~Plato’s Late Ontology

Plato’s Late Ontology:
A Riddle Resolved  

 

 Prior to the publication of Plato’s Late Ontology in 1983, there was general agreement among Plato scholars that the theses attributed to Plato in Book A of Aristotle’sMetaphysics can not be found in the dialogues. Plato’s Late Ontologypresented a textually based argument that in fact these theses appear both in the Philebus and in the second part of the Parmenides. The pivotal point of the argument is a number of synonyms for the expressions used by Aristotle in reporting Plato’s views, found in the Greek commentators on Aristotle writing during the 3rd to the 6th Centuries A.D. These synonyms are also used by Plato himself in discussing the theses in question.