Pauline SABRIER

Analyzing Reality: Forms and Kinds in Plato's Dialogues

  • Supervisor: Sylvain Delcomminette
  • Research center: Centre de Recherches en Philosophie
  • Research start date: 15.10.2021

Description

What are Plato's kinds and how are they related to Forms? This is the question that the present proposal seeks to tackle. In spite of the centrality of this question for understanding Plato's philosophy, it is still unresolved. To address this question, this project will put to the test the hypothesis that the introduction of kinds is in large part motivated by Plato’s interest in finding the constituents of a definiendum, where the definiendum is not a word but what is signified by the word to be defined. Central to this hypothesis is the distinction, that this project will develop and argue for, between parts and constituents in Plato. To achieve this task, the project will rely on a close examination of kinds in Plato's Sophist, Statesman and Philebus. If this project proves successful, it will considerably improve our understanding of Plato's theory of Forms and it will also shed new light on Plato's role in the history of the debate over the role of kinds in definitions.

Selected biography

2021–2023    If@ULB Post-doctoral Researcher, Philosophy Department, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium

2020–2021    Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin, Philosophy Department, Friedrich-Alexander University, Germany

2018–2019    Research Associate, Philosophy Department, Sun Yat-Sen University, China

2016–2017    Adjunct Lecturer, Philosophy Department, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

2012–2017    PhD, Philosophy Department, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

                      Thesis: Change and Rest in Plato's Sophist

                      Thesis supervisor: V. Politis / Thesis examiners: V. Harte, D. Moran

2014–2015    DAAD Doctoral Fellow, Munich School of Ancient Philosophy, Germany

2012–2017    Teaching Assistant, Philosophy Department, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

2009–2011    MPhil in Philosophy, Philosophy Department, Paris IV-Sorbonne University, France 

2009              BA in Philosophy, Philosophy Department, Paris IV-Sorbonne University, France

Publications

Articles & Book Chapters

  • ‘Plato's Method of Enquiry in the Sophist: The Relation Between the Question “What is Being?” and the Question “What is There?”’ in: V. Haraldsen, K. Larsen and J. Vlasits (eds.), New Perspectives on Platonic Dialectic - A Philosophy of Enquiry, Routledge (2022), 233–248.
  • ‘Plato’s Master Argument for a Two-Kind Ontology in the Sophist: A New Reading of the Final Argument of the Gigantomachia Passage (249b5–249c9)' in: Apeiron, 2020, vol. 54(3), 347–366.
  • ‘Parts, Forms and Participation in the Parmenides and Sophist: A Comparison’, in: Les Études Platoniciennes, 2019, vol. 15.

Reviews

  • O. Karatzoglou, The Embodied Self in Plato. PhaedoRepublic, De Gruyter (2021) in: Classical Review. 
  • L. Pitteloud, La séparation dans la métaphysique de Platon, Academia Verlag (2017), in: Archai Journal, 2018, n. 24 Sept.-Dec., pp. 309-315. 2)
  • H. H. Benson, Clitophon's Challenge. Dialectic in Plato's Meno, Phaedo, Republic, Oxford University Press (2015), in: International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2017, vol. 25, n. 2, pp. 302-306.
  • V. Politis, The Structure of Enquiry in Plato's Early Dialogues, Cambridge University Press (2015), in: Archai Journal, 2016, n. 16 Jan.-Apr., pp. 219-221.