Naturalismo platonico? A proposito di un recente volume di Charles H. Kahn

Abstract

This paper deals with platonic naturalism in Timaeus, in a dialogue with Charles Kahn’s Plato and the Post-Socratic Dialogue (2013). This volume is the latest stage of Kahn’s brilliant career, which also includes a critical edition of Heraclitus, important essays on the verb “being” and a successful book on Plato. The tenet of the work is that Plato’s last dialogues represent a consistent phase of his thought of natural philosophy, and the mathematical models and structures on which the rationality of nature relies. The inestimable value of the book and Kahn’s expertise notwithstanding, this tenet seems difficult to prove because of the intrinsic ambiguity of Plato’s writing, which is inherent in the very form of the dialogue in which Plato is absent.