•  46
    The Groundwork for Dialectic in Statesman 277a-287b
    International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 12 (2): 132-150. 2018.
    In Plato’sStatesman, the Eleatic Stranger leads Socrates the Younger and their audience through an analysis of the statesman in the service of the interlocutors’ becoming “more capable in dialectic regarding all things” (285d7). In this way, the dialectical exercise in the text is both intrinsically and instrumentally valuable, as it yields a philosophically rigorous account of statesmanship and exhibits a method of dialectical inquiry. After the series of bifurcatory divisions in theSophistand …Read more
  •  46
    The Emerging Good in Plato’s Philebus (review)
    Ancient Philosophy 38 (2): 451-454. 2018.
    Review of 'The Emerging Good in Plato's' Philebus by John V. Garner (Northwestern University Press, 2017).
  •  38
    The Method of Bifurcatory Division in Plato’s Sophist
    Elenchos: Rivista di Studi Sul Pensiero Antico 42 (2): 229-260. 2021.
    The strange and challenging stretch of dialectic with which Plato’s Sophist begins and ends has confused and frustrated readers for generations, and despite receiving a fair amount of attention, there is no consensus regarding even basic issues concerning this method. Here I offer a new account of bifurcatory division as neither joke nor naïve method, but instead a valuable, propaedeutic method that Plato offers to us readers as a means of embarking upon the kind of mental gymnastics that will s…Read more
  •  36
    Plato’s Philebus: A Philosophical Discussion ed. by Panos Dimas, Russell E. Jones and Gabriel R. Lear (review)
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 60 (1): 155-156. 2022.
    Plato’s Philebus is motivated by a question concerning the relationships among pleasure, wisdom, knowledge, and the good human life. Something of a philosophical tour de force, it also contains discussions of numerous important Platonic subjects like cosmic intelligence, distinctions among intellectual capacities, and the method of dialectical inquiry through division and collection. But the riches of the dialogue are obscured by its exceptional difficulty, a frequent grievance from commentators…Read more
  •  33
    Dialectical Methods and the Stoicheia Paradigm in Plato’s Trilogy and Philebus
    Plato Journal: The Journal of the International Plato Society 19 7-23. 2019.
    Plato’s Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman exhibit several related dialectical methods relevant to Platonic education: maieutic in Theaetetus, bifurcatory division in Sophist and Statesman, and non-bifurcatory division in Statesman, related to the ‘god-given’ method in Philebus. I consider the nature of each method through the letter or element paradigm, used to reflect on each method. At issue are the element’s appearances in given contexts, its fitness for communing with other elements like it…Read more
  •  25
    I argue that the fallacy concerning false speech (283e-284c) in Plato’s Euthydemus does not entail conflation of the alleged existential and veridical senses of ‘einai’ (‘to be’), but instead confusion regarding predicative statements. I consider this passage by advancing interpretations of nonbeing and the structure of true and false speech in the Sophist. I aim to refute those who hold that this passage demands an ‘existential’ sense of ‘einai ’ by offering a more Platonic interpretation.
  •  23
    Diairesis and Koinonia in Sophist 253d1-e3
    History of Philosophy Quarterly 38 (1): 1-20. 2020.
    Here I interpret a central passage in Plato's Sophist by focusing on understudied elements that provide insight into the fit of the dialogue's parts and the Sophist-Statesman diptych as a whole. I argue that the Eleatic Stranger's account of what the dialectician "adequately views" at Sophist 253d1-e3 involves both division and the communion of ontological kinds, not just one or the other as has been typically argued. I also consider other key passages and the turn throughout the dialogue from…Read more
  •  20
    Being as Communion: Sophist 247D–248B
    Review of Metaphysics 76 (3): 395-423. 2023.
    Abstract:The author considers the Eleatic Stranger's account of being as communing (κοινωνεῖν), an under-recognized aspect of the well-known "dunamis proposal" and Plato's unfolding of the notion of being in the Sophist. The Stranger calls being "the power to act upon or be affected" (247d7-e3), and shortly thereafter describes "being affected or acting upon from a certain power" (248b6) as "communing" (248b2). This marks a shift away from understanding being as capacity toward understanding it …Read more
  •  18
    Toward a Two-Route Interpretation of Parmenidean Inquiry
    Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 24 (2): 279-297. 2020.
    In this paper I challenge the orthodox view regarding the number of routes of inquiry in Parmenides’s poem. The narrating goddess in Fragment 2 identifies ‘the only routes of inquiry there are for knowing,’ guided by the ‘[...] is [...]’ and guided by ‘what-is-not as such.’ In Fragment 6, the goddess considers taking ‘both to be and not to be’ to be ‘the same and not the same,’ and most modern commentators hold that this constitutes a third route. I argue instead that this interpretation entails…Read more
  •  10
    The Senses of Apeiron in Philebus 16b-27c
    Méthexis 35 (1): 167-184. 2023.
    Scholars debate whether ‘apeiron’ (unlimited) is univocal or multivocal in Plato’s 'Philebus.' Offering a ‘middle path,’ I argue that the term is univocal, but used with respect to two senses of unlimited continua. The term appears early in two dense passages on ontological structure: the descriptions of the ‘god-given method’ (16b-18d) and ‘the fourfold division of beings’ (23c-27c). I consider each passage and argue that they respectively concern the eidetic continua of being that the knowe…Read more
  •  9
    Being in No Way and Being in Every Way
    Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 29 (1): 23-41. 2024.
    This paper concerns two similar phrases in Plato’s Sophist: ‘that-which-is-in-no-way’ (‘to mēdamōs on,’ 237b7–8) and ‘that-which-is-in-every-way’ (‘to pantelōs on,’ 248e8–249a1). I argue these capture parallel moments in the Sophist’s accounts of nonbeing (236e–241b) and being (242a–249d). In each instance, the Eleatic Stranger shows the necessity of understanding nonbeing and being as kinds, not indications of a set of entities bearing certain properties, and what each kind must entail. Thus un…Read more
  •  2
    Editorial
    Ancient Philosophy Today 3 (1): 1-2. 2021.
    Ancient Philosophy Today, Volume 3, Issue 1, Page 1-2, April, 2021.
  •  2
    The Case for the 399 BCE Dramatic Date of Plato's Cratylus
    Classical Philology 117 (4): 645-661. 2022.
    I here revive and support the hypothesis that Plato's Cratylus is set in 399 BCE, on the day of the Theaetetus and Euthyphro and before that of the Sophist and Statesman. To revive it, I suggest that the competing cases for other dramatic dates are weaker. To support it, I show that the connections between the Cratylus and Euthyphro warrant reconsideration, and I consider neglected dramatic details, the role of etymology in religious esotericism, and some missed connections between the philoso…Read more
  • Performativity and the Vitality of Discourse in Plato’s Phaedrus
    In Henry C. Curcio, Mark Ralkowski & Heather L. Reid (eds.), Paideia and Performance, Parnassos Press. pp. 163-182. 2023.
  • Inquiring into being: essays on Parmenides (edited book)
    State University of New York Press. 2025.
    New essays on early Greek natural philosopher Parmenides, who is perhaps the originator of metaphysics.