Engaging directly with the question whether Platonic Forms are concepts, David Sedley’s chapter ’Are Platonic Forms Concepts?’ takes its start from the Parmenides 132b–c, where Socrates and Parmenides briefly examine the hypothesis that Forms are ‘thoughts’ (noēmata). Sedley asks what ‘thoughts’ are in that context, and argues that they are not thought contents, but acts of thinking. The chapter offers an ambitious and comprehensive analysis of the classical theory of Forms as showcased in the Phaedo, Republic, Parmenides, and Timaeus, in terms that clarify why Plato was bound to reject the hypothesis considered in the Parmenides (132b–c), namely that Forms are thoughts.

Plotinus’ views on concepts have so far received little attention, whereas his views on ennoiai, conceptions, have been more widely discussed. This is partly due to the varied vocabulary that Plotinus uses to refer to what we might call concepts, assuming that the latter are understood as mental items distinct from thoughts. Sara Magrin’s chapter ‘Plotinus on Concepts’ focuses on one important passage of the Enneads (Ennead 6.6.12–14) which offers a critical discussion of an account of the concepts (ennoēmata) of one and numbers commonly attributed to the Stoics. The chapter pursues the twofold aim of reconstructing the account in question and of interpreting and assessing Plotinus’ criticism of it. This has scarcely, if ever, been attempted in the scholarship, both because the evidential value of that passage in respect of the Stoics has been deemed questionable and because Plotinus’ criticism of the Stoic concept of number is extremely compact and difficult to articulate. The main contribution of Magrin’s analysis consists in her use of Plotinus’ criticism of the Stoics as evidence, on the basis of which she pieces together Plotinus’ views on concepts.

This chapter is focused on aspects ot the superordinate Idea of the Good. Why is the first principle of all a normative principle (Section 2.1)? How does the Idea of the Good differ from an “ordinary” Form of the Good (Section 2.2)? Why is the unhypothetical first principle of all also the goal of everything, that which all desire (Section 2.3)? How does the Idea of the Good differ from the Demiurge? Why is the Demiurge good but not the Good (Section 2.4)? How is the admonition in Theaetetus to “assimilate to god” related to the Good as goal (Section 2.5)? In Symposium, the relation between eros and the Good is explored (Section 2.6). In Lysis, the idea of a “prōton philon” is comapred to the Idea of the Good as goal (Section 2.7). The evidence frrom Aristotle and from the indirect tradition that Plato identified the Good with “the One” is assembled. Why is oneness an index of goodness? The idea of integrated unity according to kind is introduced (Section 2.8).

This famous argument is important for understanding how, according to Socrates, we can inquire without the senses: the knowledge is already within us; the senses are merely necessary for triggering the beginning of inquiry. I argue that Socrates treats recollecting as an extended process. His claim is that learning is a type of recollecting that begins when we first perceive something and continues until we acquire knowledge of the relevant form. Moreover, I argue that Socrates is interested in a type of recollecting that involves perceiving one thing and bringing to mind another, which is the very standard by which one can judge the first. Socrates does not provide here an argument for accepting “Platonic forms,” where these are understood as including all of Plato’s central commitments about the forms. Instead, his argument highlights one key difference between ordinary objects and forms: that the latter do not change over time, whereas the former do.

This argument (typically called the “affinity argument”) is central to the structure of the Phaedo, setting up much of the remainder of the dialogue. Moreover, it develops the dialogue’s most detailed account of the forms and of ordinary objects, and it argues for an innovative account of the nature of the soul, which is relied upon in Socrates’ ethical account in the next section. Despite this, the argument has received very little scholarly attention, supposedly because scholars widely view it as an especially bad argument. This chapter shows that the argument is much more precise and stronger than has been appreciated. In doing so, it argues that Socrates describes here a new, fundamental feature of the forms: they are simple in a way that makes them partless – in strong contrast to ordinary objects, whose complex structure allows them to have opposing features at the same time.

Cebes’ cloakmaker objection presents an alternative model of the soul according to which it is ultimately destroyed in the process of providing life to the body. Socrates’ final argument rejects this model by arguing that the soul’s bringing life to the body, far from destroying the soul, is precisely what ensures that it must be immortal and imperishable. In doing so, the argument identifies a way in which the soul has a characteristic of the divine – immortality – thereby specifying one way in which it is akin to the divine, as Socrates claimed in the kinship argument. Thus, the final argument responds to Cebes’ cloak maker objection in a way that further fills in the kinship argument’s account of the soul. The final argument also includes an important discussion of forms and ordinary objects. I argue that Socrates here identifies the most basic reason why forms cannot be ordinary, perceptible things: ordinary objects are receptive of opposites, whereas forms cannot be.

