Synopses & Reviews
Knowing Persons is an original study of Plato's account of personhood. For Plato, embodied persons are images of a disembodied ideal. The ideal person is a knower. Hence, the lives of embodied persons need to be understood according to Plato's metaphysics of imagery. For Gerson, Plato's account of embodied personhood is not accurately conflated with Cartesian dualism. Plato's dualism is more appropriately seen in the contrast between the ideal disembodied person and the embodied one than in the contrast between mind or soul and body.
Review
"The discussions of the dialogues found in the book are worthy of consideration and valuable to scholars, even if one does not hold that separation is the ultimate aim of Platonic philosophy."-- The Thomist
"[The] book offers a good ride, and I find it full of splendid observations and insights as well as provocative arguments....It is one of the liveliest of recent offerings on Plato; no one should miss it..."--Ancient Philosophy
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references (p. [282]-291) and indexes.
Synopsis
Lloyd Gerson offers an original new study of Plato's account of persons, a topic of continuing interest to philosophers. His book locates Plato's psychology within his two-world metaphysics, showing that embodied persons are images of a disembodied ideal, and that they reflect many of the conflicting states of the sensible world. For Plato, Gerson argues, philosophy is the means to recognizing one's true identity.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Souls and Persons
1. Souls and Persons
2. Socrates and Self-Knowledge
3. Protagoras and the Power of Knowledge
2. Immortality and Persons in Phaedo
1. The Structure of the Argument for Immortality
2. The Cyclical Argument
3. The Recollection Argument
4. The Affinity Argument
5. The Objections of Simmias and Cebes
6. Socrates' Reply to Cebes and the Argument from Exclusion of Opposites
1. 3. Divided Persons: Republic and Phaedrus Tripartition and Personhood
2. Tripartition and Immortality in Republic X
3. Phaedrus
4. Knowledge and Belief in Republic
1. Knowledge Versus Belief
2. The Form of the Good
3. The Divided Line and the Allegory of the Cave
5. Theaetetus: What is Knowledge?
1. Interpreting Theaetetus
2. Knowledge is not Sense-Perception
3. Knowledge is not True Belief
4. Knowledge is not True Belief with an Account
6. Personhood in the Later Dialogues
1. Timaeus
2. Philebus
3. Laws
7. Concluding Remarks
Bibliography