Abstract

Plato's account of the art of due measure in the Statesman describes an important intersection between ontology, method and normativity as they relate to practical expert knowledge. Through the art of due measure, forms of practical expertise are shown to owe their objective legitimacy to certain ontological conditions even as they retain their distinctly practical character. My dissertation explores the precise nature of these relationships through careful examination of the relevant texts in the Statesman, Philebus, and Phaedrus. It begins with Plato's presentation of the art of due measure in the Statesman, where specific ontological conditions are assumed, but not demonstrated. To determine how these conditions are satisfied, I turn to the methodological and ontological doctrines of the Philebus, where their relevance to practical expert knowledge is again implicated. Moreover, Plato's conception of practical expertise within the broader context of cosmology in the Statesman is shown to be of importance in both understanding its teleological function and accounting for the distinction between theory and practice. With the foundations of practical expertise clarified, Plato's treatment of medicine, statesmanship and rhetoric in the Statesman and Phaedrus are taken together to develop a more comprehensive picture of practical expert knowledge in his later period. The dissertation concludes by relating the findings from earlier chapters to more general issues regarding the relationship between being and the good, and considers Plato's position as a possible anticipation of Aristotle's