In this paper I argue that, according to Plato’s Statesman, true statesmen directly control, administer, or govern none of the affairs of the city. Rather, administration and governance belong entirely to the citizens. Instead of governing the city, the task of the statesman is to facilitate the citizens’ successful self-governance or self-rule. And true statesmen do this through legislation, by means of which they inculcate in the citizens true opinions about the just, the good, the fine, and the opposites of (...) these. (shrink)

While Aristotle is often lauded, especially by virtue ethicists, for his focus on and insight into virtue, a central aspect of his conception of virtue—the doctrine of the mean—is often derided as false if not indeed absurd. The reason for this disparity in reaction to Aristotle is that the doctrine of the mean has been severely misinterpreted as stating that there are a variety of parameters in which one must achieve a mean. Such a doctrine is false, but it is (...) not Aristotle’s. In this paper, the author gives a more accurate account of the doctrine of the mean than has heretofore been given. According to this account, the doctrine simply states that virtue disposes one to feel one’s passions with an appropriate intensity. The author closes by considering Hursthouse’s famous criticisms of the doctrine of the mean, and he shows that they fail to be reasons for rejecting the doctrine. (shrink)

Schelling’s 1794 commentary on the Timaeus makes extensive use of Plato’s Philebus, particularly the principles of limit and unlimited. In this article, we demonstrate the resonances between Schelling’s 1794 treatment of the metaphysics of the Philebus and his 1798 philosophy of nature. Attention to these resonances demonstrates an underexplored but important debt to Plato in Schelling’s philosophy of nature. In particular, Schelling is indebted to Plato’s late metaphysics in his model of the iterative combination of two basic principles: a productive, (...) positive principle, akin to Plato’s unlimited, and a limiting, negative principle, akin to Plato’s limit. In Schelling’s philosophy of nature, the iterative interaction of these principles both provides a common ground for and accounts for the differences between inorganic and organic nature. (shrink)

This paper extracts and articulates the account of normativity in Plato’s Philebus. Central to this account is the concept of measure, which plays both an ontological and a normative role. With regard to the former, measure is what makes particular things to be the specific kind of thing they are; with regard to the latter, measure supplies the appropriate standard for determining whether or not those things are good or bad instances of their kind. As a result of measure playing (...) these two roles, normative evaluation is grounded in the ontological structure of the thing being evaluated. (shrink)

This paper concerns the two arts of measurement discussed at Statesman 283-287b. In particular, it argues against the standard interpretation of the first art of measurement, according to which the various branches of mathematics are instances of the first art. Having argued against this standard view, this paper then supplies a more accurate interpretation in its place. Furthermore, it discusses the consequences of this interpretive disagreement for how we understand the relationship between the Statesman's art of measurement and Aristotle's doctrine (...) of the mean. (shrink)