PLATO’S INTRODUCTION OF FORMS

Dancy focuses on the arguments and defends a developmental picture. He explains the Theory of Forms of the Phaedo and Symposium as an outgrowth of the quest for definitions canvased in the Socratic dialogues, by constructing a Theory of Definition for the Socratic dialogues based on the refutations of definitions in those dialogues, and showing how that theory is mirrored in the Theory of Forms. His discussion, notable for both its clarity and its meticulous scholarship, ranges in detail over a number of Plato’s early and middle dialogues, and will be of interest to readers in Plato studies and in ancient philosophy more generally.

R. M. DANCY is Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University. He is the author of Sense and Contradiction: A Study in Aristotle (1975) and Two Studies in the Early Academy (1991), and editor of Kant and Critique (1993).