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. (shrink)

Cette étude a pour but d'établir en quoi consiste l'éthique plotinienne en analysant la figure du sage, le spoudaios, dans les "Ennéades", en particulier dans le traité I, 4 [46].

Plotinus' recognises the possibility of conflict between self-referential aims and the good of the kosmos. His solution resembles closely one attributed sometimes to the Stoics. The inner reformation Plotinus proposes will yield a detached understanding of the whole universe. This view is accompanied by a realisation that one's happiness lies in functioning as a part of the whole and in contributing to the perfection of the universe. Other-regard cannot, therefore, be seen as altogether missing from neoplatonic ethics. What gives Plotinus' (...) ethics an agent-centred spin is its emphasis on how this state can be attained. Promoting the self's true well-being by an inward turn is the only means to an understanding of what is good simpliciter. (shrink)