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8 - Psychic contingency in the Republic
from Part II - Moral psychology in the Republic
- By Jennifer Whiting
Edited by Rachel Barney, University of Toronto, Tad Brennan, Cornell University, New York, Charles Brittain, Cornell University, New York
Book:

Plato and the Divided Self

Published online:

05 March 2012

Print publication:

16 February 2012, pp 174-208
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Summary

The most notorious difference between the Phaedo and Republic is the detailed presentation of the tripartite soul in the latter in contrast with the one-part psychology of the former. This chapter examines what difference this makes for our understanding of the three "types" of virtue namely slavish virtue, political or civic, habituated virtue and genuine or philosophical virtue. In the Phaedo's conception of a philosopher, the chapter argues that Plato opens up conceptual space for a type of virtue that falls short of genuine, complete virtue, but is nevertheless not slavish. In both the Phaedo and Republic what most significantly distinguishes philosophers from non-philosophers is their recognition of and concern with Forms. Philosophers' lack of fear of death and indifference to (or disdain of) the pleasures and pains of the body make Phaedo (a "Phd-philosopher") fit very well the ordinary descriptions of courageous and temperate characters.

Bibliography
Edited by Rachel Barney, University of Toronto, Tad Brennan, Cornell University, New York, Charles Brittain, Cornell University, New York
Book:

Plato and the Divided Self

Published online:

05 March 2012

Print publication:

16 February 2012, pp 368-382
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Summary

This chapter compares the accounts of the nature, aims, and activity of erôs in the Symposium and the Phaedrus and assesses the evidence for the impact of tripartition. Unlike the Phaedrus, the Symposium contains very little about the nature of the soul. Socrates argues that the desire for good things and happiness manifests itself in creative activity in the presence of beauty because this is the distinctively mortal way in which one can achieve a share of happiness. Desiring agents are distinguished in the Symposium not by being dominated by a distinctive part of the soul, but by different specifications of the good central to the happy life, and in the different ways in which they try to secure that good. The Symposium is concerned to explore the role of erôs in the good life, and each speaker is to praise erôs.

8 - Plato's divided soul
- By Christopher Shields
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
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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.