Edited book volume
Inquiring into Being: Essays on Parmenides, forthcoming with SUNY Press Edited special journal issue Presocratic Metaphysics, special issue of Ancient Philosophy Today: Dialogoi 3:1 (2021) [LINK]. Journal articles (published and forthcoming) "The Continuum of Logos and Unity of Plato's Phaedrus" Ancient Philosophy (accepted for publication, forthcoming) Abstract: At Phaedrus 264c2-5, Socrates asserts that good logos is a well-measured unity containing extremes (akra) and intermediates (mesa). This raises questions of whether and how Phaedrus is unified. I argue it is, and describe its unity through principles from Philebus concerning extremes and intermediates. Phaedrus, I argue, exhibits a discursive method range as a logos continuum bounded by the self-serving (idios) discourse of the idiot (idiotes) and the commonness (koinos) of dialectic. "Being as Communion: Sophist 247d-248b" [LINK] Review of Metaphysics 76:3 (2023), 395-423. Abstract: In this article, I consider the Eleatic Stranger’s account of being as communing (κοινωνεῖν), an under-recognized aspect of the well-known “dunamis proposal” and Plato’s unfolding of the notion of being in the Sophist. The Stranger calls being “the power to act upon or be affected” (247d7-e3), and shortly thereafter describes “being affected or acting upon from a certain power” (248b6) as “communing” (248b2). This marks a shift away from understanding being as capacity toward understanding it as activity. I identify two functions of the “being-as-communion” account: (1) a critical response to the previous competing quantitative and qualitative ontologies, and (2) a new ontological notion that plays a key role in the great kinds discussion and what follows, capturing the sense in which to be is to engage actively in relations with structuring, causal kinds. I conclude by speaking to the account’s valuable insight into the meaning of being as being-with and being-through. "The Senses of Apeiron in Philebus 16b-27c" [LINK] Methexis 35 (2023), 167-184. Abstract: Scholars debate whether ‘apeiron’ (unlimited) is univocal or multivocal in Plato’s Philebus. Offering a ‘middle path,’ I argue that the term is univocal, but used with respect to two senses of unlimited continua. The term appears early in two dense passages on ontological structure: the descriptions of the ‘god-given method’ (16b-18d) and ‘the fourfold division of beings’ (23c-27c). I consider each passage and argue that they respectively concern the eidetic continua of being that the knower comes to understand and the fluxing continua of opposed and co-constitutive bodily elements from which spatiotemporal objects derive their natures. They also indicate two major influences on Plato, respectively the Pythagorean and Heraclitean as recorded in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, and I draw on these resources to develop my account. I conclude by considering some important Platonic lessons that we learn from thinking through this distinction between the related senses of the unlimited. "The Case for the 399 BCE Dramatic Date of Plato's Cratylus" [LINK] Classical Philology 117:4 (2022), 645-661. Abstract: I here revive and support the hypothesis that Plato's Cratylus is set in 399 BCE, on the day of the Theaetetus and Euthyphro and before that of the Sophist and Statesman. To revive it, I suggest that the competing cases for other dramatic dates are weaker. To support it, I show that the connections between the Cratylus and Euthyphro warrant reconsideration, and I consider neglected dramatic details, the role of etymology in religious esotericism, and some missed connections between the philosophical concerns of the two dialogues. I conclude by suggesting ways in which this hypothesis yields promising new horizons to explore. "Against the Existential Reading of Euthydemus 283e-284c, with Help from the Sophist" [LINK] Ancient Philosophy 42:1 (2022), 67-81. Abstract: I argue that the fallacy concerning false speech (283e-284c) in Plato’s Euthydemus does not entail conflation of the alleged ‘existential’ and ‘veridical’ senses of ‘einai’ (‘to be’), but instead confusion regarding predicative statements. My ultimate goal is to refute the claim that this passage demands an existential ‘einai.’ I do so by advancing interpretations of nonbeing and the structure of true and false speech developed in the Sophist. "The Method of Bifurcatory Division in Plato's Sophist" [LINK] Elenchos 42:2 (2021), 229-260. Abstract: The strange and challenging stretch of dialectic with which Plato's Sophist begins and ends has confused and frustrated readers for generations, and despite receiving a fair amount of attention, there is no consensus regarding even basic issues concerning this method. Here I offer a new account of bifurcatory division as neither joke nor naive method, but instead a valuable, propaedeutic method that Plato offers to us readers as a means of embarking upon the kind of mental gymnastics that will stretch us properly in preparation for further, more challenging dialectical work. Considering several interpretive issues, I argue that bifurcatory division is a process of collective inquiry into the common through which an account, both definitional and taxonomical, is discovered. Depending on the level of understanding exhibited by the inquirers, this account may or may not allow for noetic understanding of the object in the deepest sense. "Diairesis and Koinonia in Sophist 253d1-e3" [LINK] History of Philosophy Quarterly 38:1 (2020), 1-20. Abstract: Here I interpret a central passage in Plato's Sophist by focusing on understudied elements that provide insight into the fit of the dialogue's parts and the Sophist-Statesman diptych as a whole. I argue that the Eleatic Stranger's account of what the dialectician "adequately views" at Sophist 253d1-e3 involves both division and the communion of ontological kinds, not just one or the other as has been typically argued. I also consider other key passages and the