Plato's Introduction of Forms

Plato's Introduction of Forms

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  • Author: R. M. Dancy
  • Publisher: Cambridge University Press
  • ISBN: 1139456237
  • Category : Philosophy
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 362

Scholars of Plato are divided between those who emphasize the literature of the dialogues and those who emphasize the argument of the dialogues, and between those who see a development in the thought of the dialogues and those who do not. In this important book Russell Dancy focuses on the arguments and defends a developmental picture. He explains the Theory of Forms of the Phaedo and Symposium as an outgrowth of the quest for definitions canvassed in the Socratic dialogues, by constructing a Theory of Definition for the Socratic dialogues based on the refutations of definitions in those dialogues, and showing how that theory is mirrored in the Theory of Forms. His discussion, notable for both its clarity and its meticulous scholarship, ranges in detail over a number of Plato's early and middle dialogues, and will be of interest to readers in Plato studies and in ancient philosophy more generally.


Plato's Forms

Plato's Forms

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  • Author: William A. Welton
  • Publisher: Lexington Books
  • ISBN: 9780739105146
  • Category : Philosophy
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 338

The "theory of forms" usually attributed to Plato is one of the most famous of philosophical theories, yet it has engendered such controversy in the literature on Plato that scholars even debate whether or not such a theory exists in his texts. Plato's Forms: Varieties of Interpretation is an ambitious work that brings together, in a single volume, widely divergent approaches to the topic of the forms in Plato's dialogues. With contributions rooted in both Anglo-American and Continental philosophy, the book illustrates the contentious role the forms have played in Platonic scholarship and suggests new approaches to a central problem of Plato studies.


Plato's Forms in Transition

Plato's Forms in Transition

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  • Author: Samuel C. Rickless
  • Publisher: Cambridge University Press
  • ISBN: 1139462784
  • Category : Philosophy
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 231

There is a mystery at the heart of Plato's Parmenides. In the first part, Parmenides criticizes what is widely regarded as Plato's mature theory of Forms, and in the second, he promises to explain how the Forms can be saved from these criticisms. Ever since the dialogue was written, scholars have struggled to determine how the two parts of the work fit together. Did Plato mean us to abandon, keep or modify the theory of Forms, on the strength of Parmenides' criticisms? Samuel Rickless offers something that has never been done before: a careful reconstruction of every argument in the dialogue. He concludes that Plato's main aim was to argue that the theory of Forms should be modified by allowing that forms can have contrary properties. To grasp this is to solve the mystery of the Parmenides and understand its crucial role in Plato's philosophical development.


Plato

Plato

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  • Author: Julia Annas
  • Publisher: Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.
  • ISBN: 9781402770524
  • Category : Biography & Autobiography
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 192

"Julia Annas provides an incisive exploration of the many-sided and elusive genius whose wide-ranging, bold, and influential ideas continue to challenge, provoke, and inspire us today"--Page 4 of cover.


Plato's Essentialism

Plato's Essentialism

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  • Author: Vasilis Politis
  • Publisher: Cambridge University Press
  • ISBN: 1108988539
  • Category : Philosophy
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 263

In this book, Vasilis Politis argues that Plato's Forms are essences, not merely things that have an essence. Politis shows that understanding Plato's theory of Forms as a theory of essence presents a serious challenge to contemporary philosophers who regard essentialism as little more than an optional item on the philosophical menu. This approach, he suggests, also constitutes a sharp critique of those who view Aristotelian essentialism as the only sensible position: Plato's essentialism, Politis demonstrates, is a well-argued, rigorous, and coherent theory, and a viable competitor to that of Aristotle. This book will appeal to students and scholars with an interest in the intersection between philosophy and the history of philosophy.


