Ideas in Plato’s Laws: Are They Really Absent?

Result code in IS VaVaI

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Result on the web

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DOI - Digital Object Identifier

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Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Ideas in Plato’s Laws: Are They Really Absent?

Original language description

It is commonly believed that ideas do not appear in Plato’s longest work. According to the developmental theory, this is because the author abandoned the theory of ideas altogether in his later work. However, a glance at the dialogue Crito (considered by the developmentalists to be an early work), in which properties are attributed to the Athenian laws that are strikingly reminiscent of the function of Plato’s ideas, leads us to view the problem of the presence or absence of ideas in the various dialogues somewhat less narrowly. We find that also in the Laws the roles and properties of ideas are imprinted both in laws and virtues, and the same question as in the Crito is thus raised: If the functions and properties of ideas are already there, is it really necessary to insist on the use of the same terminology if we are to recognize that Plato is consistent in his basic metaphysical convictions? Our aim, however, will not be simply to negate the usual interpretation, that is, to show that ideas are present in the Laws. Plato’s terminological abstinence and, at the same time, his theoretical coherence will make it easier for us to understand what role the theory of ideas really plays for him: It is not a blueprint of Platonism, a theoretical construction identifying Platonic doctrine and its ultimate objects, but a general structure which, as a structure, on the one hand never loses its validity and usefulness for explaining metaphysical reality, but on the other hand does not represent the actual summit of this reality.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

C - Chapter in a specialist book

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

60301 - Philosophy, History and Philosophy of science and technology

Project

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Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2025

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Book/collection name

Plato and the Ideas: A Very Complicated Story

ISBN

978-90-04-72217-0

Number of pages of the result

22

Pages from-to

166-187

Number of pages of the book

248

Publisher name

Brill

Place of publication

Leiden

UT code for WoS chapter

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