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A Critical Analysis Of The Metaphysics Of Limit And Unlimited In Plato's Philebus, Ashley Lascano

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This paper examines several key passages within Plato’s Philebus and analyses the underlying metaphysics that exists at the heart of the dialogue. Plato implements the metaphysics in the dialogue by utilizing the terminology of “the limit” and “the unlimited”. This paper examines the Pythagorean origins of the limit and unlimited and depicts how Plato has adapted the terms from their original intent. The Philebus is examined to show the metaphysical importance of the limit and unlimited. The dialogue displays an example of the metaphysics of the limit and the unlimited through the debate between pleasure and intelligence, which is a …

Truth And Falsehood In Plato's Sophist, Michael Oliver Wiitala

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

This dissertation is a study of the ontological foundations of true and false speech in Plato’s Sophist. Unlike most contemporary scholarship on the Sophist, my dissertation offers a wholistic account of the dialogue, demonstrating that the ontological theory of the “communing” of forms and the theory of true and false speech later in the dialogue entail one another.

As I interpret it, the account of true and false speech in the Sophist is primarily concerned with true and false speech about the forms. As Plato sees it, we can only make true statements about spatio-temporal beings if it …