Platonism and Naturalism

Lloyd P. Gerson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He is the author or editor of numerous books, including, most recently, From Plato to Platonism.

Introduction

2. Platonism vs. Naturalism

2.1. What Is Platonism?

2.2. What Is Naturalism?

2.3. Methodological, Philosophical Naturalism

2.4. A Rapprochement?

3. Plato's Critique of Naturalism

3.1. Some Hermeneutical Assumptions

3.2. The Turn from Naturalism to Metaphysics

3.3. Socrates's "Autobiography" in Phaedo

3.4. Republic on the Subject Matter of Philosophy

3.5. Theaetetus and Sophist on the Subject Matter of Philosophy

4. Plato on Being and Knowing

4.1. Forms as Explanatory Entities

4.2. Eternity and Time

4.3. Nominalism and Its Connection to Relativism

4.4. The Nature and the Possibility of Knowledge

4.5. Some Exigencies of Knowledge and Belief

5. The Centrality of the Idea of the Good in the Platonic System (1)

5.1. The Idea of the Good, Unhypothetical First Principle of All

5.2. First Principles in Parmenides

5.3. First Principles in Sophist

5.4. First Principles in Philebus

5.5. First Principles in Timaeus

5.6. Aristotle's Account of First Principles in Plato

6. The Centrality of the Idea of the Good in the Platonic System (2)

6.1. The Form of the Good and the Idea of the Good

6.2. Virtue, Knowledge, and the Good

6.3. Platonic Ethics without the Idea of the Good

6.4. The Good, Ethical Prescriptions, and Integrative Unity

6.5. Eros and the Good

7. Aristotle the Platonist

7.1. Introduction

7.2. Aristotle on the Subject Matter of Philosophy

7.3. The Immateriality of Thought

7.4. The Causality of the First Principle

8. Plotinus the Platonist

8.1. The Platonic System

8.2. Critique of Stoicism

8.3. Platonic and Stoic Wisdom

9. Proclus and Trouble in Paradise

9.1. The Dynamics of the Platonic System

9.2. A Crack in the System?

9.3. Damascius

10. Concluding Reflections