The Euthyphro is generally considered one of Plato’s early dialogues. According to the developmental approach to reading the dialogues, when writing the Euthyphro Plato had not yet developed the sort of elaborate “theory of forms ” that we see presented in the middle dialogues and further refined in the late dialogues. This essay calls the developmental account into question by showing how key elements from the theory of forms that appear in the late dialogues, particularly in the Statesman, are already (...) operative in the Euthyphro. When one identifies the way in which each of Euthyphro ’s definitions of piety fails in light of Socrates’s arguments, one already finds the conception of form that Plato presents in the middle and late dialogues. (shrink)

This paper examines Plato's ideas on cause-effect relations in the "Phaedo." It maintains that he sees causes as things (not events, states of affairs or the like), with any information as to how that thing brings about the effect relegated to a strictly secondary status. This is argued to make good sense, so long as we recognise that aition means the "thing responsible" and exploit legal analogies in order to understand what this amounts to. Furthermore, provided that we do not (...) pre-suppose that we already know what can and what cannot count as a cause, Plato proves to have an attractive case for his principle that all causation is a matter of like causing like. Once we appreciate this, we are a little closer to understanding his more idiosyncratic principle, which although puzzling is ubiquitous in his writings and often invoked as a premise in key arguments, that opposites cannot cause opposites. The last part of the paper turns to formal causes, defending Plato's advocacy of them, and examining their role in the "Parmenides'" Third Man Argument. The main proposal is that Plato's conception of Forms as causes opens the door to a better version of that argument's "Non-identity" premise than those currently available. (shrink)

In editing Plato's Sophist for the new OCT vol. I, ed. E. A. Duke, W. F. Hicken, W. S. M. Nicoll, D. B. Robinson, and J. C. G. Strachan , there was less chance of giving novel information about W = Vind. Supp. Gr. 7 for this dialogue than for others in the volume, since Apelt's edition of 1897 was used by Burnet in 1900 and was based on Apelt's own collation of W. The result was better than the somewhat (...) confused information printed by Burnet, even in his 1905 reprint, for W for the other dialogues in vol. I. But in the Sophist as elsewhere in vol. I collations largely due to Dr W. S. M. Nicoll added new facts about all of BDTWP and their correctors, and the search for testimonia largely carried out by Dr E. A. Duke added new facts in that area. A reviewer counts 66 changes in our text of the Sophist, which may perhaps be a slight over-estimate. Classification of changes as substantive or as falling into different groups is sometimes difficult, but I think plausible figures are as follows. We have in 25 places made a different choice of readings from the primary mss. and testimonia. We have printed conjectures where Burnet kept a ms. reading in 17 places, but conversely we have reverted to a ms. reading where Burnet had a conjecture in 8 places. We have printed alternative conjectures to conjectures adopted by Burnet in 6 places. So we have actually departed from the primary sources on at most 9 more occasions overall than Burnet. What must be noted is that Burnet had already printed conjectures on something like 87 occasions , so our percentage addition to Burnet's departures from the primary sources is modest. Moreover Burnet printed about 25 readings from testimonia; we have followed him in 20 or so of these cases, and this in turn implies that the primary mss. are in error at these further 20 places. It needs to be underlined that though Burnet undoubtedly deserved to be regarded as a safe and cautious editor, nevertheless he departed from the primary mss. on average about twice per Stephanus page in this dialogue. Sometimes, of course, testimonia showed him right to do this, but testimonia cover only a quite small part of this dialogue. Otherwise Burnet accepted almost 90 conjectures. For the Politicus the figures are fairly similar; Burnet accepted 22 Byzantine conjectures and 35–40 more modern ones. The new OCT there adds 15 or so more conjectures. (shrink)

