Volume 44, Issue 2

Traditionally, scholars have taken homoiôsis theôi in the Theaetetus digression (172c–177c) to require neglect of particulars, but they have noted that although Socrates advocates it, he does not live such a life. To explain the discrepancy, Mahoney and Rue both argue that we need to reinterpret godlikeness to require active engagement in the city. I reject their reinterpretations and I revise the traditional view, arguing that godlikeness is not a single ideal. Instead, I argue, Plato provides several different portraits of godlikeness that together suggest interest in particulars makes the person neither better nor worse as a philosopher.

Each of the degenerating constitutions in Book VIII of Plato's Republic is the result of the disappearance of one of the four cardinal virtues. The failure of wisdom creates a timocracy; the failure of courage, an oligarchy; the failure of moderation, a democracy; the failure of justice, a tyranny. The degeneration shows that the disunited virtues are imperfect, though they have some power to stave off vice. Thus Book VIII implies a unity of the virtues thesis according to which perfect virtues can only exist in a united state, but imperfect simulacra of virtue can exist in a disunited state.

In the Timaeus , Plato says that the hypothesis of there being five worlds casts a reasonable doubt. Neither ancient commentators of Plato nor modern scholars have succeeded in unveiling the meaning of this hypothesis. I propose that five is the number of combinations with which the five platonic solids can be arranged in sets of four, each set making up a world. I discuss the question of whether Plato's mathematical skills made him equal to the task of calculating the correct number of combinations, as well as the possible reasons why he rejected the hypothesis of there being five worlds.

By defending the following views – that Aristotle identifies the generator and perhaps the obstacle remover (in an extended sense) as an essential cause of the natural sublunary elemental motion in Physics VIII 4; that this view is consistent with the view of Physics II 1 that the sublunary simple bodies have a principle of internal motion; and that the sublunary and the celestial elements have a nature in the very same way – I shall offer what has so far eluded Aristotelian commentators: a consistent interpretation of Aristotle's theory of the natural motions of the sublunary and also the celestial elements.

In the Philebus , Plato claims that there exists a natural state of organic harmony in which a living organism is neither restored nor depleted. In contrast to many scholars, I argue that this natural state of organic stability differs from a neutral state between pleasure and pain that Plato also discusses in the dialogue: the natural is without any changes to the organism, the neutral is merely without the perception of these changes. I contend that Plato considers the natural state to be unobtainable by human beings, who can only achieve its closest approximation, namely, the neutral state.