perceptual misrepresentation of size, witnessed paradigmatically in the ‘greatest pleasures’.

Abstract: In the Philebus, Socrates constructs a dialectical argument in which he purports to explain to Protarchus why the pleasure that spectators feel when watching comedy is a mixture of pleasure and pain. To do this he brings in phthonos (malice or envy) as his prime example (47d-50e). I examine the argument and claim that Socrates implicitly challenges Protarchus’ beliefs about himself as moderate and self-knowing. I discuss two reasons to think that more is at stake in the argument (...) than the mixed pleasure and pain of comic malice. (shrink)

Die Beschäftigung mit Platon hat eine lange Geschichte, Rezeptionen seines Denkens sind so prägend für die Philosophiegeschichte geworden, dass diese verständlicherweise zuweilen als eine Sammlung von Fußnoten zu seinem Werk begriffen wurde. Das gilt besonders für einen durchgängigen metaphysischen Zug des abendländischen Denkens, ein grundsätzliches Ordnungsmodell aus der Antike, das, christlich gewendet, die Theoriebildung bis in unsere Tage fundiert. Aber mit einer Reihe anderer Gewissheiten ist auch dieser erfolgreiche Platonismus Gegenstand der Kritik geworden. Kann und soll man den metaphysischen Platon (...) retten oder muss man Platon vielmehr gegen die metaphysische Tradition neu verstehen? Muss man Platon gegen die Platonisten verteidigen, ist er der Anfang einer philosophischen Verirrung? -- Dorothea Frede, Ekkehard Martens, Arbogast Schmitt, Gernot Böhme, Hermann Schmitz, Wolfgang Detel und andere entdecken – auch durch ihre Kritik – Platon als Gesprächspartner der Gegenwart neu. (shrink)

Following the structuring hints given by Plato in his Timaeus you find, that the dialogue – actually Timaeus' lecture – falls in two parts, not in three as Cornford, Brisson and others suggest. The main division follows the two invocations of the gods (27c, 48d). The first part presents the world in its noetic form, poetically described as the work of the demiurg. Timaeus opens this part giving first his premises in the form of an introduction, which lead his presentation. (...) At the end of this part he remarks that the given premises are not enough for his aim, to explain the nature of man. Therefore he adds other guiding principles for the second part in form of a second introduction like in the first part. We need a third principle beside the real beings (the ideas) and the things we perceive. He names it chora and the new form of "`causation"' ananke, necessity. These supplementary principles anable Timaeus to describe the world under our everyday conditions, they mediate the noetic world with the world of our senses. Here is the point we can see a surprising parallel in Kant's work. The Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft correspond to the first part of the Timaeus, because here Kant exposes too the metyphysical foundation of the sciences. Later, in his last years he remarks, that there is a gap between these metaphysical principles and the physics (say of Newton or other). He seeks for a mediating principle and finds it in the "Äther" or "Wärmestoff." Kant was no more able to bring his idea to an end, we only have a lot of variating attempts, named by editors Opus postumum. But the aim of them is clear – and near by the aim that Plato aimed at – to mediate the noetic structure of the world with our everyday world. And this is evidently equivalent with the second introduction in the Timaeus. -/- Here some pages of the book-version: Erwin Sonderegger, Zur Funktion der Chora in Platons Timaios und des Äthers in Kants Übergangsschrift, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2015. ISBN 978-3-8260-5837-0. Für allfällige Zitierungen bitte ich nur die gedruckte Ausgabe zu verwenden. Danke. (shrink)

The scope of Platonism is extended by introducing the concept of a “Platonic computer” which is incorporated in metacomputics. The theoretical framework of metacomputics postulates that a Platonic computer exists in the realm of Forms and is made by, of, with, and from metaconsciousness. Metaconsciousness is defined as the “power to conceive, to perceive, and to be self-aware” and is the formless, con-tentless infinite potentiality. Metacomputics models how metaconsciousness generates the perceived actualities including abstract entities and physical and nonphysical realities. (...) It is postulated that this is achieved via digital computation using the Platonic computer. The introduction of a Platonic computer into the realm of Forms thus bridges the “inverse explanatory gap” and therefore solves the “inverse hard problem of consciousness” in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Since 1976, when Thomas A. Szlezák held his inaugural lecture as a private lecturer at the University of Zurich entitled "The Dialogue Form and Esotericism: On the Interpretation of the Platonic Dialogue the Phaedrus", the now-emeritus professor at Tübingen has advocated a particular interpretation of the Platonic dialogues and especially of the Phaedrus: namely, that what is referred to in the latter dialogue—without further explanation—as "more valuable" than what is set down in writing corresponds to Plato's "so called unwritten doctrines", (...) or for Szlezák, "unwritten... (shrink)

