God and Forms in Plato and other Essays on Plato's Metaphysics

by: Mohr, R.D.

Price: 33,00 EURO

1 copy in stock

God & forms in Plato

Author:Richard D. Mohr

This book is a collection of dovetailing essays which together interpret and assess the chief arguments and texts which make up Plato?s cosmology. Arguments in the Timaeus, Sophist, Statesman, Philebus, and Laws X are analyzed with an eye to problems which affect the wider understanding of Plato?s metaphysics, theology, epistemology, psychology, and physics. New interpretations are given to Plato?s views on the role and characteristics of his craftsman God, the nature and status of Forms, the nature of time and eternity, the status and nature of space and the phenomenal realm, and the nature of and relations between reason, souls, bodies, and motion.

The book is critically sympathetic to the Platonic project, at least to the extent that it argues that many (though not all) features of the Platonic cosmology are more intelligible and coherent than usually supposed by critics. It defends the view that for Plato God makes the world in the way that a carpenter cuts a board to be exactly a yard long – by applying a yard stick to the board and removing the excess wood. This view of a making requires that there be standards or measures that exist independently both of the agent who creates and the world on which he works. These standards are Plato?s Forms. Transcendent Forms cannot be excised from the Platonic metaphysics as many modern critics have been trying to do in an attempt to make Plato respectable by today?s criteria of philosophical decency.

This work presents a revised and updated edition of the author's 1985 book The Platonic Cosmology (E.J. Brill, Leiden) together with four revised and updated essays by the author on Plato's metaphysics, and a wholly new essay, "Extensions," which expands the themes of the book into wider philosophical contexts.

Contents:
CONTENTS
PREFACE TO THE REVISED AND EXPANDED EDITION (2005)
FROM THE ORIGINAL PREFACE (1985)
INTRODUCTION: THEMES AND THESES (1985)
PART ONE THE WORKS OF REASON
Divinity, Cognition, and Ontology: The Unique World Argument
Plato on Time and Eternity
PART TWO THE EFFECTS OF NECESSITY
Image, Flux, and Space in the Timaeus
The Gold Analogy in the Timaeus
Remarks on the Stereometric Nature and Status of the Primary Bodies in the Timaeus
The Mechanism of Flux in the Timaeus
PART THREE THE OTHER COSMOLOGICAL WRITINGS Disorderly Motion in the StatesmanThe Sources of Evil Problem and the Principle of Motion Doctrine in the Phaedrus and Laws X
The World-Soul in the Platonic Cosmology
The Relation of Reason to Soul in the Platonic Cosmology: Sophist 
The Platonic Theodicy: Laws X, 
RELATED ESSAYS ON PLATO?S METAPHYSICS
Family Resemblance, Platonism, Universals
The Formation of the Cosmos in the Statesman Myth
The Divided Line and the Doctrine of Recollection in Plato
The Number Theory in Platos Republic VII and Philebus Extensions (2005)bibliography of works cited
index of platonic passages cited
author index

Revised edition of: The Platonic cosmology. 1985

xxv, 279 pages ; 23 cm

God and Forms in Plato and other Essays on Plato's Metaphysics

by: Mohr, R.D.

• ISBN-13: 9781930972018 / 978-1-930972-01-8
• ISBN-03: 1930972016 / 1-930972-01-6
• Parmenides Publishing, Las Vegas, 2005

Price: 33,00 EURO

1 copy in stock