In Part I of this paper, I argue that the arguments Plato offers for the tripartition of the soul are founded upon an equivocation, and that each of the valid options by which Plato might remove the equivocation will not produce a tripartite soul. In Part II, I argue that Plato is not wholly committed to an analogy of soul and state that would require either a tripartite state or a tripartite soul for the analogy to hold. It follows that (...) the heart of the analogy is not to be found in the comparison of the Kallipolis and its three parts to the soul conceived as tripartite, but rather must be supposed to reside in some other connection between the ways in which justice characterizes states and souls, and I will suggest what this other connection consists in. (shrink)

Many philosophers today approach important psychological phenomena, such as weakness of the will and moral motivation, using a broadly Humean distinction between beliefs, which aim to represent the world, and desires, which aim to change the world. On this picture, desires provide the ends or goals of action, while beliefs simply tell us how to achieve those ends. In the Republic, Socrates attempts to explain the phenomena using a different distinction: he argues that the human soul or psyche consists in (...) reason, spirit, and appetite. It is initially tempting to assimilate Socrates’ picture to the standard belief ⁄ desire model, and to think that reason’s role in motivating action is restricted to calculating the best means for satisfying spirited and appetitive desires. But this would be a mistake, since Socrates thinks that each element in the soul is capable of setting the ends of action. But then how exactly should we understand these elements? My aim in this essay is to introduce the reader to Plato’s theory of the tripartite psychology. In part 2, I present Socrates’ argument for the claim that the soul has three elements. In part 3, I provide a general characterization of reason, spirit, and appetite, respectively. I then turn to discuss two central interpretive issues. In part 4, I discuss the sense in which Socrates considers the appetitive and spirited elements to be non-rational. And in the final part of the essay, I discuss the issue of how we ought to conceive of the parts of the soul, and more specifically, whether we should think of them as agent-like parts, or in some other way. (shrink)

It is widely held by commentators that in the Protagoras, Socrates attempts to explain the experience of mental conflict and weakness of the will without positing the existence of irrational desires, or desires that arise independently of, and so can conflict with, our reasoned conception of the good. In this essay, I challenge this commonly held line of thought. I argue that Socrates has a unique conception of an irrational desire, one which allows him to explain the experience of mental (...) conflict and weakness of the will, while still holding the Socratic thesis that we always do what we think is good. The resulting picture is both psychologically plausible and philosophically distinctive. (shrink)

This paper tackles some issues arising from Plato's account of the democratic man in Rep. VIII. One problem is that Plato tends to analyse him in terms of the desires that he fulfils, yet sends out conflicting signals about exactly what kind of desires are at issue. Scholars are divided over whether all of the democrat's desires are appetites. There is, however, strong evidence against seeing him as exclusively appetitive: rather he is someone who satisfies desires from all three parts (...) of his soul, although his rational and spirited desires differ significantly from those of the philosopher or the timocrat. A second problem concerns the question why the democrat ranks so low in Plato's estimation, especially why he is placed beneath the oligarch. My explanation is that Plato presents him as a jumble of desires, someone in whom order and unity have all but disintegrated. In this way he represents a step beyond the merely bipolarised oligarch. The final section of the paper focuses on the democrat's rational part, and asks whether it plays any role in shaping his life as a whole. For the disunity criticism to hold, Plato ought to allow very little global reasoning: if there were a single deliberating reason imposing a life plan upon his life, the fragmentation of life and character discussed earlier would only be superficial. I argue that Plato attributes very little global reasoning to the democrat. Aside from the fact that the text fails to mention such reasoning taking place, Plato's views on the development of character and his use of the state-soul analogy show that the democrat's lifestyle is determined just by the strength of the desires that he happens to feel at any one time. (shrink)

In Republic 4, Plato’s Socrates argues that there are three elements in the soul: the rational, the spirited, and the appetitive. This paper focuses on the argument distinguishing spirit from appetite in the story of Leontius. I shall argue that the rational element first opposes Leontius’ appetite and, when appetite overpowers reason, then Leontius’ spirited part opposes the appetitive. Consequently, there is a kind of disgust that would be appropriately characterized as rational; and, drawing on this consequence, I suggest that (...) the primary target of early ethical education is the rational element of the soul. (shrink)

Broadly speaking, something can be called intermediate for Plato insofar as it occupies a place between two objects, poles, places, time, or principles. But this broad meaning of the intermediate has been eclipsed by the Aristotelian critique of the intermediate objects of the dianoia, so that it has become more difficult to think of the intermediates as functions of the soul. The aim of this paper is to show how, in the Republic, thumos is analogously treated as an intermediate with (...) other kinds of intermediate objects, and tentatively to relate this psychological intermediate in a broader theory with doxa, as its epistemological ground in the course of action. (shrink)

Plato links pleasure with illusion, and this link explains his rejection of the view that all desires are rational desires for the good. The Protagoras and Gorgias show connections between pleasure and illusion; the Republic develops these into a psychological theory. One part of the soul is not only prone to illusions, but also incapable of the kind of reasoning that can dispel them. Pleasure appears good; therefore this part of the soul (the appetitive part) desires pleasures qua good but (...) ignores reasoning about what is really good. Hence the new moral psychology of the Republic: not all desires are rational, and thus virtue depends on bringing one's non-rational desires under the control of reason. (shrink)

The subject of this essay is a discussion of the doctrines of emotions of Plato and Aristotle. According to both them it is impossible to oust the passions from the good, i.e. happy life. On the contrary, emotions are an important component of human excellence. We investigate this question with reference to Plato’s doctrine of the soul and his concept of a perfect life, and Aristotle’s ethics, poetics and rhetoric.

