Knowing Persons: A study in Plato

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. This study argues that Plato´s analysis of personhood is intended to cohere with his two-world metaphysics as well as a radical separation of knowledge and belief. Gerson demonstrates that Plato´s account of persons plays a key role not just in his theory of mind, but in his theory of knowledge, his metaphysics, and his ethics. A proper understanding of Plato´s account of persons must therefore place it in the context of his doctrines in these areas. Knowing Persons fills a significant gap by showing the way to such an understanding.
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 * 3. Divided Persons: Republic and Phaedrus1 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