Socrates argues here that the sole pursuit of philosophers is dying and being dead. In doing so, he introduces most of the key topics in the dialogue, including forms, inquiry, the soul, and the philosophical life. Nonetheless, this section of the dialogue is often overlooked, perhaps because it seems simply to assert many of its claims. I argue that we often must wait until later in the dialogue to find the explanation for these claims, as part of the Phaedo’s unfolding structure. Once we take this section seriously, we can appreciate its tight and careful argumentative structure. Moreover, Socrates’ accounts here, in particular his ethical account, are sophisticated theories in their own right. The section also introduces some unusual and important terminology that Socrates uses later in the dialogue, including “auto kath’ auto” (which I argue should be translated “itself through itself”) and terminology for identifying the forms. The chapter ends with a new account of the famous “exchange passage.”

This chapter begins by arguing that to understand Socrates’ (alleged) autobiography, we need to appreciate that he distinguishes between the terms “aitios” (responsible) and “aitia” (cause). Socrates’ account should be understood against the backdrop of the sophisticated treatments of aitios and aitia and of hypotheses in fifth-century medical treatises. At the same time, the autobiography shows how Socrates – as portrayed throughout Plato’s dialogues – would engage with the natural scientific tradition: he shows his hallmark profession of ignorance; he becomes excited by the prospect of acquiring knowledge of the good; since he is unable to learn this from Anaxagoras or others, he proceeds in a way that does not require knowledge; instead, he hypothesizes the existence of the things sought by his typical “what is it?” question. I argue that Socrates might not be interested in teleology here, as opposed to simply being interested in knowledge of the good. Once we situate the method of hypothesis within the overall dialogue, we can see that it is supposed to help one slowly build rational trust in a theory, thereby avoiding the cycle of trust and doubt that leads to misology.

This chapter argues that Irish modernism is founded on a broad notion of technology as form and an awareness of the embeddedness of technoscience in the imperial military power that supports British colonial rule. The first wave of Irish modernists, or what are referred to in the chapter as protomodernists, engaged critically with technological forms by the end of the nineteenth century, setting them alongside literary forms and evaluating them as modes of perception, engagement, and mediation. By the height of the European modernist period, Irish modernists would fully acknowledge that technoscientific development was part of a larger network of forms that could not be so easily disentangled from literary form. And all recognised those forms, this chapter argues, as ‘[organising] a situation of moral decision-making’, in the words of Peter-Paul Verbeek.

The introduction traces the emergence of new forms of the near future to the global financial crisis of 2008 and ensuing events, linked to an urgent awareness of coming and needed change in relation to global environmental crisis. It argues that by merging the Anthropocene with the broader contemporary field, the near future provides a better means of understanding how global warming makes its presence felt in fiction than does a focus on ‘climate fiction’ alone. Two major themes shape contemporary culture’s relationship to the Anthropocene: the prospect of radical change, and of a broad collective. A large number of works, explored through the first half of the book as the ‘domestic near future’, recoil from the prospect of such cooperation and such change. The second half reads a set of fictions which do try to imagine new kinds of collectivity, and radical change, though they frequently struggle to find a generic form adequate to the task. In these cases, the near future acts more like the emergent form that Raymond Williams hypothesised, underlining the link between the emergent near future as narrative genre, and the cultural shift to which such a genre might correspond.

One of the ways in which Plato has captured the popular imagination is with the claim that the philosopher can feel ers, passionate love, for the objects of knowledge. Why should Plato make this claim? In this chapter, I explore Plato’s treatment of philosophical ers along three dimensions. First, I consider the source of philosophical ers. I argue that it is grounded in our mortality and imperfection, which give rise to a desire for immortality and the immortal. Second, I turn to the object of philosophical ers. I suggest that it is an arresting response to beauty, through which we come to value the ideal properties of the forms. Finally, I address the nature of ers. I claim that it is a focusing desire, that overrides other concerns and causes us to overwhelmingly focus on its object. I conclude the chapter by considering the problem Vlastos famously raises for Plato’s account of ers: can it do justice to disinterested, interpersonal love? In agreement with Vlastos, I claim that one who comes to grasp the forms will cease to feel interpersonal love; however, I also suggest that ers can give rise to philia, beneficent concern with the wellbeing of others.

There is one fundamental argument in the Republic for the conclusion that justice is the greatest good. It begins in Book II; although adumbrated in Book IV, it is not completed until Book IX; and it draws essentially on material in Books VI and VII about Platonic forms, knowledge, and philosophical training. Justice consists in the rule of reason over spirit and appetite, but to understand the value of this state fully we must see how it is instantiated in the philosopher. Goodness consists in order, and by cognizing and loving forms (the most orderly objects there are) the philosopher possesses the highest goods. A fully just person is a creator and lover of orderly relationships among human beings. This condition exists to some degree in all just individuals, but it is most fully present in those who understand what justice is – philosophers.