This paper defends Plotinus’ reading ofSophist248e-249d as an expression of the togetherness or unity-in-duality of intellect and intelligible being. Throughout the dialogues Plato consistently presents knowledge as a togetherness of knower and known, expressing this through the myth of recollection and through metaphors of grasping, eating, and sexual union. He indicates that an intelligible paradigm is in the thought that apprehends it, and regularly regards the forms not as extrinsic “objects” but as the contents of living intelligence. A meticulous reading (...) ofSophist248e-249d shows that the “motion” attributed to intelligible being is not temporal change but the activity of intellectual apprehension. Aristotle’s doctrines of knowledge as identity of intellect and the intelligible, and of divine intellect as thinking itself, are therefore in continuity with Plato, and Plotinus’ doctrine of intellect and being is continuous with both Plato and Aristotle. (shrink)

Some statements couched in the present tense have no reference to time. They are, if you like, grammatically tensed but logically tenseless. Mathematical statements such as ‘twice two is four’ or ‘there is a prime number between 125 and 128’ are of this sort. So is the statement I have just made. To ask in good faith whether there is still the prime number there used to be between 125 and 128 would be to show that one did not understand (...) the use of such statements, and so would any attempt to answer the question. It is tempting to take another step and talk of such timeless statements as statements about timeless entities. If the number 4 neither continues nor ceases to be twice two this is, surely, because the number 4 has no history of any kind, not even the being a day older today than yesterday. Other timeless statements might shake our confidence in this inference: ‘clocks are devices for measuring time’ is a timeless statement, but it is not about a class of timeless clocks. But, given a preoccupation with a favoured set of examples and a stage of thought at which men did not distinguish the properties of statements from the properties of the things they are about, we can expect timeless entities to appear as the natural proxies of timeless statements. (shrink)

A close reading of the dilemmatic argument and of the discussions of the three senses of logos by which Socrates appears to refute the proposal that knowledge is true judgment together with a logos. I argue that the determinateness of each of Socrates' arguments implies further lines of thought for the reader and that these lead to an understanding of the relations of intuition and discourse in inquiry and of the compossible simplicity and complexity of the object of knowledge. These (...) lines of thought find their home, as it were, in the critical turn to the conception of forms in the Parmenides and in the practice of dialectic in the Sophist and the Statesman. (shrink)

A close reading of Socrates' refutation of the final proposed definition of knowledge, "true opinion with an account." I examine the provocations to further thinking Socrates poses with his dilemma of simplicity and complexity and then by his rejections of the three senses of "account," and I argue that these provocations guide the responsive reader to that rich and determinate understanding of the sort of 'object' which knowledge requires that the Parmenides and the Eleatic dialogues will go on to explicate.

It is widely held that in Plato's Sophist, Forms rest or change or both. The received opinion is, however, false—or so I will argue. There is no direct support for it in the text and several passages tell against it. I will further argue that, contrary to the view of some scholars, Plato did not in this dialogue advocate a kind of change recognizable as 'Cambridge change', as applicable to his Forms. The reason that Forms neither change nor rest is (...) that they are purely intelligible entities, not susceptible to changing or being at rest. Since Plato continues in the Sophist to treat Forms as causes, it follows that Forms are changeless causes. I ask what conception of cause might allow for this view, and reject the suggestion that Plato was some kind of proto-dispositionalist about causation. Instead I suggest that he understood causation to incorporate a notion of structuring, such that Forms can be seen to structure their participants and so cause them to possess the attributes they possess. (shrink)

The paper argues that Motion and Rest are “greatest kinds” and not just convenient examples, since they are all-pervading. Thus Motion and Rest can be jointly predicated of a single subject and can be predicated of each other, just as Sameness and Otherness can. While Sameness and Otherness are opposites, a single subject may be the same in one respect, namely, the same as itself, and other in another respect, namely, other than other things. Thus they can be predicated of (...) a single subject, and they can be predicated of each other, as well, since Sameness is other than other things and Otherness is the same as itself. The same explanation applies to Motion and Rest, as the paper demonstrates: a given subject may be in motion in one respect while being at rest in another respect. This distinction is made in the Sophist itself, right in the passage concerning the greatest kinds. Thus Motion and Rest should be considered greatest kinds on par with Being, Sameness, and Otherness, and each of these kinds pervades all other kinds. (shrink)