In this chapter, I make the case for platonic realism, the thesis that there are properties that lack spatial locations. After criticizing the one-over-many argument for realism and Lewis's argument for realism, I endorse a modal argument that derives the existence of platonic properties from considerations involving necessary truth. I then defend this argument from various objections. Finally, I argue that epistemic considerations and considerations of parsimony favor a weak form of platonic realism on which there are platonic properties, but (...) each property could have had an instance, and would have been located in its instances if it had any. (shrink)

The so-called Final Ranking of the Philebus offers Socrates’ final evaluation of the relative merits of pleasure and reason in the best life. I begin by examining two common lines of interpretation as they address the criterion according to which the final ranking is organized. I then discuss the role ‘similarity’ has in organizing the investigation throughout the dialogue, from the initial comparison of the two lives (of reason and pleasure singly) down through the final ranking. I then consider (...) the thematic discussions of pleasure and reason separately, arguing that their treatments display an intriguing structural similarity. Next, I propose my own reading of the final ranking, whereby the ‘dependence’ relation at work in those two specific discussions may be see as the through-line of all (now five) tiers of the final ranking. I conclude by suggesting that this interpretation is able to preserve what is worthwhile in the two traditional lines of interpretation, while avoiding the pitfalls that tend to accompany them. (shrink)

Principala sursă biografică despre Platon, după mărturia neoplatonicului Simplicius, ar fi fost scrisă de discipolul Xenocrate, dar din păcate nu a ajuns la noi. Cea mai veche biografie a lui Platon care a ajuns până la noi, De Platone et dogmate eius, este a unui autor latin din secolul al II-lea, Apuleius. Toate celelalte biografii ale lui Platon au fost scrise la peste cinci sute de ani de la moartea sa. Istoricul grec Diogene (secolele II și III) este autorul unei (...) serii de biografii ale filosofilor greci (Viețile filosofilor) în care face referire la viața lui Platon. Acesta ar fi scris și un elogiu funerar lui Platon. Alți biografi timpurii ai lui Platon sunt Olimpiodor cel Tânăr în secolul al VI-lea și o sursă anonimă. O sursă importantă despre viața lui Platon sunt chiar dialogurile sale filozofice, treisprezece scrisori (posibil false totuși, cu excepția poate a Scrisorilor VII și VIII), scrierile lui Aristotel, un fragment din Istoria filozofilor (Syntaxis ton philosophon) a epicureanului Philodemus de Gadara din secolul I î.e.n., scrierile anonime Prolegomena despre filozofia platonică atribuite în mod tradițional lui Olimpiodor, Suda, secolul al X-lea și Viața lui Dio a lui Plutarh, secolul I-II. -/- DOI: 10.58679/CS86928. (shrink)

Abstract Platon, Phaidros 249bc A philological check of the grammar of this passage shows its philosophical impact. To be able to understand the many as unity, thanks to the ideas, is the specifity of us human beings.

