Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T17:42:42.885Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Normativity in Plato’s Philebus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 December 2020

Jeffrey J. Fisher
Jeffrey J. Fisher*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA
*
Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

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.

Keywords

PlatoPhilebusmeasurenormativityontology
Type
Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 50 , Issue 8 , November 2020 , pp. 966 - 980
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Canadian Journal of Philosophy

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Annas, Julia. 1981. An Introduction to Plato’s Republic. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Barker, Andrew. 1989. Greek Musical Writings, II: Harmonic and Acoustic Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Barney, Rachel. 2016. “Plato on Measure and the Good: The Rank-Ordering of the Philebus .” In Plato’s Philebus: Proceedings of the Ninth Symposium Platonicum Pragense , edited by Jirsa, Jakub, Karfík, Filip, and Špinka, Štěpán, 208–29. Prague: Oikomenh.Google Scholar
Brewer, Talbot. 2009. The Retrieval of Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooper, John. 1977. “The Psychology of Justice in Plato.” American Philosophical Quarterly 14 (2): 151–57.Google Scholar
Cooper, Neil. 1968. “Pleasure and Goodness in Plato’s Philebus .” The Philosophical Quarterly 18 (70): 12–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Delcomminette, Sylvain. 2005. “La just mesure. Étude sur les rapports entre le Politique et le Philèbe” Les études philosophiques (special iss.: Le Politique de Platon): 347–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foot, Philippa. 2003. Natural Goodness. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Frede, Dorothea, trans. 1993. Philebus. By Plato. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.Google Scholar
Geach, Peter. 1957. “Good and Evil.” Analysis 17 (2): 33–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gill, Mary Louise. 2019. “The Fourfold Division of Beings: Philebus 23b–27c.” In Plato’s Philebus: A Philosophical Discussion , edited by Panos, Dimas, Jones, Russell E., and Lear, Gabriel R., 71–89. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grube, G. M. A. 1935. Plato’s Thought. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Hampton, Cynthia. 1990. Pleasure, Knowledge, and Being: An Analysis of Plato’s Philebus. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Harte, Verity. 2002. Plato on Parts and Wholes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harte, Verity. 2019. “The Dialogue’s Finale: Philebus 64c–67b.” In Dimas, Panos, Jones, Russell E., and Lear, Gabriel R., 2019: 253–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harvey, George. 2009. “ Technê and the Good in Plato’s Statesman and Philebus .” Journal of the History of Philosophy 47 (1): 1–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackson, Henry. 1882. “Plato’s Later Theory of Ideas: The Philebus and Aristotle’s Metaphysics I. 6.” Journal of Philosophy 10: 253–98.Google Scholar
Kraut, Richard. 2011. Against Absolute Goodness. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lang, Philippa. 2010. “The Ranking of Goods at Philebus 66a–67b.” Phronesis 55: 153–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moore, G. E. 1903. Principia Ethica. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Moravcsik, Julius. 1979. “Forms, Nature, and the Good in the Philebus .” Phronesis 24: 81–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Penner, Terry. 2003. “The Forms, the Form of the Good, and the Desire for Good in Plato’s Republic .” Modern Schoolman 80 (3): 191–233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sayre, Kenneth. 1987. “The Philebus and the Good: The Unity of the Dialogue in which the Good is Unity.” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 2: 45–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sayre, Kenneth. 2005. Plato’s Late Ontology: A Riddle Resolved. Las Vegas, NV: Parmenides.Google Scholar
Silverman, Allan. 2002. The Dialectic of Essence: A Study of Plato’s Metaphysics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Thomson, Judith Jarvis. 2008. Normativity. Peru, IL: Open Court.Google Scholar
Vogt, Katja. 2010. “Why Pleasure Gains Fifth Rank: Against the Anti-Hedonist Interpretation of the Philebus .” In Plato’s Philebus: Selected Papers from the Eighth Symposium Platonicum , edited by Dillon, John and Brisson, Luc, 250–55. Sankt Augustin, Ger.: Academia Verlag.Google Scholar
White, Nicholas. 1979. A Companion to Plato’s Republic. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.Google Scholar