Plato's moral psychology : intellectualism, the divided soul, and the desire for good / Rachana Kamtekar.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kamtekar, Rachana, 1965- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Plato--Ethics.

Plato.

Ethics.

Soul.

Psychology and philosophy.

Physical Description:

x, 231 pages ; 23 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford, United Kingdom : Oxford University Press, 2017.

Summary:

Plato's Moral Psychology argues that if we read Plato's dialogues with a close eye to the dialectical dependence of their main speakers' statements on the precise intellectual problem set up with the interlocutors, we will see that throughout the dialogues Plato has a consistent account of human motivation. According to this account, human beings have a natural desire for our own good, and actions and conditions contrary to this desire are involuntary. Our natural desire for our own good may be manifested in different ways: by our (rational) pursuit for what we calculate is best, but also by our (emotional and appetitive) attraction to peasant or fine things-attitudes which Plato assigns to distinct parts of the soul. In some dialogues Plato treats these soul-parts as sub-agents that pursue the good under a more or less adequate conception, and in other dialogues he provides a natural teleological account for them. Plato's Moral Psychology differs radically from previous interpretations of Plato's moral psychology, which have supposed that Plato's early dialogues maintain that human beings only do what we believe to be the best of the things we can do ('Socratic intellectualism'), with interpreters disagreeing about whether the middle dialogues (1) reject this in favour of the view that the soul is divided into parts with some good dependent and some good-independent motivations ('the divided soul'), or (2) continue to uphold Socratic intellectualism. Plato's Moral Psychology's close readings of the early dialogues call into question the common presupposition that these dialogues uphold Socratic intellectualism. Instead, Plato's Moral Psychology argues, the dialogues explore different possible relationships between knowledge, belief, appearance, and action on the basis of a conception of human beings as by nature desiring our own good that Plato shares with his sophistic predecessors. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Doctrine and Dialectic in Plato's Dialogues 6

2 Psychology for Sophists 35

3 Why is Wrongdoing Unwilling? 69

4 The Divided Soul 129

5 Why is the Divided Soul Tripartite? 165

6 Psychological Eudaemonism and Explanation 186.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [209]-217) and indexes.

ISBN:

019879844X

9780198798446

OCLC:

1004761132