On the trail of Plato’s συγγένεια

The objective of my paper is to examine the role of syngeneia in Plato’s dialogues. Although this notion has never been given much attention by Plato’s scholars, it is likely to be crucial to his philosophy. As I set out to demonstrate, the function of syngeneia can be either “ver- tical” or “horizontal”: in the rst case, it turns out to put human intellect in touch with the ideal and divine dimension, so that this proves knowable and imitable; whereas, in the second sense, syngeneia should be considered as alluding to nothing but our being “tied” both to one another and to the kosmos. Moreover, by means of an accurate research for all the occurrences of synge- neia and syngenes in Plato’s works, I set out to elicit from them all the philosophical assumptions which lie behind, and follow from, Plato’s exploitation of this notion. What I will show is that syngeneia plays a remarkable role in any kind of philosophically relevant a nity or similarity, for it proves to be the reason for these very similitudes to occur.