Volume 52, Issue 2 -

No Socratic theory of forms is implied by the questions Socrates asks in Plato’s Euthyphro . His questions appear to commit him to the existence of a certain kind of paradigm form in the Euthyphro , but there is no place for such a form in his philosophy, and that is a good thing, for such a form cannot exist. As stated, the main question does not have an answer, but it is reasonable for Socrates to ask it in the context of Euthyphro’s claims. if they could be supported, Socrates’ question would have an answer. But Euthyphro’s claims are not supportable. The turn toward a paradigm form for piety is a wrong turn; the turn toward the part-whole relation is another. Piety cannot be a proper part of justice on any view that is plausibly Socratic. Piety concerns the whole of virtue in a way that distinguishes it from primary virtues such as justice, and this point prepares the way for Socrates’ defense in the Apology .

Aristotle often claims that some animal kinds “dualise” between two opposite groups (e. g., terrestrial and aquatic, or biped and quadruped), i. e. that they belong “to both and to neither”. This claim is paradoxical since it appears to attribute incompatible features to the same kind. Some scholars have therefore suggested that, for Aristotle, dualisers are not an objective phenomenon, but rather a misleading appearance that depends of the ambiguity of terms like “aquatic”. Others have argued that Aristotle’s classifications contain overlaps because they are not meant to capture an essentialist hierarchy of kinds. I show that Aristotle sees dualisers as an objective feature of the world that does not depend on the ambiguity of our concepts, and that the passages on dualisers can be better understood on an essentialist (as opposed to a relativist) interpretation of classification. For Aristotle, dualisers belong “to both and to neither” of two opposite kinds because they belong to both in a spurious sense, but they are not full members of either.

At the beginning of Categories 5, Aristotle distinguishes between two kinds of substance: primary substance and secondary substance . Primary substances include particular living organisms, inanimate objects, and their parts. Secondary substances are the species and genera of these. This distinction is unique to the Categories , which raises the question of why Aristotle treats species and genera as substances. I argue that Aristotle has two distinct reasons for doing so, and contrast my interpretation with recent alternatives. On my view, species and genera enjoy two kinds of fundamentality – ontological and epistemological – in virtue of which they warrant their status as substances.

The Pyrrhonist’s argumentative practice is characterized by at least four features. First, he makes a therapeutic use of arguments: he employs arguments that differ in their persuasiveness in order to cure his dogmatic patients of the distinct degrees of conceit and rashness that afflict them. Secondly, his arguments are for the most part dialectical : when offering an argument to oppose it to another argument advanced by a given dogmatist, he accepts in propria persona neither the truth of its premises and conclusion nor the validity of its logical form. Thirdly, he avails himself of arguments in his own open-minded inquiry into the truth about a wide range of topics. Fourthly, Pyrrhonian argumentation is oppositional inasmuch as it typically works by producing oppositions among arguments that appear to the Pyrrhonist to be equipollent. In this article, I focus on the first three features with the aim of both shedding some light on them and determining whether they are in tension or coherently relate to each other.