Platon s-a inspirat din activitatea filosofică a unora dintre predecesorii săi, în special a lui Socrate, dar și Parmenide, Heraclit și Pitagora, pentru a-și dezvolta propria filosofie, care explorează majoritatea domeniilor importante, inclusiv metafizica, etica, estetica și politica.Împreună cu profesorul său Socrate și elevul său Aristotel, a pus bazele gândirii filosofice occidentale. Platon este considerat ca unul dintre cei mai importanți și influenți filosofi din istoria omenirii, fiind unul dintre fondatorii religiei și spiritualității occidentale. Filosofia dezvoltată de el, cunoscută sub (...) numele de platonism, se bazează pe teoria Formelor cunoscută prin rațiune pură ca soluție la problema universalelor. Filosofia lui Platon se înscrie pe linia presocraticilor, a sofiștilor și a tradițiilor artistice care stau la baza educației grecești, într-un cadru nou, definit de dialectică și teoria ideilor. Cunoașterea este pentru Platon o activitate a sufletului, afectată de obiectele sensibile, și de procesele interne. În Republica, forma cea mai înaltă este considerată ca fiind Forma Binelui, sursa tuturor celorlalte Forme care ar putea fi cunoscute prin rațiune. Tema centrală a cărții este dreptatea, argumentată cu ajutorul mai multor teorii platonice, inclusiv mitul alegoric al peșterii, doctrina ideilor, dialectica, teoria sufletului și proiectul unui oraș ideal. Dialectica lui este un tip de cunoaștere, cu rol rol ontologic și metafizic, la care se ajunge prin confruntarea mai multor poziții pentru a depăși opinia (doxa), o deplasare din lumea aparențelor (sau a „sensibilului”) către cunoașterea intelectuală (sau „inteligibilul”) până la primele principii. Modelul educațional al lui Platon (paidèia) diferențiază nivelul educației în funcție de aptitudinile elevilor. Conform principiilor socratice, pentru a face dreptate trebuie să se știe ce este bine, iar aceasta o știe cel mai bine filosoful. Platon a detaliat acest concept, evidențiind distincția dintre filosof (care caută principiile adevărului fără a pretinde că îl posedă) și sofist (care se lasă ghidat de opinie ca singurul parametru valid al cunoașterii). -/- CUPRINS -/- Platon - Biografie - Călătoriile lui Platon - Socrate - Academia - Lucrările lui Platon - - Clasificări ale lucrărilor - - - Cronologic - - - Tetralogii - - - Trilogii - - - Grupări lexicale Filosofia lui Platon - Sufletul - Funcția mitului - Idei - Teoria formelor - Ontologia - Epistemologia - Etica - Politica - Statul filosofic - Arta - Doctrinele nescrise: Unu și Diada Republica - Personaje - Conținut - Temele Republicii - - Justiția și dreptatea (Cartea I) - - Statul ideal (Cărțile II-III) - - Analogia oraș-suflet. Armonia părților (Cărțile IV-V) - - Teoria Formelor (Metafora liniei și mitul peșterii) (Cărțile VI-VII) - - Familia și statul (Cărțile VIII-IX) - - Mitul lui Er (Cartea X) Dialectica Educația Filosoful-rege Bibliografie -/- DOI 10.13140/RG.2.2.27534.23361 . (shrink)

Edward Feser defends the ‘Neo-Platonic proof ’ for the existence of the God of classical theism. After articulating the argument and a number of preliminaries, I first argue that premise three of Feser’s argument—the causal principle that every composite object requires a sustaining efficient cause to combine its parts—is both unjustified and dialectically ill-situated. I then argue that the Neo-Platonic proof fails to deliver the mindedness of the absolutely simple being and instead militates against its mindedness. Finally, I uncover two (...) tensions between Trinitarianism and the Neo-Platonic proof. (shrink)

As a way of arguing that Platonic characters' individual roles within familial, social, and religious structures could deepen our understanding of some philosophical issues--human nature, epistemology, justice and education in the polis, virtue--I present information about the characters Meno of Thessaly, Theaetetus of Sunium, Diotima of Mantinea, Phaenarete (wife of Sophroniscus and Chaeredemus), and [unnamed] of Athens (wife of Pericles and Hipponicus).

We discuss the one–many problem as it appears in the Philebus and find that it is not restricted to the usually understood problem about the identity of universals across particulars that instantiate them (the Hylomorphic Dispersal Problem). In fact some of the most interesting aspects of the problem occur purely with respect to the relationship between Forms. We argue that contemporary metaphysicians may draw from the Philebus at least three different one–many relationships between universals themselves: instantiation, subkind and (...) part, and thereby construct three new ‘problems of the one and the many’ (an Eidetic Dispersal Problem, a Genus–Species Problem, and an Eidetic Combination Problem), which are as problematic as the version generally discussed. We then argue that this taxonomy sheds new and interesting light on certain discussions of higher-order universals in recent Australian analytic philosophy. (shrink)

Aristóteles comparte con Platón la concepción de la forma como causa del ser y del conocimiento de las cosas. Sin embargo, un análisis de sus críticas a las Ideas muestra que encuentra en la separación de las Ideas y las cosas sensibles la aporía fundamental de la teoría platónica. Con el propósito de circunscribir el significado de “separación” aplicable a las Ideas, concentraremos nuestro estudio en dos objeciones: 1) el argumento que conduce al tercer hombre y 2) la inutilidad de (...) las Ideas como causas. En el primer caso, creemos que la separación entraña homonimia, por lo que la solución aristotélica implicará la comunidad de naturaleza entre el individuo y su esencia. En el segundo, la separación implica trascendencia o falta de contacto entre generante y generado, por lo que la solución aristotélica apuntará a concebir la forma de las entidades naturales como un principio inmanente, inseparable de la materia y del movimiento, pero a la vez eterno a través de su reproducción en otros individuos de la misma especie. Creemos que en ambas soluciones opera un principio de sinonimia, que constituye su propia contribución al problema de la separación. (shrink)

