According to the traditional 'distinct objects' view of Plato's epistemology, epistêmê ('knowledge' or 'understanding') is defined by and restricted to the Forms, such that the Philosophers must go beyond the perceptible world of appearances to get at the Truth. In contrast, doxa ('belief', 'mere belief', 'opinion') is defined by and restricted to the perceptible world—what merely seems or appears to be, as opposed to what really is.

My dissertation asks and seeks to answer: if epistêmê alone is of the Forms, and Truth is the sole prerogative of those with a grasp of the Forms, what—if anything—explains Plato’s notion of true doxa on a ‘distinct objects’ interpretation? How can doxa be true, without getting at the Truth? I argue that true doxa is only true by convention within idealized epistemic communities such as Plato's kallipolis, that is, true doxa contingent upon the shared practices and institutions established by those with a grasp of the Forms. If so, the job of Philosophers is not to establish epistêmê in the perceptible world, but to critically reflect on the shared practices and institutions of existing epistemic communities given their knowledge of the Forms. This allows those with true doxa to nevertheless walk the right path, even though they have not grasped the Truth.

Rather than 'thin' ethical concepts that seems to hold across cultures, e.g., 'x is good' and 'x is right', Bernard Williams famously argued for 'thick' ethical concepts which are embedded in cultural conventions: 'x is kind' in a culture which recognizes the normative significance of being kind; 'x is chaste' in a culture which recognizes the normative significance of being chaste. Furthermore, according to Williams, an individual's application of these 'thick' ethical concepts is irreducibly particular, and must reflect the motivations that arise for some particular individual faced with some particular decision. Contrary what Plato might have hoped for ethical knowledge, then, Williams argues that there can be no ethical knowledge that determines, objectively, what any one individual ought to do through philosophizing alone. This is because what some particular individual ought to do is not only determined by cultural contingencies, but also by their own motivations. 

I am interested in pushing the limits Williams imposes upon philosophizing, which I see as only imposed given Williams's focus on the first-personal singular, as opposed to the first-personal plural ('we') and the second-personal. In a series of papers critically examining Williams's vision of ethical life as applied in Confucian ethical communities, I have argued that some social roles—notable ones in the Analects, such as 'father', 'husband', 'wife', 'son'—are 'thick' ethical concepts operative within Confucian ethical communities, resulting in ethical knowledge under these social roles. In the background of Williams's discussion about first-personal philosophizing ('what I ought to do') is thus a larger cultural discussion about what we ought to do as a culture of fathers, husbands, wives, sons, and so on.  

Plato famously expressed anxiety over the power of literature in shaping our ethical knowledge—invoking what he calls 'the ancient quarrel between philosophy and literature'. Books II and III of the Republic features a lengthy criticism of the works of literature in his time. I highlight only two aspects of his criticism. First, as works of literature are fictional and therefore, strictly speaking, false; they thus cannot impart genuine ethical knowledge, which get at the Truth. Second, literature nourishes the affective or appetitive parts of one's soul, at the expense of eroding the rational (or truth-loving) parts. 

Was Plato right to be worried? I explore these same issues in contemporary debates at the intersection of ethics and aesthetics, with respect to contemporary works of literature. My overarching research question concerns whether literature can play a significant role in imparting ethical knowledge through engaging readers' imaginations or affective responses to what is fictional.