1. Plato’s Isolation of a Kind Being, or Why in the Sophist To Be Is Not To Be Something

   Roberto Granieri
   In the Sophist Plato singles out Being (on, ousia) as just one among the Kinds or Forms. I argue that the exploration of one main implication of Plato’s isolation of a Kind Being enables us to question aspects of an entrenched scholarly consensus about Plato’s conception of being, namely that for Plato ‘to be is always to be something’. By scrutinizing various passages from the second half of the Sophist, starting from 250a8–d3, I defend the view that when Plato metaphysically analyses ‘X is’ in terms of X’s participation in or combination with the Kind or Form of Being, he does not mean that X is something, or is itself, or is variously characterized (or similar), but that it exists.
2. Negative Forms in Plato’s Sophist: A Re-Examination

   Samuel Meister
   Contrary to recent work on the topic, I argue that, in the Sophist, Plato’s Visitor does not posit any negative kinds or forms, such as the kind or form of the not-beautiful or not-being. My argument has a textual and a philosophical side. On the textual side, I argue that the Visitor does not posit negative kinds or forms. On the philosophical side, I argue that the Visitor does not need to posit any such entities because he can reach his goals by appeal to difference. The latter conclusion suggests that an appeal to negative kinds or forms would be gratuitous and hence weaken the Visitor’s account. The textual result implies that we need not saddle him with this unsatisfactory view. Rather, by appeal to difference, the Visitor offers a unified account of ‘is not’ claims and false speech that relies on remarkably economical ontological resources.
3. Virtue and Contemplation in Eudemian Ethics 8.3

   Roy Lee
   Eudemian Ethics 8.3 defends a standard (horos), according to which certain actions should promote contemplation. Exactly which actions fall under the scope of the standard is contested. Commentators often limit the scope of the standard to a restricted subset of actions, but such restrictions lead to serious, previously unnoticed inconsistencies. I argue for the interpretation that all actions fall under the standard’s prescription by considering the dialectical context of the chapter, as well as the argument Aristotle gives in favor of this standard. The result is that the Eudemian account of virtue includes a further essential feature: virtue aims to promote the most contemplation. This feature should be understood coordinately alongside virtue’s other essential features and not as establishing a dominant end.
4. How Virtuous Actions Are a Means to Contemplation

   Sukaina Hirji
   In a number of passages in the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle seems to suggest that ethically virtuous actions are an instrumental means to contemplation. But, as many scholars have worried, this view appears to be both implausible on its face, and in tension with other commitments Aristotle has. The difficulty in understanding the relationship between virtuous actions and contemplation is part of a larger puzzle about the structure of value in Aristotle’s ethical theory. In this paper, I argue that virtuous actions really are ‘for the sake of’ contemplation because they instrumentally promote contemplation. Specifically, virtuous actions are for the sake of the noble or kalon insofar as they promote conditions of peace, security, and freedom from necessity, and these are precisely the conditions under which contemplation is possible. On the interpretation I defend, we find in Aristotle a sophisticated theory of value that demonstrates the possibility of being a pluralist while still maintaining that every good is hierarchically organized around some one highest good.
5. Thought ‘From Without’

   Robert Roreitner
   Building on Aristotle’s De Anima 3. 5, the author of De Intellectu makes a striking claim that in order to think anything, we already need to think the divine ‘agent intellect’. Most interpreters saw here a paradoxical view that our very first thought is directed to God. Others identified a Neoplatonist account in the background according to which we think anything whatsoever by turning to the respective form contained in the divine Intellect. I argue that in order to understand the position developed in De Intellectu we need to see it as a novel response to traditional Peripatetic aporiai deriving from Theophrastus. The author seeks to reconcile the idea that our thinking depends on a transcendent principle with the assumption that thinking is up to us. His key move is to conceive the transcendent intellect as a self-standing act of thought which can become ours, at least to some extent. The proposed interpretation makes it easier to accept the traditional attribution of De Intellectu to Alexander of Aphrodisias, while raising, from a new angle, the question of Alexander’s potential influence on Neoplatonism.

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