Platonic Predication

Abstract:  Plato is very attached to a certain kind of predication (‘qua predication’) which is not to be confused with universal generalization. He uses qua predication in many diverse ways and it can appear in quite different forms,  sometimes explicit (’the doctor qua doctor aims at the health of the patient’) but often (and confusingly) implicit. This paper attempts to sort out the areas in which qua predication is at home, the functions it serves for Plato, and reasons it is central to his philosophical dialectic.