Being and Structure in Plato’s Sophist is a study of the metaphysical notion of being as it is at play in Plato’s dialogue the Sophist, and the senses in which Plato’s conception of being entails further accounts of ontological structure and goodness. While modern metaphysics primarily concerns existence, ancient metaphysics primarily concerns what grounds what, and in this dissertation I consider the nature and value of Plato’s understanding of being as a notion of ground rather than a principle of existence. I argue that Plato conceives of being in the fundamentally unified sense of participation, which entails a self-and-other and hence complex relation. For Plato, being must be understood in its context as one among many Platonic forms, or the network of mutually co-constitutive structures of determinacy that are the grounding stability necessary for the very possibilities of becoming, knowing, and discourse. I argue that Plato inherits his view in large part from Parmenides, and that the account in the Sophist makes explicit a previously implicit aspect of the Parmenidean tradition insofar as it involves a novel sense of nonbeing not as absolute nothingness, but instead as difference in the sense of constitutive and determinate otherness. I furthermore discuss the ways in which this account helps to show the connections between seemingly disparate elements of the dialogue like its dramatic setting, the method of division, and the discussion of the great ontological kinds. In this way, the dissertation entails a study of the entire dialogue and the interrelation of its parts, as well as its context among several other key Platonic and Parmenidean texts.

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Nesta investigação tenho por fim estudar a translatio da lexicografia conceitual que parte do verbo grego ser (einai) chegando ao verbo latino ser (esse) à luz do de Hebdomadibus de Boécio. Neste percurso me deparo com a embriologia da doutrina dos transcendentais, na qual ser, bem e um são convertíveis ou coextensivos, como também me deparo com uma metafísica do bem, herdada pela Escolástica, pela qual tento especular Boécio em seu exercício filosófico, que consiste em tentar esclarecer o modo pelo qual as substâncias são boas nisto que são, contudo não são bens substanciais. / The aim of this study is the translatio of the conceptual lexicography following the Greek verb be (einai) through the Latin verb be (esse) in light of Boethius de Hebdomadibus. Throughout this journey I find myself facing the embriology of the doctrine of transcendentals, in which being, goodness and one are convertible or co-extensive, and I also face a metaphysics of goodness, inherited by the Scholastics, through which I then try to speculate Boethius in his philosophical endeavour, consisting in trying to clarify how substances are good in that they are, though they are not substantial goods.

Nesta investigação tenho por fim estudar a translatio da lexicografia conceitual que parte do verbo grego ser (einai) chegando ao verbo latino ser (esse) à luz do de Hebdomadibus de Boécio. Neste percurso me deparo com a embriologia da doutrina dos transcendentais, na qual ser, bem e um são convertíveis ou coextensivos, como também me deparo com uma metafísica do bem, herdada pela Escolástica, pela qual tento especular Boécio em seu exercício filosófico, que consiste em tentar esclarecer o modo pelo qual as substâncias são boas nisto que são, contudo não são bens substanciais. / The aim of this study is the translatio of the conceptual lexicography following the Greek verb be (einai) through the Latin verb be (esse) in light of Boethius de Hebdomadibus. Throughout this journey I find myself facing the embriology of the doctrine of transcendentals, in which being, goodness and one are convertible or co-extensive, and I also face a metaphysics of goodness, inherited by the Scholastics, through which I then try to speculate Boethius in his philosophical endeavour, consisting in trying to clarify how substances are good in that they are, though they are not substantial goods.

This is a study of love (erōs) in Plato’s Symposium. It’s a study undertaken over three chapters, each of which serves as a stepping stone for the following and addresses one of three primary aims. First: to provide an interpretation of Plato’s favored theory of erōs in the Symposium, or as it’s referred to here, a theory of Platonic love. This theory is understood to be ultimately concerned with a practice of living which, if developed correctly, may come to constitute the life most worth living for a human being. On this interpretation, Platonic love is the desire for Beauty, ultimately for the sake of eudaimonic immortality, manifested through productive activity. Second: to offer a reading of the Symposium which attends to the work’s literary elements, especially characterization and narrative structure, as partially constitutive of Plato’s philosophical thought on erōs. Here it’s suggested that Platonic love is concerned with seeking and producing truly virtuous action and true poetry. This reading positions us to see that a correctly progressing and well-practiced Platonic love is illustrated in the character of the philosopher Socrates, who is known and followed for his bizarre displays of virtue and whom Alcibiades crowns over either Aristophanes or Agathon as the wisest and most beautiful poet at the Symposium. Third: to account for how to love a person Platonically. Contra Gregory Vlastos’ influential critical interpretation, it’s here argued that the Platonic lover is able to really love a person: to really love a person Platonically is to seek jointly for Beauty; it is to work together as co-practitioners in the art of love. The art of Platonic love is set up in this way to be explored as a practice potentially constitutive of the life most worth living for a human being.

Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2012. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The definition and function of Socratic irony has been much disputed in contemporary scholarship. This thesis identifies some methodological difficulties in interpreting and defining Socratic irony and attempts to narrow the field of interpretation in order to facilitate the formulation of a new definition of the concept. With reference to the primary texts of Plato, Xenophon and Aristophanes, as well as some fragments, the different types of irony as employed by Socrates are identified as verbal, in the form of self-deprecation and knowledge disavowal, and physical. A review of late 18th, 19th and 20th century philosophical scholarship on the topic is done in order to gain a better understanding of the perceived functions of Socratic irony. On the basis of this, as well as the opinions of prominent classical scholars, it is argued that the function of Socratic irony in its verbal form is primarily heuristic, while the physical form is a political mode of being designed to criticise 5th-century Athenian politics. Socratic irony is then redefined to allow for these forms and functions, which are shown to be much more complex than previously thought. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Daar word baie gedebatteer oor die definisie en funksie van die Sokratiese ironie in die onlangse navorsing. Hierdie tesis identifiseer sommige metodologiese probleme in die interpretasie en die definisie van Sokratiese ironie en poog om die veld van interpretasie te beperk ten einde die formulering van 'n nuwe definisie van die begrip te fasiliteer. Met verwysing na die primêre tekste van Plato, Xenophon en Aristophanes, asook 'n paar fragmente, word die verskillende vorme van ironie soos deur Sokrates gebruik, geïdentifiseer as verbaal, in die vorm van self-afkeuring en ontkenning van kennis, en fisies. ʼn Oorsig van die laat 18de-, 19de- en 20ste-eeuse filosofiese navorsing is gegee ten einde 'n beter begrip te verkry van die waargenome funksies van Sokratiese ironie. Op grond hiervan, asook die menings van vooraanstaande klassici, word aangevoer dat die funksie van die Sokratiese ironie in sy verbale vorm hoofsaaklik heuristies is, terwyl die fisiese vorm 'n politieke bestaanswyse is, met die doel om die 5de-eeuse Atheense politiek te kritiseer. Teen hierdie agtergrond word Sokratiese ironie dan herdefinieer om voorsiening te maak vir bogenoemde vorme en funksies wat blyk baie meer kompleks te wees as wat voorheen gemeen is.

This thesis analyses the method, purpose, and results of Aristotle's treatment of a select number of Presocratic and Platonic theses about the soul within the context of De Anima 1. Contrary to a prevalent interpretation of De Anima 1 which sees Aristotle's treatment of his predecessors' psychological views as dialectical, I argue that Aristotle treats his predecessors as having offered potentially viable hypotheses about the nature of the soul, and that these hypotheses are treated as attempts to explain the soul's basic powers. I further show that, in order to test the explanatory limits of these theories, Aristotle uses a version of the scientific method of inquiry advertised in the Prior and Posterior Analytics, which consists in setting out the basic psychological phenomena which psychology should explain, and then testing the extent to which his predecessors' definitions of the soul are able to accomplish this task. This thesis argues that, by demonstrating where his predecessors' first principles fall short, Aristotle is able to make theoretical progress towards establishing his own 'hylomorphic' first principle of soul, that soul is the 'first fulfilment of a natural instrumental body', and towards the idea that soul operates in the body of living beings as a formal, final, and efficient cause.

This thesis examines the role appearances play, with notable continuity, in the psychology and ethics of Plato's Protagoras, Gorgias, and Republic. Common to these dialogues is the claim that evaluative appearances are almost invariably false: what appears to be good or bad is typically not in fact so and what is good or bad typically does not appear so. I argue that this disparity between apparent and real value forms the basis of Plato's diagnoses of a wide range of practical errors: psychological phenomena like akrasia, mistaken conceptions of the good like hedonism, and the influence of cultural sources of corruption like oratory, sophistry, and poetry. It also, relatedly, forms the basis of his account of lower passions like appetite, anger, or fear. Such passions are especially prone to lead us astray because their objects -- appetitive pleasures like food, drink, or sex, for example -- present especially deceptive appearances. One of the principal aims of this thesis is to show that this presents a significant point of agreement between the psychologies of the Protagoras, Gorgias, and Republic. In all three dialogues, I argue, motivational errors result from a specific kind of cognitive error: the uncritical acceptance of appearances. Plato's early and middle psychologies differ in their account of the subject of this error -- in the Protagoras and Gorgias, the whole person; in the Republic, the appetitive or spirited part of a person's soul -- but not in their basic theory of how our passions arise or, crucially, why they are liable to motivate us towards harmful ends.

<p>This dissertation seeks to identify what makes Cicero’s approach to politics unique. The author's methodology is to turn to Cicero’s unique interpretation of Plato as the crux of what made his thinking neither Stoic nor Aristotelian nor even Platonic (at least, in the usual sense of the word) but Ciceronian. As the author demonstrates in his reading of Cicero’s correspondences and dialogues during the downward spiral of a decade that ended in the fall of the Republic (that is, from Cicero’s return from exile in 57 BC to Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon in 49 BC), it is through Cicero's reading of Plato that the former develops his characteristically Ciceronian approach to politics—that is, his appreciation for the tension between the political ideal on the one hand and the reality of human nature on the other as well as the need for rhetoric to fuse a practicable compromise between the two. This triangulation of political ideal, human nature, and rhetoric is developed by Cicero through his dialogues "de Oratore," "de Re publica," and "de Legibus."</p> / Dissertation