This paper proposes a reading of Plato’s Republic and Theaetetus, so as to analyze the three levels of transcendence in which experience unfolds. First, it is necessary to overcome the doxastic plane: therein an ens may be and not be within an equal respect, generating a contradiction which removable via hypothesises. Still, hypothesises produce an indefinite regression: a hermeneutic step towards Forms is hence needed. The alogon is interpreted as the transcendent and luminous source of every subsequent discourse. Ultimately, the case of the epekeina tes ousias shows transcendence to depend on a hermeneutic activity aimed at saving the phenomena.

The themes of the so-called Palinode have often produced different levels of disorientation. For this reason, I considered it necessary to start from the relationship between the Palinode and the three metaphysical dialogues par excellence (Phd., R. and Smp.). In this relationship, factors of discontinuity no doubt prevail, but the memorable creativity of the Palinode powerfully suggests not to dismiss the issue hastily. However, once the Palinode is concluded, why does the enthusiasm with which Platonic Socrates had evoked “World 2” in the Palinode dissolve in an instant? The sudden distancing that follows seems unmotivated and is therefore difficult to account for. In view of that, I argue that the post-Palinode section of the Phaedrus is marked by a very clear desire to look forward, to the present, and not back, so as to say things that are (or could be) significant for Plato’s contemporaries. A special attention is then paid to the new, and impressively creative, idea of rhetoric that surfaces in Phdr. 261ab and 264c. A section on orality and writing follows. Here I maintain that this does not go at all in the direction indicated by the masters of the so-called Tubingen School. I then argue that the Phaedrus is aimed at several (but primarily two) different types of audience and that not every goal was fully reached by Plato – which, if you think about it, is not surprising.

The Parmenides is the locus of Plato’s theoria motus abstracti (that is, abstract kinematics) for it is here that Plato gives a mereological and locational analysis of motion (First Deduction: 138b7-139b3) and discusses the famous puzzle of the instant of change (Second Deduction: 156c1-157b5). But there is another scholarly very neglected text from this dialogue that provides us with great insights about Plato’s theory of change: the Fifth Deduction (160b3-163b6) and its answer to the Eleatic argument against coming-to-be. I shall devote my paper to Plato’s discussion of the coming-to-be (γένεσις) of beings from what is not; first, by expounding what Plato says in the Fifth Deduction, second, by putting his theory in a bigger philosophical ecosystem (the quarrel between Eleaticism and Creationism). Then, I shall argue for two points: first, coming-to-be as described in the Fifth Deduction is, at first sight, incompatible with Plato’s account of motion given in the First Deduction; second, the logic behind the Fifth Deduction - if consistent - must be a non-classical temporal logic that restricts Leibniz’s laws of identity to some but not all properties.