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Plato's Moral Psychology

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Oxford University Press has a book out entitled Plato's Moral Psychology, written by Rachana Kamtekar, who is affiliated with Cornell University.

The book came out in 2017 but seems still to be kicking up excitement in the relevant quarters of academe. It dd succeed in making a new splash out of its very old subject matter.

She identifies a common understanding, among students of Plato, that there was a shift in Plato's views on moral psychology between the earlier dialogues and the Republic. The early dialogs take an intellectualist view of motivation, so that bad actions are the consequence of error or ignorance, and virtue is teachable. But by the time he wrote the Republic (says the standard view) Plato had abandoned that intellectualism.

Kamtekar believes this account mistaken. She holds instead, that for Socrates, at least as Plato retrospectively understood his views, that the good is the natural object of desire. This is not as simple as claim is that virtue is knowledge, and as an inference that wrong actions must be misunderstandings. Further, Plato's notion that good is the natural object of desire can be seen to survive certain switches that he did make on related questions (holding in one dialogue that virtue can be taught, and in another that it cannot). The two sides of those about-face moves can be seen as two facets of the same coherent doctrine.

Further, Kamtekar holds that the Republic does not mark a change from this broad position.  Indeed, the principle that good is the natural object of desire is the theoretical basis for  the tripartite soul.



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