I propose a new interpretation of Plato’s Parmenides. I avoid the assumption of Developmentalism, that Plato is criticising his own ‘middle’ theory of forms. Instead, I read the dialogue as Plato’s serious presentation of the Eleatic position. He shows that Eleatics’s counterintuitive thesis follows from the fundamental assumption of qualitati…[Read more]

The Dream Theory in Theaetetus is Plato’s generalised account of Presocratic elements. Evidence for this given from Laws, Phaedo, Timaeus, and through a comparison with Aristotle’s account.

A response to John Finamore, “The Divided Line and the Cave in Proclus’ Republic Commentary.”

What has proportion to do with humor or irony? And what do either of these have to do with being human? Jokes, laughter, and funniness connote excess, exaggeration, incongruity, dissonance, etc., the opposite of proportion–balance, symmetry, Aristotle’s golden mean. Yet, The Philosopher maintains, the wit has found the ideal moderate position b…[Read more]

[This draft is for the Oxford Handbook of Apophatic Theology.] This chapter identifies an apophatic theology common to the three Cappadocian Fathers—Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa. The central theme of their apophatic theology is the incomprehensibility of God. God, they argue, is known under multiple concepts and n…[Read more]

Interpretations of the Theaetetus digression fail to see how it functions in Plato’s argument because they have taken its praise of the philosopher at face value. But this is not the philosopher from Republic. His otherworldliness reflects both Theodorus’ mathematical understanding of philosophy as the study of ‘divine’ objects and the judgeme…[Read more]