Essays on Plato
Edward P. Butler
Top 10 Best Quotes
“Φύσις is used, e.g., at Rep. 620c, as a synonym for that which elsewhere in Er’s account is more often termed βίος, a life or way of life, namely that structure which, through the choice of a paradigm, the individual brings forth. This structure expresses the different result that follows from one individual choosing a particular paradigm rather than another individual choosing the same one: same paradigm, different life.”
“the ‘anti-essentialists’ are quite heterogeneous and in open conflict on certain issues. On the one hand, there are those constituting what Allan Silverman has labelled a new anti-essentialist “orthodoxy”, e.g. Fine, Annas, Moravcsik, McCabe et al.[99] Also classifiable as ‘anti-essentialist’ is a growing body of scholarship that displaces forms as such from a central place in Plato’s ‘ontology’ in favor of unities such as souls and minds (see, e.g., Lloyd Gerson, Knowing Persons; Gerd van Riel, Plato’s Gods). And where in this picture ought one to place the so-called Tübingen school, which displaces the theory of forms in the interest of a doctrine of principles (archai) drawn from the testimonia and careful reading of the dialogues?”
“the transition from the reign of Kronos to [25] that of Zeus as recounted in Hesiod does lead to the establishment of a more just order among the Gods, one chiefly operating through persuasion and the balancing of honors (timai) rather than force of will (Ouranos) or calculation (Kronos).”
“the Gods are to the ideas generally what, e.g., fire is to the idea of heat (Phaed. 105c).”
“for Aristotle (Politics 1323b23-26) the God is blessed “not because of any exoteric good but through himself, on account of being a nature of a certain kind,”
“Within henology, multiple ontologies are possible simultaneously, and what is is no longer prescriptive for what might be.”
“With respect to astronomy, we know that in his dialogue the Laws, the importance of astronomy is that celestial motion is akin to “the motion and revolution and calculations of reason” (Laws 897c). Thus the role of astronomy in Plato’s argument would have concerned the importance of a certain kind of motion in the cosmos, namely the kind that holds things together and fosters their orderly coexistence rather than their dispersion and disintegration, both individually and in harmonious conjunction. Plato would have sought to demonstrate thereby the way in which a single principle, the principle of unity, could govern all things in a just manner.”
“We see the way in which beauty in particular interacts with the peculiar attributes borne by various Gods in the account Plato offers of erotic attraction. Humans who find themselves on the Earth together at a given moment have been, prior to their return into bodies, followers or attendants of various deities. Socrates explicitly remarks that he was a follower of Zeus, and presumes this of Phaedrus as well (Phaedr. 250b). This prenatal cultic affiliation, so to speak, manifests itself in our patterns of erotic attraction. Plato goes into quite a bit of detail. The God to whom we are affiliated affects not only the qualities we find attractive in another, but also our style as lovers and the qualities which, once we have found a partner, we seek to bring out simultaneously in them and in ourselves.”
“We are reminded of the formulations from the vision of Er when the Philebus states that “in the nature [φύσις] of Zeus … a kingly soul and a kingly mind appeared through the power of the cause, and in other deities other noble qualities from which they derive their favourite epithets” (30d, trans. Fowler, slightly modified).”
“To recognize how fundamental polytheism is to Plato’s metaphysics, one need only reflect on the Timaeus, in which the cosmos itself comes to be from one God beholding another God.”
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