The Handmaid’s Tale depicts a United States taken over by a fundamentalist dictatorship called Gilead that also resembles Plato’s ideal city. Attempts to explain Gilead’s debt to Plato face two challenges. First, aspects of Gilead that recall Plato also contain features that differ, at times dramatically, from the Platonic original. Second, Gilead invokes distorted versions of ideas from philosophies other than Plato’s. I explore two ways of making sense of Gilead’s distorted philosophical appropriations. The explanations differ over whether such distortions (...) are best explained by the nature of the philosophies they misrepresent, or by the nature of Gilead. The explanation that emphasizes Gilead’s own agency is ultimately best able to make sense of how illiberal regimes misappropriate philosophical concepts, both in the novel and in reality, in order to limit the political imagination of their subjects. (shrink)

This paper provides a rational reconstruction of a Platonic trope bundle theory that is a live alternative to contemporary bundle theories. According to the theory, Platonic particulars are composed of what Plato calls images of Forms; contemporary metaphysicians call these tropes. Tropes are dependent on Forms and the Receptacle, while trope bundles are structured by natural kinds using the Phaedo's principles of inclusion and exclusion and the Timaeus’ geometrised elements, as well as by co-location in the Receptacle. Key elements of (...) discussion include persistence and abundance of Plato's tropes. The resulting theory is compared with contemporary trope bundle theories. (shrink)

Written in the fourth century BCE, Philebus is likely one of Plato’s last Socratic dialogues. It is also famously difficult to read and understand. A multilayered inquiry into the nature of life, Philebus has drawn renewed interest from scholars in recent years. Yet, until now, the only English-language commentary available has been a work published in 1897. This much-needed new commentary, designed especially for philosophers and advanced students of ancient Greek, draws on up-to-date scholarship to expand our understanding (...) of Plato’s complex work. In his in-depth introduction, George Rudebusch places the Philebus in historical, philosophical, and linguistic context. As he explains, the dialogue deals with the question of whether a good life consists of pleasure or knowing. Yet its exploration of this question is riddled with ambiguity. With the goal of facilitating comprehension, particularly for students of philosophy, Rudebusch divides his commentary into twenty discrete subarguments. Within this framework, he elucidates the significance—and possible interpretations—of each passage and dissects their philological details. In particular, he analyzes how Plato uses inference indicators (that is, the Greek words for “therefore” and “because”) to establish the structure of the arguments, markers difficult to present in translation. A detailed and thorough commentary, this volume is both easy to navigate and conducive to new interpretations of one of Plato’s most intriguing dialogues. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide some acquaintance with the exegetical history of ἐξαίφνης inside the Platonic Tradition, from Plato to Marsilio Ficino, by way of Middle Platonism and Greek Neoplatonism. (Since this is only a draft, several modifications should be made later, notably in order to improve the English.) Some part has been presented in Los Angeles: “Damascius’ Theodicy: Psychic Input of Disorder and Evil into the World”, 16th Annual ISNS (International Society for Neoplatonic Studies) Conference, Loyola (...) Marymount University, 14th June 2018. (shrink)

Psiche sets up a close-knit comparison between the psychology of Plato's Republic and Freud's psychoanalysis. Convergences and divergences are discussed in relation both to the Platonic conception of the oneiric emergence of repressed desires that prefigures the main path of Freud's subconscious, to the analysis of the psychopathologies related to these theoretical formulations and to the two diagnostic and therapeutic approaches adopted. Another crucial theme is the Platonic eros - the examination of which is also extended to the Symposium and (...) Phaedrus - taken up explicitly by Freud in relation to the concept of libido. Finally, the author also addresses the two themes - of, inter alia, a metapsychological nature - inherent to the moral dimension. -/- Psiche istituisce un confronto ravvicinato tra la psicologia della "Repubblica" di Platone e la psicoanalisi di Freud. Convergenze e divergenze vengono discusse in relazione sia alla concezione platonica dell'emersione onirica dei desideri repressi, che prefigura la via regia per l'inconscio di Freud, sia all'analisi delle psicopatologie correlate a tali impostazioni teoriche, sia ai due approcci diagnostici e terapeutici adottati. Altro tema cruciale è l'eros platonico - la cui disamina viene estesa anche al "Simposio" e al "Fedro" - ripreso esplicitamente da Freud in relazione al concetto di libido. L'autore affronta, infine, le due tematizzazioni, di natura metapsicologica e non solo, inerenti alla dimensione morale. (shrink)

