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The Platonic work, extended to a lot of dialogues, could be used among others as an analytical instruction of the nature of participation given through various types of predication relations. This article focuses on the identification of the implicit and explicit predications (seen as participations) dispersed in the Platonic work. Nine distinct categories have been found and each of then is comprised of certain structures, carrying distinguishable meanings. Ordinary predication, Pauline predication, identity, difference, otherness and definition are included, while the various senses of self-predication and self-participation are presented. Lastly, concept maps of mutual relations between selected ideas are exhibited in a software ontology environment.

Based on the various senses of predications implied in the platonic texts, I attempt to shed light on the several types of predication and participation relations met in a number of selected Platonic dialogues and to construct conceptual maps including the main Platonic ideas interconnected in various modes. Various types of predication and participation (128 exemplary cases) are examined, such as the normal connective-is predication, Pauline predication, identity, difference, otherness and definition. Among them the cases of self-predication and self-participation are given special attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plato's Sophist and Statesman stand out from many other Platonic dialogues by at least two features. First, they do not raise a ti esti question about a single virtue or feature of something, but raise the questions what sophist, statesman, and philosopher are, how they differ from each other, and what worth each should be accorded. Second, a visitor from Elea, rather than Socrates, seeks to address these questions and does so by employing what is commonly referred to as the method of collection and division. Some scholars have argued that this so-called method is value neutral and therefore unable to address the question how philosophy differs from sophistry and statesmanship according to worth. This article contends that the procedures of collection and division does not preclude the visitor from taking considerations of worth into account, but rather helps establish an objective basis for settling the main questions of the dialogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his early dialogue ‘On order’ (De ordine) Augustine dramatises a discussion of theodicy in which the Manichaean solution is clearly rejected, even though the debate ends in aporia. It is argued in this paper that the dialogue’s dramatic setting at the villa in Cassiciacum is strongly reminiscent of Manichaean imagery and the stock motifs of the Manichaean mythological system. It is proposed in the dialogue itself, that the scenic elements (Augustine’s ill health, night and darkness, the dawning day, dirt and ugliness, fighting cocks) have the character of signs which illustrate the significance of the not-beautiful and the negative in the divine order. The dialogue setting thus presents an ontological scale that leads from the levels of reduced being up to the highest being, linking night or darkness to light or day, dirt to purity, sickness to health, defeat to victory, the ugly to the beautiful. The dialogue setting becomes a semiotic system in which even the ontologically deficient forms of phenomenon always also refer to something at the highest level, namely the omnipotent divine creator. The scenic design of De ordine can thus be read as an extension of the Manichaean system of codes, and hence as a message also addressed to a Manichaean readership.