turn throughout the dialogue from imagistic opining toward noetic understanding. "Toward a Two-Route Interpretation of Parmenidean Inquiry" [LINK] Epoche 24:2 (2020), 279-298. Abstract: In this paper I challenge the orthodox view regarding the number of routes of inquiry in Parmenides' poem. The narrating goddess in Fragment 2 identifies "the only routes of inquiry there are for knowing," (i) one guided by the "[...] is [...]" and (ii) one guided by "what-is-not as such." In Fragment 6, the goddess considers taking (iii) "both to be and not to be" to be "the same and not the same," and most modern commentators hold that this constitutes a third route. I argue instead that this interpretation entails missing the routes' fundamental interconnections, and that the goddess describes only two. To show this, I consider Fragments 2 and 6 before turning to key notions in Doxa, particularly the constitutive ontological kinds 'light' and 'night,' to account for the second, mortal route. Mortals have missed the being of these two, and I develop an account of the inquiry that is guided by this insight. "Dialectical Methods and the Stoicheia Paradigm in Plato's Trilogy and Philebus" [LINK] Plato Journal: The Journal of the International Plato Society 19 (2019), 7-23. Abstract: Plato's Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman exhibit several related dialectical methods relevant to Platonic education: maieutic in the Theaetetus, bifurcatory division in the Sophist and Statesman, and non-bifurcatory division in the Statesman, related to the 'god-given' method in the Philebus. I consider the nature of each method through the letter or element (stoicheion) paradigm, used to reflect on each method. At issue are the element's appearances in given contexts, its fittingness for communing with other elements like it in kind, and its own nature defined through its relations to others. These represent stages of inquiry for the Platonic student investigating into the sources of knowledge. "The Groundwork for Dialectic in Statesman 277a-287b" [LINK] The International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 12:2 (2018), 132-150. Abstract: In Plato's Statesman, the Eleatic Stranger leads Socrates the Younger and their audience through an analysis of the statesman in the service of the interlocutors' becoming "more capable in dialectic regarding all things" (285d7). In this way, the dialectical exercise in the text is both intrinsically and instrumentally valuable, as it yields a philosophically rigorous account of statesmanship and exhibits a method of dialectical inquiry. After the series of bifurcatory divisions in the Sophist and early Statesman, the Stranger changes to a non-bifurcatory method of dividing to account for the statesman, but does not explain the reason for this change. I argue that the change is prepared by the elements discussed in the digression from 277a2 to 287b2. Here the Stranger makes use of four concepts that are crucial for understanding this change: the notion of paradigm, the paradigms of care and the weaver, and the notion of due measure. I claim that the notion of paradigm clarifies the nature of dialectical inquiry, care and weaving act as paradigms appropriate to dialectical practice, and an account of due measure offers insight into the constitutive ratios that govern the composition of kinds pursued through dialectical inquiry. I suggest that the non-bifurcatory method is intended to articulate knowledge in the strictest sense, or knowledge of the forms, presenting a method of inquiry into being and its structure that will foster the turning of the soul from things to forms that Socrates describes in the Republic. Book chapters "Empedocles on Becoming and Temporality," in Empedocles in Sicily, ed. Jessica Elbert Decker, Jennifer Ferris-Hill, and Heather L. Reid, Parnassos Press, forthcoming. "Parmenides' Fragment 2 and the Meaning of 'Einai'" and "Introduction," in Inquiring into Being: Essays on Parmenides, ed. Colin C. Smith, SUNY Press, forthcoming. "Performativity and the Vitality of Discourse in Plato’s Phaedrus," in Paideia and Performance, ed. Henry C. Curcio, Mark Ralkowski, and Heather L. Reid, Parnassos Press (2023), 163-182. [LINK] Journal notes "Editorial," Ancient Philosophy Today: Dialogoi 3:1 (2021), 1-2. Book reviews Catharine Craig, Memory and the Political Art in Plato's Statesman [LINK] Review of Politics 86:3 (2024), forthcoming. Gwenda-lin Grewal, Thinking of Death in Plato's Euthydemus: A Close Reading and New Translation [LINK] Ancient Philosophy 43:2 (2023), 539-543. A. A. Long, Selfhood and Rationality in Ancient Greek Philosophy: From Heraclitus to Plotinus [LINK] Review of Metaphysics 76:4 (2023), 758-760. Veronique Decaix and Christina Thomsen Thornqvist (ed.), Memory and Recollection in the Aristotelian Tradition: Essays on the Reception of Aristotle's De memoria et reminiscentia [LINK] The Medieval Review 30 (2023), 3.17. Eva Brann, Peter Kalkavage, and Eric Salem (trans.), Plato, Meno. Translation, Introduction, and Glossary [LINK] Bryn Mawr Classical Review 33 (2022), 3.48. Panos Dimas, Russell E. Jones, and Gabriel R. Lear (ed.), Plato's Philebus: A Philosophical Discussion [LINK] Journal of the History of Philosophy 60:1 (2022), 155-156. John Sallis, Chorology: On Beginning in Plato's Timaeus (2020 Edition) [LINK] Phenomenological Reviews (2020), 12.6. Emanuela Bianchi, Sara Brill, and Brooke Holmes (ed.), Antiquities beyond Humanism [LINK] Bryn Mawr Classical Review 31 (2020), 2.29. Thomas Benatouil and Katerina Ierodiakonou (ed.), Dialectic after Plato and Aristotle [LINK] Bryn Mawr Classical Review 30 (2019), 8.27. John V. Garner, The Emerging Good in Plato's Philebus [LINK] Ancient Philosophy 38:2 (2018), 451-454. Works in progress "Plato's Forms as Grounds," in Ground and Fundamentality in Plato and Aristotle, ed. Richard Neels, chapter accepted by editor, volume under review. Several other papers, chapters, and book manuscripts under review or in preparation. |