Platon s'est inspir? des travaux philosophiques de certains de ses pr?d?cesseurs, en particulier Socrate, mais aussi Parm?nide, H?raclite et Pythagore, pour d?velopper sa propre philosophie, qui explore les domaines les plus importants, notamment la m?taphysique, l'?thique, l'esth?tique et la politique. Avec son professeur Socrate et son ?l?ve Aristote, il pose les bases de la pens?e philosophique occidentale. Platon est consid?r? comme l'un des philosophes les plus importants et les plus influents de l'histoire humaine, ?tant l'un des fondateurs de la religion (...) et de la spiritualit? occidentales. La philosophie qu'il a d?velopp?e, connue sous le nom de platonisme, est bas?e sur la th?orie des Formes connues par la raison pure comme une solution au probl?me des universaux. La philosophie de Platon s'inscrit dans la lign?e des pr?socratiques, des sophistes et des traditions artistiques qui sous-tendent l'?ducation grecque, dans un cadre nouveau, d?fini par la dialectique et la th?orie des Id?es. Pour Platon, la connaissance est une activit? de l'?me, affect?e par des objets sensibles, et par des processus internes. Dans La R?publique de Platon, la forme la plus ?lev?e est consid?r?e comme la Forme du Bien, la source de toutes les autres Formes qui pourraient ?tre connues par la raison. Le th?me central du livre est la justice, argument?e ? l'aide de plusieurs th?ories platoniciennes, dont le mythe all?gorique de la caverne, la doctrine des Id?es, la dialectique, la th?orie de l'?me et la conception d'une cit? id?ale. Sa dialectique est un type de connaissance, ? r?le ontologique et m?taphysique, qui s'atteint par la confrontation de plusieurs positions pour d?passer l'opinion (doxa), un passage du monde des apparences (ou ? sensible ?) ? la connaissance intellectuelle (ou ? intelligible ? ) aux premiers principes. Le mod?le ?ducatif de Platon (paid?ia) diff?rencie le niveau d'?ducation selon les comp?tences des ?l?ves. Selon les principes socratiques, pour faire justice, il faut savoir ce qui est bien, et c'est ce que le philosophe sait le mieux. Platon a d?taill? ce concept en soulignant la distinction entre le philosophe (qui cherche les principes de v?rit? sans pr?tendre les poss?der) et le sophiste (qui se laisse guider par l'opinion comme seul param?tre valable de la connaissance). (shrink)

Plato's 'Symposium': Kierkegaard and Platonic Eros.

Reflections on the linkage between and the provocative force of problems in the analogy of city and soul, in the simile-bound characterization of the Good, and in the performative tension between what Plato has Socrates say about the philosopher's disinclination to descend into the city and what he has Socrates do in descending into the Piraeus to teach, with a closing recognition of the analogy between Socratic teaching and Platonic writing.

In this note I examine the two main differences between Plato's and Dennett's views of the self as an abstract object. I point out that in the presence of certain forms of ontological realism, abstract-object theories of the self are compatible with the full reality of the self. I conclude with some remarks on the relationship between ontology and ethics.

A standard interpretation of Plato’s metaphysics holds that sensible particulars are images of Forms. Such particulars are fairly independent, like Aristotelian substances. I argue that this is incorrect: Platonic particulars are not Form images but aggregates of Form images, which are property-instances. Timaeus 49e-50a focuses on “this-suches” and even goes so far as to claim that they compose other things. I argue that Form images are this-suches, which are tropes. I also examine the geometrical account, showing that the geometrical constituents (...) of the elements are also Form images. Thus everything in the sensible world is composed of tropes. (shrink)

Some remarks about commentaries on Plato in the medieval Byzantium.

Some scientific explanations appear to turn on pure mathematical claims. The enhanced indispensability argument appeals to these ‘mathematical explanations’ in support of mathematical platonism. I argue that the success of this argument rests on the claim that mathematical explanations locate pure mathematical facts on which their physical explananda depend, and that any account of mathematical explanation that supports this claim fails to provide an adequate understanding of mathematical explanation.

