Ricerc@Sapienza

In this article, I try to propose some reflections about the nature and status of the intelligible
in the Timaeus, particularly with respect to its features of a properly being and
above all vital reality. The attribution of “life” and “vitality” to the intelligible certainly
has an analogical character, that is, it depends on the consideration of the sensible:
since the cosmos is a sensible living being and is a copy of an intelligible model, then
the intelligible model must be configured as an intelligible living being. Now, to be

In this note I discuss Pierre-Marie Morel’s article L’argomento della ‘venerabilità dell’essere’ e la sua fortuna published in this same volume (see pp. 11-26) on Soph. 248e-249a, trying to develop his interpretation of this passage and the conception of being it implies. I also examine Morel’s reconstruction of some steps of the exegetical history and reception of this passage in the history of Ancient Platonism, with reference to Aristotle and Plotinus.

In this article I examine Plato’s conception of λόγος, as a significant sequence (συνέχεια) of ὄνομα
and ῥῆμα, with a detailed commentary of Sophist 261d-262e. I particularly discuss the following
points: 1. Why the linguistic terms, in the case of a sequence of nouns or of a sequence of verbs,
do not indicate any action or any absence of action (οὐδεμίαν ... πρᾶξιν οὐδ᾽  πραξίαν), any
reality that is or any reality that is not (οὐδὲ οὐσίαν ὅντος οὐδὲ μὴ ὄντος, 262c2-4) ? 2. What is

This article aims to highlight the tension between Heidegger’s reading of the Sophist and the interpretive scheme according to which Plato is the founder of Metaphysics conceived as the age of the oblivion of Being. Heidegger works on the «new version of negation» Plato introduced by Plato in Western logic following the «parricide», and he carefully explains the decisive phenomenological consequences of the distinction between “non-being” (which is «blind») and “being- not”, which has an opening and manifestative function.