En la República Platón parece romper con el intelectualismo socrático al aceptar deseos independientes del bien. Sin embargo, esto no le impide seguir afirmando que el alma hace todo lo que hace en virtud del bien. Para resolver esta aparente contradicción en el presente artículo se insiste en la distinción entre deseos y valores. Los deseos, generados en las partes del alma, están apegados a sus objetos propios, pero los valores revisten estos deseos de imágenes del bien y otros elementos (...) cognitivos que los convierten en móviles aceptables de la acción en la unidad del alma, por lo que hay que distinguir una volición independiente del bien en las partes del alma y una volición que actúa sub specie boni en el contexto de un alma unitaria que ha de decidir entre deseos opuestos entre sí. (shrink)

Socrates’ admirers and successors in the fourth century and beyond often felt the need to explain Socrates’ reputed relationship with Alcibiades, and to defend Socrates against the charge that he was a corrupting influence on Alcibiades. In this paper I examine Plato’s response to this problem and have two main aims. First, I will argue in Section 2 that (...) central points: that motivations associated with the spirited part of the soul play a decisive role in moral education, particularly in the case of exceptionally ambitious and talented individuals; and that the democratic Many themselves, not Socrates, are primarily responsible for the corruption of promising young men like Alcibiades. These points are connected, moreover: the Many exert a moral influence on the young by shaping and exploiting their spirited motivations. I aim to show that Plato develops and dramatizes this diagnosis of the problem of Alcibiades in three earlier dialogues—Protagoras, Gorgias, and Symposium—as well as in Book 6 of the Republic. My second main claim will be that the psychological and educational theories of the Republic are informed by Plato’s diagnosis of the problem of Alcibiades, and that they are conceived, at least in part, as a solution to that problem. (shrink)

In the Republic, Plato argues that the soul has three distinct parts or elements, each an independent source of motivation: reason, spirit, and appetite. In this paper, I argue against a prevalent interpretation of the motivations of the spirited part and offer a new account. Numerous commentators argue that the spirited part motivates the individual to live up to the ideal of being fine and honorable, but they stress that the agent's conception of what is fine and honorable is determined (...) by social norms. I argue that while it is correct to hold that spirit aims to be fine and honorable, it is not the case that the agent’s conception of what it is to be fine and honorable is determined by social norms. Instead, there is a fact of the matter about what it is to be fine and honorable, and it is this fact that shapes the individual’s conception of the fine and honorable. I argue that being fine and honorable involves living up to your rational views about how you should behave, despite appetitive temptations to the contrary. I claim that this condition of the soul is the basis of a variety of interrelated admirable traits, some with moral and others with aesthetic connotations. (shrink)

The just person controls his appetites by virtue of an alliance between his rational and spirited parts: while the first determines the object of the action, the second gives stability and strength to the prescription of reason. This essay aims to show that the spirited part can give strength to reason’s orders, only if it also receives value (i.e. the restoration of the individual’s damaged image). From this, I argue that the spirited part (i) always takes the side of reason (...) in the conflict with appetites (as enemies of the individual’s freedom) and, nevertheless, (ii) it can oppose [to] reason when the appetitive part is not at stake (and the claim of restoration, i.e. revenge, is repressed by reason). (shrink)

This paper contrasts Socrates’ attitude towards poetry in the early dialogues with the sharply critical view of poetry expressed in Plato’s Republic. The difference between these two views constitutes further evidence for a developmentalist interpretation of Plato.

Though Dante never read Plato's dialogues on love, when examining the texts of Dante one notes the presence of Platonic thought and influence particularly concerning the notion of love. This thesis will focus upon the Platonic notion of eros and how it changes over time, ultimately being integrated into the Christian notion of love as understood by Dante, and how this Platonic influence is instantiated within Dante's poetry. The inherent ambiguity of the concept of love, evident historically through frequent debates (...) concerning its value whether positive, negative or in-between, makes any investigation into the nature of love problematic, often aporetic. One aim of this thesis is to help overcome some of the aporiai of knowledge concerning love through focusing upon one form of love, eros or passionate desire, which we shall use in order to understand love more generally through exploring its points of intersection and overlapping with certain other types of love, each of which emphasizes different aspects of love's character differentiated through culture and period. Significantly eros, as perhaps the most ambiguous type of love, is often characterized negatively. Taking into account Nygren's negative view of eros which he sees as being wholly acquisitive and self-seeking as opposed to the thoroughly selfless Christian agape, we shall consider whether this view tells the full truth about eros. In this endeavour we shall explore the interrelationship of eros and understanding understood as a dialectic directed towards the pursuit of truth, which in both the Platonic and Christian traditions involves the permanent possession of the good, beautiful and true; these converge in Neo-Platonic tradition, forming a unity which in Christianity is identified with God. We shall also explore how various strands of eros relate to and articulate the notion of love of the individual. These explorations cast light on the transformation of Platonic eros by Christian agape into the Latin concept of caritas. In terms of procedure, we shall examine the notion of Platonic eros as presented in the Symposium and the Phaedrus and how this conception is reinterpreted in Dante's Commedia, these texts together acting as a lens which -will enable us better to comprehend the significance of Bros, and of love more generally, through the transformation of eros over time. (shrink)

An attempt to show that Plato has a unified approach to the rationality of belief and the rationality of desire, and that his defense of that approach is a powerful one.