Aristotle's syllogistic theory, as developed in his Prior Analytics, is often regarded as the birth of logic in Western philosophy. Over the past century, scholars have tried to identify important precursors to this theory. I argue that Platonic division, a method which aims to give accounts of essences of natural kinds by progressively narrowing down from a genus, influenced Aristotle's logical theory in a number of crucial respects. To see exactly how, I analyze the method of division as it was (...) originally conceived by Plato and received by Aristotle. I argue that, while Plato allowed that some divisions fail to rigorously investigate the essence, he began a program continued by Aristotle (and others in antiquity and the middle ages) of seeking norms for division that would apply in any domain whatsoever. This idea of a rigorous, general method was taken up and developed by Aristotle in his syllogistic. Aristotle also used Plato's conception of predication as parthood in his semantics for syllogistic propositions. As part of my argument, I prove that a semantics based on Platonic divisional structures is sound and complete for the deduction system used in the literature to model Aristotle's syllogistic. (shrink)

David Armstrong accepted the following three theses: universals are immanent, laws are relations between universals, and laws govern. Taken together, they form an attractive position, for they promise to explain regularities in nature—one of the most important desiderata for a theory of laws and properties—while remaining compatible with naturalism. However, I argue that the three theses are incompatible. The basic idea is that each thesis makes an explanatory claim, but the three claims can be shown to run in a problematic (...) circle. I then consider which thesis we ought to reject and suggest some general lessons for the metaphysics of laws. (shrink)

The well-known connection between the extant fragments of Philolaus and Plato’s Philebus is examined in its methodological aspect. By drawing on more texts, it is shown that Plato was aware of an explanatory scheme that can be attributed to Pythagoreanism. His attempt to modify it is also outlined, which sets the historical-philosophical perspective.

From the second half of the 16th century the question about Platonis Aristotelisque Concordia is no more a merely doctrinal problem, but it involves a discussion about methodus and ordo, according to the importance given to them in the coeval philosophical debate. In many cases underscoring Plato’s scientific merits, not only about inventio but also about the transmission of knowledge, meant promoting Platonism as a philosophy suitable for University. In this context the need for Platonic handbooks is perceived as compelling, (...) due to the recognised didactic superiority of Aristotle’s writings. The Compendio and the Vere Conclusioni are the specific contribution of Francesco Verino secondo, who gave holiday lectures on Plato at the Florentine Studium from 1576 to 1579. The present study focuses on the platonism of Francesco Verino, covering nearly all his works, printed and manuscript, in a constant comparison with his noble predecessors Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Francesco Cattani da Diacceto. In order to give light to Verino’s lectureship, particular attention is paid to glosses in his working and teaching copy of Platonis Opera. (shrink)

Filosofia lui Platon se înscrie pe linia presocraticilor, a sofiștilor și a tradițiilor artistice care stau la baza educației grecești, într-un cadru nou, definit de dialectică și teoria ideilor. Cunoașterea este pentru Platon o activitate a sufletului, afectată de obiectele sensibile, și de procesele interne. Platonismul își are originea în filosofia lui Platon, deși nu se confundă cu aceasta. Conform platonismului există obiecte abstracte (noțiune diferită de cea a filosofiei moderne care există într-un al tărâm distinct atât de lumea sensibilă (...) externă, cât și de lumea internă a conștiinței, și este opusul nominalismului). O distincție esențială pentru Platon în filosofia sa este teoria Formelor, distincție dintre realitatea perceptibilă dar neinteligibilă (știința) și realitatea imperceptibilă dar inteligibilă (matematica). Geometria a fost principala motivație a lui Platon, iar aceasta arată și influența lui Pitagora. Formele sunt arhetipuri perfecte ale căror obiecte reale sunt copii imperfecte. -/- DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.33183.43687. (shrink)

El conocimiento ha incursionado como tema de gran alcance dadas las múltiples disciplinas que lo evocan y cuyos intereses investigativos incurren en una definición para este. Primeras cavilaciones acerca del conocimiento se adelantaron bajo una óptica dualista de materialismo e idealismo, ambas posturas de carácter filosófico que determinaron el pensar de Occidente. Dicho así, desde la Grecia clásica pensadores como Platón, entre otros clásicos, entronizaron esta cuestión, pero dicho trato dualista en el ámbito del saber estuvo fuertemente vinculado con una (...) reflexión de talante ético del que Platón no se eximió. Con lo dicho, el presente artículo busca describir los postulados gnoseológicos y éticos en Platón con el fin de esclarecer el nexo entre conocimiento y práctica humana. (shrink)