Overview

This volume highlights Plato's relevance for the notion of personal autonomy. By offering discussions of self-legislation, self-determination, self-rule, law, preference, and freedom from a wide range of perspectives, it shows how deeply they are intertwined with Plato's more familiar inquiries into knowledge, moral psychology, ethics, politics, and metaphysics. The book also reveals how some of the Platonic worries about self- and other-determination become interpreted and given explicit expression by the Neoplatonists. Many chapters question an exclusively individualistic account of autonomy. The autonomous subject, for Plato, is not primarily the possessor of individual preferences, nor someone with a personally unique take on the world, but, rather, a unified agent who in both collaborative and personal activities originates her own motions and reasons and commits in a profound sense to her own actions. It is this understanding of personal autonomy we label Platonic.

Full Product Details

Author:   Olof Pettersson (Uppsala Universitet, Sweden) ,  Pauliina Remes (Uppsala Universitet, Sweden)
Publisher:   Cambridge University Press
Imprint:   Cambridge University Press
ISBN:  

9781009520485

ISBN 10:   1009520482
Pages:   282
Publication Date:   31 July 2025
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

Introduction: Pauliina Remes and Olof Pettersson; Part I. Self-Determination: From Legislation to Giving Rational Accounts: 1. Accounts and accountability: the importance of being Autologizomenos Amber Carpenter; Part II. Motivational Challenges to Self-Rule: 2. Plato's problems with aversion Nicholas D. Smith; 3. A complex model of action: what is ruling? Oda Tvedt; Part III. Internal and External Authorities: 4. Dialectic and rational agency: establishing self-rule in the republic and hippias major Franco V. Trivigno; 5. Socrates and conflicting epistemic requirements: autonomy and authority Toomas Lott; 6. Awakening autonomy: Olympiodorus' commentary on Plato's Gorgias James M. Ambury; Part IV. The Limits of Autonomy and Self-Rule: 7. Vulnerability, dialogue, and the limits of autonomy Marina Berzins McCoy; 8. Plato, dialogue and epistemic autonomy Olof Pettersson; Part V. Reconciling between Freedom, External Authority, and Nature: 9. Self-government and law in the crito and the statesman Charlotta Weigelt; 10. Freedom, willing servitude, and the limits to autonomy in Plato's Laws Susan Sauvé Meyer; 11. The natural preconditions of political freedom Andy German.

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Author Information

OLOF PETTERSSON is Associate Professor (docent) in Philosophy at Uppsala University. He has published extensively on Plato and ancient philosophy and also edited several books in this field, including Plato's Protagoras: Essays on the Confrontation of Philosophy and Sophistry (2017) and Defending a Philosophical Life: Readings of Plato's Apology (2018). PAULIINA REMES is Professor in Philosophy at Uppsala University. She is also the author of Plotinus' on Self (Cambridge, 2007) and Neoplatonism (2008), and the co-editor, together with Slaveva-Griffin, of the award-winning Routledge Handbook of Neoplatonism (2014).

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