Plato’s forms, mathematics and astronomy

Plato’s forms, mathematics and astronomy

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  • Author: Theokritos Kouremenos
  • Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
  • ISBN: 3110601486
  • Category : Literary Criticism
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 158

Plato’s view that mathematics paves the way for his philosophy of forms is well known. This book attempts to flesh out the relationship between mathematics and philosophy as Plato conceived them by proposing that in his view, although it is philosophy that came up with the concept of beings, which he calls forms, and highlighted their importance, first to natural philosophy and then to ethics, the things that do qualify as beings are inchoately revealed by mathematics as the raw materials that must be further processed by philosophy (mathematicians, to use Plato’s simile in the Euthedemus, do not invent the theorems they prove but discover beings and, like hunters who must hand over what they catch to chefs if it is going to turn into something useful, they must hand over their discoveries to philosophers). Even those forms that do not bear names of mathematical objects, such as the famous forms of beauty and goodness, are in fact forms of mathematical objects. The first chapter is an attempt to defend this thesis. The second argues that for Plato philosophy’s crucial task of investigating the exfoliation of the forms into the sensible world, including the sphere of human private and public life, is already foreshadowed in one of its branches, astronomy.


Plato's Euthyphro and the Earlier Theory of Forms

Plato's Euthyphro and the Earlier Theory of Forms

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  • Author: Reginald E. Allen
  • Publisher: Routledge
  • ISBN: 0415626307
  • Category : Philosophy
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 194

Plato’s Euthyphrois important because it gives an excellent example of Socratic dialogue in operation and of the connection of that dialectic with Plato’s earlier theory of Forms. Professor Allen’s edition of the dialogue provides a translation with interspersed commentary, aimed both at helping the reader who does not have Greek and also elucidating the discussion of the earlier Theory of Forms which follows. The author argues that there is a theory of Forms in the Euthyphroand in other early Platonic dialogues and that this theory is the foundation of Socratic dialogue. However, he maintains that the theory in the early dialogues is a realist theory of universals and this theory is not to be identified with the theory of Forms found in the Phaedo, Republic, and other middle dialogues, since it differs on the issues of ontological status.


Plato's Parmenides

Plato's Parmenides

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  • Author: Samuel Scolnicov
  • Publisher: Univ of California Press
  • ISBN: 0520925114
  • Category : Philosophy
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 207

Of all Plato’s dialogues, the Parmenides is notoriously the most difficult to interpret. Scholars of all periods have disagreed about its aims and subject matter. The interpretations have ranged from reading the dialogue as an introduction to the whole of Platonic metaphysics to seeing it as a collection of sophisticated tricks, or even as an elaborate joke. This work presents an illuminating new translation of the dialogue together with an extensive introduction and running commentary, giving a unified explanation of the Parmenides and integrating it firmly within the context of Plato's metaphysics and methodology. Scolnicov shows that in the Parmenides Plato addresses the most serious challenge to his own philosophy: the monism of Parmenides and the Eleatics. In addition to providing a serious rebuttal to Parmenides, Plato here re-formulates his own theory of forms and participation, arguments that are central to the whole of Platonic thought, and provides these concepts with a rigorous logical and philosophical foundation. In Scolnicov's analysis, the Parmenides emerges as an extension of ideas from Plato's middle dialogues and as an opening to the later dialogues. Scolnicov’s analysis is crisp and lucid, offering a persuasive approach to a complicated dialogue. This translation follows the Greek closely, and the commentary affords the Greekless reader a clear understanding of how Scolnicov’s interpretation emerges from the text. This volume will provide a valuable introduction and framework for understanding a dialogue that continues to generate lively discussion today.


Plato on the Metaphysical Foundation of Meaning and Truth

Plato on the Metaphysical Foundation of Meaning and Truth

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  • Author: Blake E. Hestir
  • Publisher: Cambridge University Press
  • ISBN: 1107132320
  • Category : Philosophy
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 285

Blake E. Hestir's examination of Plato's conception of truth challenges a long tradition of interpretation in ancient scholarship.


Plato on Knowledge and Forms

Plato on Knowledge and Forms

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  • Author: Gail Fine
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
  • ISBN: 9780199245581
  • Category : History
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 447

Plato on Knowledge and Forms brings together a set of connected essays by Gail Fine, in her main area of research since the late 1970s: Plato's metaphysics and epistemology. She discusses central issues in Plato's metaphysics and epistemology, issues concerning the nature and extent of knowledge, and its relation to perception, sensibles, and forms; and issues concerning the nature of forms, such as whether they are universals or particulars, separate or immanent, and whether they are causes. A specially written introduction draws together the themes of the volume, which will reward the attention of anyone interested in Plato or in ancient metaphysics and epistemology.