This is a book about the self in Plato that is about many things, but not about the self. This is the paradox with which one is tempted to begin a review of K.'s The Embodied Self in Plato. This paradox might wrongly suggest that there is nothing to be learned from this book, which would be a hasty conclusion and certainly one that the author of this review is not willing to draw. Rather, the paradox is meant to be a warning to readers: this book is not directly about the embodied self in Plato, but about the conditions that need to be met if one is entitled to talk about the embodied self in Plato. And the chief condition, which is the real target of this book, is to demonstrate that the self, for Plato, is not the rational part of the soul. This, it turns out, is the main task that K. sets himself in the c. 150 pages of his book. In order to defend this thesis, one must, among other things, revisit the tripartition of the soul, a notoriously difficult issue in Plato.

As readers might have immediately recognised, this is an ambitious task, and although K. has narrowed his focus to three dialogues (Phaedo, Republic, Timaeus), it is still a lot to be achieved in just 150 pages. As a consequence of this, readers are left with the impression that the book sometimes loses focus; and one may wish that K. had not taken on a task of this magnitude, but had rather spent more time examining in detail the passages that best support his view. The starting point of this project seems to be K.'s intuition that, surely, it cannot be the case that all Plato has to say about the self is that it is identical with the rational part of the soul. Surely, the intuition continues, Plato cannot so unilaterally exclude the body from the answer to that very important question, namely the question about who we are. This all sounds very promising, and K. invites us – rightly and persuasively, I think – to ask again the question of the notion of the person in Plato. The problem is that the book deals only with the negative side of the thesis – proving that the self is not identical with the rational part of the soul; it completely neglects the positive side – namely, exploring and explaining what this new conception of the self in Plato, that includes and is enriched by the body, would be like.

The book is divided into three equal parts. The first part, which mostly focuses on the Phaedo, attempts to downplay the view that the argument in the Phaedo is focused on the rational part of the soul by arguing that much of the argument in the Phaedo relies on premises that are not demonstrated there. Moreover, K. tries to re-evaluate the role of the body in the dialogue by emphasising the importance of hope, which according to K. is connected with the body, as opposed to reason, in Socrates’ attitude towards death. The second part of the book proposes to tackle the issue of the tripartition of the soul in Plato's Republic. K.'s aim is twofold: first, to argue that it is misleading to talk about ‘parts’ of the soul, and advocates that it is more appropriate to refer to them as ‘aspects’ of the soul. Second, to argue that there is an entity, the person, standing over and above the different parts – as opposed to the person being simply identical with one part, i.e. the rational part – and that the non-rational parts play an important role in the emergence of this unity. Finally, K. seeks support for the rehabilitation of the body in Plato's view in the Timaeus, where he thinks he finds proof that there is no strict separation between the soul and the body, since they are made of the same ingredients. Difference, especially, plays an important role in his account, as the kind that bridges the gap between the intelligible and the sensible realms.

There are several interesting ideas and analyses to be found in this book. Whether readers will be convinced by the analyses of the individual passages (which include, in addition to the three dialogues mentioned, the Gorgias, the Sophist, the Parmenides and even passages in Aristotle) and by the defence of the overall thesis remains doubtful. The book has the drawback of attempting to show too much, and, perhaps because of this, it fails to be convincing. If one attempts to put together all the different claims defended in the book, one ends up with bits and pieces that can be interesting in themselves, some of them even very promising, but they ultimately fail to provide a comprehensive view of the embodied self. This issue is acknowledged in the epilogue, but is then explained away in just three pages, leaving readers with a palpable sense of unfinished business.