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

Kamtekar (Cornell) explores alternatives to Platonic intellectualism, the doctrine that equates virtue with knowledge and vice with ignorance. She examines all the Platonic dialogues to find Platonic theories of psychological, or at least nonintellectual, motivation. In doing so, she assumes that it is possible to identify which arguments in the dialogues represent Plato's own views, and that there is some consistency or at least coherence among those views. Kamtekar argues that The Republic privileges reason and thus intellectualism because the analogy between the soul and the city is central to Plato's argument that the just city requires governance based on knowledge. According to Kamtekar, however, even in the Republic Platonic intellectualism is undermined by Plato's division of the soul. Her provocative analysis of psychological eudaemonism in Protagoras and love as divinely inspired madness in Phaedrus are particularly illuminating. Kamtekar's analysis and scholarship are impressive. Her arguments depend on extremely close and careful readings of the texts, buttressed in places by new translations and by extensive and comprehensive notes. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --Chana Berniker Cox, Lewis and Clark College