Includes bibliographical references (p. 639-654) and indexes.

Preliminary material / S. DELCOMMINETTE -- INTRODUCTION / S. DELCOMMINETTE -- MISE EN PLACE / S. DELCOMMINETTE -- L’UN ET LE MULTIPLE / S. DELCOMMINETTE -- PREMIÈRE APPROCHE DU BIEN / S. DELCOMMINETTE -- MÉLANGES / S. DELCOMMINETTE -- L’ANALYSE DU PLAISIR DANS L’ÉCONOMIE DU DIALOGUE / S. DELCOMMINETTE -- LE CADRE GÉNÉRAL DE L’ANALYSE / S. DELCOMMINETTE -- LES PLAISIRS FAUX / S. DELCOMMINETTE -- LES PLAISIRS MÉLANGÉS / S. DELCOMMINETTE -- LES PLAISIRS PURS ET VRAIS / S. DELCOMMINETTE -- LE PLAISIR ET LE BIEN / S. DELCOMMINETTE -- FONCTION ET PRINCIPES DE LA CLASSIFICATION DES SCIENCES / S. DELCOMMINETTE -- LES SCIENCES INFÉRIEURES / S. DELCOMMINETTE -- LA DIALECTIQUE ET L’INTELLIGENCE / S. DELCOMMINETTE -- D’UNE PERSPECTIVE DYNAMIQUE À UNE PERSPECTIVE STATIQUE / S. DELCOMMINETTE -- LE MÉLANGE / S. DELCOMMINETTE -- PASSAGE À L’IDÉE DU BIEN / S. DELCOMMINETTE -- LA HIÉRARCHIE FINALE / S. DELCOMMINETTE -- CONCLUSION / S. DELCOMMINETTE -- BIBLIOGRAPHIE / S. DELCOMMINETTE -- INDEX NOMINUM / S. DELCOMMINETTE -- INDEX LOCORUM / S. DELCOMMINETTE.

Available to subscribing member institutions only.

This book deals with the nature and function of the good in Plato’s philosophy, by focusing on the dialogue explicitly devoted to it: the Philebus. It provides a comprehensive commentary of this difficult dialogue in which almost all the themes of Plato’s philosophy are discussed or alluded to. The author shows that a scrupulous analysis and reconstruction of its argumentative progress makes it possible to discover the unity between these different topics, and argues that this unity lies in the fact that Plato develops there what he was calling for notably in the Republic, id est a (dialectical) science of the good (or ‘agathology’). Read from this viewpoint, the Philebus appears as a dialogue of tremendous importance for the understanding of Plato’s philosophy as a whole.