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1 results

  • 8 - Plato's divided soul

  • Edited by Mark L. McPherran, Simon Fraser University, British Columbia
  • Book:
    Plato's 'Republic'
    Published online:
    04 February 2011
    Print publication:
    25 November 2010, pp 147-170

  • Summary

    Plato's reason for introducing a tripartite soul into the Republic pertains to the overarching goals of that work: Plato wishes to establish the nature of justice and thereby to show why an individual might wish to be just rather than unjust. In saying that the soul had appeared to the interlocutors of the Republic to be composite, Plato is evidently alluding to the argument for the tripartition of the soul in Book 4 of the Republic. Plato's argument proceeds in two stages. First, he establishes that the reasoning element (to logistikon) is not the same as the appetitive element. He then turns to the slightly more vexed question of whether there is a third element, reducible to neither the appetitive nor the rational. According to Plato, internal discord arises when our motivational streams are not integrated with one another, when and only when we are suffering from psychic disarray.