Traditionally, scholars have taken homoiôsis theôi in the Theaetetus digression (172c–177c) to require neglect of particulars, but they have noted that although Socrates advocates it, he does not live such a life. To explain the discrepancy, Mahoney and Rue both argue that we need to reinterpret godlikeness to require active engagement in the city. I reject their reinterpretations and I revise the traditional view, arguing that godlikeness is not a single ideal. Instead, I argue, Plato provides several different portraits of godlikeness that together suggest interest in particulars makes the person neither better nor worse as a philosopher.

J. B. Kennedy recently proposed a radical new interpretation of the Platonic dialogues, arguing that their stichometric structure is based in a Greek twelve-tone musical scale. We explore to what extent such an interpretation might be borne out historically by Greek music-theoretical traditions: the concept of scale, the significance of number 12 (on which Kennedy's theory is anchored), conceptual differences between Harmonicists and Pythagoreans, and the applicability of Kennedy's scale within the context of Plato's thought. While the statistical correlations Kennedy notes are intriguing, their foundation in Greek music-theoretical traditions proves problematic.

This paper offers a new reading of the method of hypothesis in the Divided Line of Plato's Republic that preserves a clear distinction between the objects of that method and dialectic. Properties, or Forms, are hypothesized when they are predicated of particulars whose character is to be investigated, as in the ekthesis of a construction based geometric proof. Hypothesis is the basis for rigorous proof of general theorems, expressed entirely in terms of particulars, such as geometric figures. Only in dialectic, centered on the ‘What is F?’ question, do we come to investigate universal properties directly.

Each of the degenerating constitutions in Book VIII of Plato's Republic is the result of the disappearance of one of the four cardinal virtues. The failure of wisdom creates a timocracy; the failure of courage, an oligarchy; the failure of moderation, a democracy; the failure of justice, a tyranny. The degeneration shows that the disunited virtues are imperfect, though they have some power to stave off vice. Thus Book VIII implies a unity of the virtues thesis according to which perfect virtues can only exist in a united state, but imperfect simulacra of virtue can exist in a disunited state.

It is a well-known characteristic of Aristotle’s De Partibus Animalium that the parts animals have are explained by reference to their function. For example, birds have wings for the sake of fl ying, and many of the hoofed animals have horns for protection: according to Aristotle, the function the part performs in the animals that have it explains why it is present. The explanation thus provided is teleological in nature. My aim in this paper is to further specify this standard (and simplifi ed) depiction of teleological explanation in Aristotle by showing that there are two types of teleology underlying these explanations: a primary kind that involves the realization of an internal, pre-existing potential for form through conditional necessity, and a secondary one that involves the emergence of functions as the result of formal natures using materials that have come to be of material necessity for something good.