19 Mar
2026
19 Mar
'26
5:20 p.m.
We are pleased to announce that on Friday, March 20 at 4.30pm (CET), Béatrice Lienemann
(University of Fribourg) will give the talk The Explanatory Role of Forms in Definitions
in Plato as part of the Lugano Philosophy Colloquia Spring 2026 organised by the Institute
of Philosophy (ISFI) at USI.
This hybrid talk will take place in Room Multiuso FTL Building (USI west campus) and
online via Zoom. If you are interested in joining online, please write to
events.isfi(a)usi.ch.
Here is the abstract of the talk:
The talk addresses the complex relation between Forms and definitions in Plato. A
straightforward conjecture about this relation might be that to define things like justice
or beauty one must refer to the corresponding Forms, i.e. the Form of Justice or the Form
of Beauty. In other words, Platonic Forms fulfil the role of the definientia in a proper
definition. But even if this conjecture goes in the right direction, at least in so far as
the middle and later dialogues are concerned, neither did Plato present this view out of
the blue in these dialogues nor has he ever unfolded it in full detail and as explicitly
as one may wish. In this talk, I examine in more depth why Forms are well suited,
according to Plato, to be definientia, or even to be the only appropriate definientia
whatsoever. I start by asking what motivates Plato to develop an interest in definitions
in the early dialogues. I submit that it is through the various unsatisfying answers
offered by his interlocutors that Plato’s Socrates first develops a substantial conception
of the conditions that must be met by a satisfactory definition. This reveals also the
need for the explanatory priority of the definiens in good definitions and paves the way
for asking why and to what extent, according to Plato, only Forms turn out to be suited to
fulfil this explanatory role in definitions.
For more information: https://www.ftl.usi.ch/it/feeds/15142