This chapter offers a guide to reading Plato’s dialogues, including an overview of his corpus. We recommend first considering each dialogue as its own unified work, before considering how it relates to the others. In general, the dialogues explore ideas and arguments, rather than presenting parts of a comprehensive philosophical system that settles on final answers. The arc of a dialogue frequently depends on who the individual interlocutors are. We argue that the traditional division of the corpus (into Socratic, middle, late stages) is useful, regardless of whether it is a chronological division. Our overview of the corpus gives special attention to the Republic, since it interweaves so many of his key ideas, even if nearly all of them receive longer treatments in other dialogues. Although Plato recognized the limits inherent in written (as opposed to spoken) philosophy, he devoted his life to producing these works, which are clearly meant to help us seek the deepest truths. Little can be learned from reports of Plato’s oral teaching or the letters attributed to him. Understanding the dialogues on their own terms is what offers the greatest reward.

The chapter aims to show that Plato’s engagement with mystery cults – the Eleusinian mysteries and Orphic cults in particular – can illuminate centrally important topics of Plato’s philosophy, including his conception of the philosophical life, its relation to the human good, the role of memory in the knowledge of the Forms, and the soul’s kinship to the divine. It explores why and how Plato presents philosophy as the true initiation which can fulfil the promise of the mystery cults to offer the best human life and afterlife. It analyses why and how Plato describes the knowledge of the Forms on the model of the direct encounter with the divine at the culmination of a mystery ritual. It further suggests that the ‘birth’ announced at the highest point of the Eleusinian mysteries can shed new light on the role of ‘giving birth’ at the culmination of the philosophical life in the Symposium. Finally, it shows how Pythagorean and Orphic focus on memory offered Plato a framework to develop his account of the relationship between the soul and the divine Forms, reincarnation, and the fate of our soul in the afterlife.

The chapter asks if the first part of the Parmenides (including the “Third Man”) shows that Plato abandoned Platonic forms, and argues instead that Plato’s “Third Man” passage is not an indirect proof of anything: it simply shows the youthful Socrates not able to defend his views on forms. The exercise Parmenides then prescribes and demonstrates is the way forward Plato provided. It leads us to distinguish two kinds of predication, corresponding to two kinds of facts about forms. Better-organized thinking about forms lets us reject the notion that to perform their work in Plato’s theory, they must be perfect exemplars along the lines of “the Platonic ideal of the banana split.” This dispels the underlying problem which led to confusion over the “Third Man.” We can face down analogues of that argument for any form, from the Fox and Triangularity to Likeness and the Beautiful. This interpretation emerges from detailed construal of the text, taking account of both its literary and overtly philosophical aspects; the chapter brings together background for Plato’s agenda in his previous works, in the works of Anaxagoras and the historical Parmenides, and in Greek usage.

Plato’s philosophical writings have over the centuries evoked widely differing styles of response. Platonist metaphysical systems have been created, as by his first successors in the Academy, down to Plotinus and later Neoplatonists and beyond; while the questioning spirit they evince was what fuelled the scepticism of Arcesilaus and Carneades in the Hellenistic period, and what most impressed James Mill and George Grote, the nineteenth-century British ‘Philosophical Radicals’. Both types of response agreed, however, in rejecting what the dialogues call ‘opinion’, the metaphysicians because it lacks the security and clarity of true knowledge, the sceptics and radicals because it leaves prevailing norms unquestioned. They all took from Plato the precept: Think for yourself, whatever opinion or the prevailing norms may be. And from the beginning they disagreed among themselves too, with Speusippus, Plato’s nephew and his successor as head of the Academy, already rejecting the dialogues’ theory of transcendent Forms. Where the theory was embraced, it was developed further than its originator ever did himself or perhaps could have done. Plato wrote for eternity, to open minds and encourage independent thought in any reader, whatever their historical circumstances.

Book X of the Republic does not ban more mimesis than Book III, nor operate with a different concept of mimesis, two claims often made. It surveys the same territory from a higher, more philosophical perspective, illuminating it particularly by reference to the theory of Forms and the psychology of soul parts that were introduced in sections of the Republic subsequent to Book III. Indeed, its arguments are directed to the philosopher, or someone sympathetic to Plato’s philosophy, not to any and every potential reader. Where they go beyond Book III in scope of what is banned is in pronouncing an anathema upon any poetry oriented towards pleasure rather than to what is beneficial, or upon what Socrates refers to as ‘the honeyed Muse’ – leaving only hymns to the gods and encomia of exemplary, heroic citizens. We endanger our souls and our grip on truth if, in watching tragic drama, we allow ourselves to enjoy grieving over suffering, and to some extent to believe, against our better judgment, that ups and downs of fortune are much more significant than they really are. Book X speaks to us from the viewpoint of eternity, from a position of deep spiritual elitism.