•  3
    Difference in Kind: Observations on the Distinction of the Megista Gene
    In Beatriz Bossi & Thomas M. Robinson (eds.), Plato's "Sophist" Revisited, Walter De Gruyter. pp. 247-268. 2013.
  •  4197
    The eponymous dialogue presents the sophist as a figure who defies definition, and those difficulties are attributed to the conception of the image. Ultimately, the sophist is defined as a species of image maker. The image, however, which is important throughout the Platonic corpus as a metaphor, an analogy, and a metaphysical concept as well, receives in the Sophist little clarification or definition apart from whatever may be inferred from the division of image making arts. In the Sophist, the…Read more
  •  11
    R. E. Allen, 1931-2007
    Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 81 (2). 2007.
  •  4
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Book Reviews Kenneth Dorter. Form and Good in Plato's Eleatic Dialogues: The "'Parmenides," "Theaetetus," "Sophist," and "Statesman." Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994. Pp. x + 256. Cloth, $45.00. Dorter's title suggests an engagement with Eieaticism, and, certainly in three of" the dialogues, Parmenides was much on Plato's mind. In a book otherwise sensitive to implications of dramatic setting for the ar…Read more
  •  978
    Difference in Kind: Observations on the Distinction of the Megista Gene
    In Beatriz Bossi & Thomas M. Robinson (eds.), Plato's "Sophist" Revisited, Walter De Gruyter. pp. 247-268. 2013.
    It is argued that the analysis by which the gene are differentiated in the dialogue is an exercise in studied ambiguities informed by an Eleatic logic of strict dichotomy that was the underpinning of the Sophist's method of division. By this dialectical drill, Plato shows that the metaphysics underlying the Visitor's method fails to adequately distinguish what it means to have a character from what it means to be a character, and therefore remains inadequate to track down the sophist or to disti…Read more
  •  77
    The Theaetetus is subtitled peri epistemes, on knowledge, and peirastikos, tentative. Theaetetus' three attempted definitions of knowledge, each ventured only to fail, are structured in a cascading reduction. This regress functions both negatively, as an indirect demonstration that knowledge is not definable in term of opinion or judgment, that is, knowledge is not "opinion plus," but also positively, as the ill-fated definitions build upon one another to delineate the elements necessary for a p…Read more
  •  16
    The book is a translation of the Sophist with a running commentary. Three main points are argued: the dialogue does not present positive doctrine but has the structure of a reductio ad absurdum, Plato's point is to criticize the metaphysics of Parmenides. By failing to account for resemblance, Eleaticism implies an inadequate theory of relations, which makes impossible any understanding of "essence." Consequently, Eleaticism can be taken as the philosophical underpinning for the antithesis of ph…Read more