The Analysis of “Being” in Plato

Editor\u27s note: After blind peer review, this paper was selected for reading at the University of Dayton\u27s 10th annual Philosophy Colloquium, held Feb. 27-28, 1981. While ancient philosophers do not thematize the notion of existence, medieval philosophers do. Aristotle, for example, thinks that to be is to be in some category; it is to be predicatively something. Aquinas, on the other hand, because of a scriptural commitment to creationism, radically distinguishes necessary and contingent existents