Vol. 18 (2018): Plato Journal #18

The volume starts with C. Buckels arguing vigorously against the standard interpretation of Plato’s sensible particulars as images of Forms, proposing instead a different approach: Platonic particulars would not be Form images but aggregates of Form images. A. Lefka articulates her paper on the symbol of the ‘sacred tree’ in Plato’s Phaedrus (229 a 8-c 5), sharply contributing to shed some new light on the role that the planeai tree of Ilissos and the oak of Dodona could play in Plato’s reception of religious traditions within his philosophy. PLATO Journal 18 proudly hosts a Dossier on The Problem of the Intermediates, edited by S. Stone and N. Baima. All six articles were originally presented at a conference on the possibility of intermediates in Plato’s dialogues, hosted by the two editors at Florida Atlantic University Honors College, in March 2018. The reader would probably better check N. Baima’s Introduction to the Dossier at p. 41 for further details on the articulated scope of the dossier and of each one of the six papers. I will limit myself to enumerate the outstanding list of the six Authors here enrolled: L. Gerson, S. Stone, O. Renaut, E. Katz, N. D. Smith and A. German. Finally, this volume ends with two fairly incisive Reviews: the first by A. Preus on the recent translation and commentary of the first two books of Plato’s Laws by S. S. Meyer, a dialogue that generally got much less attention than most other works of Plato; in the second review, A. Lanoue goes through the monumental Il disordine ordinato, la filosofia dialettica di Platone, by M. Migliori, concluding that the book stands as one of the more important specialized works of this Century.