Theorie und Praxis bei Platon

By drawing a close link between theoretic and practical questions, the present work aims to reconstruct Plato's later ethics against the backdrop of the Philebus.

In the Philebus, two issues - the development of which transpires throughout the different stages of the Platonic opus - come together: one concerns the problem of the unity of the manifold; the other one, the problem of action-motivation. As such, the relationship between both problems displays the link between the dialectical and the ethical - or again, in Aristotelian terms, between theory and praxis. The Philebus's model of the mixed life displays an ideal of the unity of the manifold as well as the incorporation of man's affective part into a rationally oriented life.

The Philebus advances a model of the theory-praxis relationship which, on the one hand, resists the Aristotelian critique of Platonic ethics; and, on the other, bears on the modern rehabilitation of practical philosophy as well as on current concerns regarding the question about the good life.