Rachana Kamtekar

About

Rachana Kamtekar is the Bryce and Edith M. Bowmar Professor in Humanistic Studies at Cornell University, affiliated with the Department of Classics and Philosophy. She earned her PhD in Philosophy from the University of Chicago in 1995, having completed her MA in 1989, and holds a B.A. with honors and distinction in Philosophy and Religious Studies from Stanford University, obtained in 1987. Her primary research focuses on ancient philosophy, especially ethics, politics, and moral psychology, with a significant emphasis on Plato, Aristotle, and Stoicism. Kamtekar has authored the monograph 'Plato's Moral Psychology: Intellectualism, the Divided Soul, and Desire for Good' (Oxford University Press, 2017), which challenges mainstream narratives about Socrates and Plato's views on motivation and the soul, proposing that both philosophers advocate for a natural desire for the good and that conflicting motivations are unwilling rather than rationally justified. She is also engaged in projects exploring anti-determinist arguments in antiquity, and as of July 1, 2022, she serves as the editor of Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy. Her extensive publication record includes articles and chapters on Plato, Aristotle, Stoicism, and ancient political thought, contributing significantly to the understanding of ancient moral psychology, virtue ethics, and political philosophy.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Epistemology
• Law
• Philosophy
• Sociology
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Literature
• History
• Art

Selected publications

• Agent‐Regret and Accidental Agency

  Midwest Studies in Philosophy · 2019-08-02 · 29 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• “False positive” emotions, responsibility, and moral character

  Cognition · 2021 · 20 citations

  PublisherDOI

• Weaving together Natural Courage and Moderation

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2021 · 20 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Chapter 11 discusses Statesman 305e8-308b9, where the Visitor identifies, as a source of civic conflict, disagreements about whether a course of action or a person is courageous or rash, moderate or cowardly, disagreements he analyses as conducted using thick ethical terms. He claims that these disagreements are rooted in natural temperamental differences among human beings (some are naturally courageous and others naturally moderate) and are to be reconciled by political expertise’s pr…

  PublisherDOI

• Platonic Pity, or Why Compassion Is Not a Platonic Virtue

  BRILL eBooks · 2020 · 12 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  From Socrates’ claim in the Apology that a good person cannot be harmed to Plato’s characterizations of virtue as godlikeness in later dialogues like the Theaetetus and Timaeus, Platonic virtue seems to be an ideal of invulnerability. One might conclude that Plato would not count as virtues some of the qualities of character that we count as virtues, such as a compassionate disposition or disposition to pity, insofar as such qualities require their possessor to be vulnerable in ways that the god…

  PublisherDOI

• Plato on Education and Art

  2019-10-04 · 6 citations

  reference-entry1st authorCorresponding

  Plato’s philosophy of education and art begins (in the <italic>Apology, Protagoras</italic>, and <italic>Gorgias</italic>) with reflection on the differences between the sophists’ and Socrates’s methods of engaging would-be students, and turns to an account of what these methods presuppose about the nature of the soul that is to be educated (in the <italic>Republic</italic>). Developments in Plato’s educational proposals throughout the dialogues (from the early dialogues to the <italic>Republic<…

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Christopher Bobonich

  Stanford University

  4 shared

• Shaun Nichols

  Cornell University

  3 shared

• Sara Ahbel‐Rappe

  3 shared

• Julia Annas

  2 shared

• Richard Kraut

  2 shared

• Włodek Rabinowicz

  Lund University

  1 shared

• David Sedley

  1 shared

• David Bostock

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• Editor of Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy (2022)

Similar researchers at Cornell University

• Scott MacDonaldh-20
• Mike Fontaineh-17
• Tad Brennanh-17