Δύναμις and Φύσις in Plato

Plato and Innatism

Plato and Innatism

Pleasure and Illusion in Plato

Plato links pleasure with illusion, and this link explains his rejection of the view that all desires are rational desires for the good. The Protagoras and Gorgias show connections between pleasure and illusion; the Republic develops these into a psychological theory. One part of the soul is not only prone to illusions, but also incapable of the kind of reasoning that can dispel them. Pleasure ...

Plato and Divination

Plato uses the idea of divinatory knowledge as a metaphorical descriptor for a variety of kinds of daytime, waking knowing. What unites these examples is that they all include discussion of a kind of knowing that cannot account for itself, and that is tentative, imagistic and non-discursive. These metaphorical uses can further be illuminated by his more detailed discussion of divinatory knowled...

Symmetry and Beauty in Plato

Plato writes about Beauty in many of his dialogues, particularly in the Symposium, but he has no word equivalent to our "Symmetry", and this concept was not then formalised. Nevertheless, there are indications that some aspects of the concept were understood, if only intuitively. Plato has a very abstract concept of beauty, and when he uses "beauty" to characterise the so-called "Platonic Solid...