In this paper, I intend to analyze how Plato's Philebus takes up some specific topics of Platonic dialectic and employs them to understand how the cognitive soul can be affected by false pleasures, false opinions, and false images. This study aims to criticize certain modern readings of Platonism, chiefly esoteric theory based on Plato's unwritten doctrine, which stipulate a revision of the Platonic theory of forms and defend the emergence of a new ontology explained by two principles, the One and the unlimited Dyad of great and small, conceived both as formal principle and material principle.
Dialectic; Ontology; Idea of good; Eudaimonistic ethic; False pleasures; Wise imitation