This paper argues that in Eudemian Ethics 8.3, virtue’s mean between excess and deficiency is defined by the standard of promoting the most contemplation. Promotion is indirect and constrained by virtue’s other essential features. The chapter’s apparent restriction of the standard to actions concerning natural goods actually serves a dialectical, not a restrictive, purpose. This paper proposes to unify the chapter’s argumentative arc.

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. (shrink)

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. (shrink)