Plato: Tripartite Theory of the Soul

alright so in the last video we discovered what justice in the city looks like and now we are going to try and apply this to the individual so remember if we found the correct definition of justice for the city then we should also be able to find this same justice in the sole since the theory of forms claims that all just things share in the same essence of the form of justice so just as with the city justice and the individual should be when the parts of the individual are properly organized so what are your parts well Plato has a tripartite theory of the soul in other words the soul has three parts according to Plato now why think this all right so go back to the earlier dialogues that we've read already in the class and the Phaedo so on and so forth right Socrates was talking about a soul that could not be divided he was talking about a single unitary substance when we think from Christian theology or Greek theology right the soul has always been thought to be one thing so this this theory that the soul has three parts to it is counter-intuitive alright so Plato is gonna have to give us some pretty good argument now in the Republic here if we're going to believe that the soul has three parts so let's start that process so first Socrates says one thing cannot act in opposite ways or be in opposite states at the same time and in the same part of itself in relation to the same other thing if we find this happening we shall know that we are not dealing with one thing but with several that is a confusing paragraph but roughly what's being said here is that if we have two conflicting desires regarding the same object at the same time then there must be two unique things generating these conflicting desires right because the same thing can't have conflicting desires at one time all right so Socrates is claiming here that it's impossible for your soul to both if the soul is one thing right to desire water and to not desire water at the same time right those are conflicting desires it's impossible for your soul or for one thing to have contradictory desires at the same time okay so does this happen with us well yes Socrates thinks there's evidence that in our soul we get conflicting desires all the time and so that means there must be more than one part there the example Socrates uses is the example of a person who is thirsty but doesn't want to drink now that seems like a commonplace example that happens to many of us I here's what he says now would we assert that sometimes there are thirsty people who don't wish to drink what then should one say about them isn't it that there is something in their soul bidding them to drink and something different forbidding them to do so that overrules the thing that bids so here Socrates concludes the soul has to have at least two parts and he'll call one of those parts the appellative part the appellative part is the one that's generating the desire based on the body's thirst and then there's also the reasoning part which is generating the desire to not drink water for whatever reason the the reasoning part has developed so here's an example of when this might happen right you're going to see a movie and now with all the movies movie theaters out they're always bringing like having the option to get drinks whenever you want right somebody comes up your waitress comes up and says hey if you want water I can bring you a glass of water and you say no I don't want to drink during this movie even though I'm thirsty right you're saying I'm thirsty but I don't want this water why is that well because I don't want to miss any of the movie I don't want to have to get up and go to the bathroom so even though your body is yelling at you hey I'm thirsty get me water your reason is saying no we shouldn't drink water right now because then we're going to miss out on other things that we want to do alright so you have two parts of your your soul generating desires that conflict with one another one seems to come from the or at the appetite the bodily desires the other seems to stem from something that's doing some reasoning so Socrates concludes right we have at least these two parts the Cepeda t'v part and the reasoning part okay but like I said this is a tripartite theory so where is the next part oops there we go I've heard a story which I believe that Leonidas the son of I haven't heard this one before so excuse my pronunciation the son of a Glee on has come up from the Piraeus on the outside of the northern wall saw the executioner with some corpses lying near him Leonidas felt a strong desire to look at them but at the same time he was disgusted and turned away for a time he struggled with himself and covered his face but then overcome by his desire pushing his eyes wide open and rushing toward the corpses he said look for yourselves you bad things get your fill of the beautiful sight besides we often see this elsewhere when his appetites are forcing a man to act contrary to reason and he rails it himself and is angry with that within himself which is compelling him to do so okay so why is this telling us there's a third part there well he's saying look it's not the reasoning and it's not the appetite that's making this person acted the way they ours that's making Leonidas act the way he does so in that story right when he's feeling that anger and he's mad at his himself for having the desire to look at the corpses that shows it's not the appetite right there's an appetite that wants him to look at the dead body but he doesn't want to and it's filling him with anger so it can't be the appetite that's causing this so it's got to be something else but then Socrates says it also can't be the reasoning part because we see this type of behavior this anger this spirit in beings that don't even have reason yet the best example would be small children so here at the bottom even in small children one can see that they are full of spirit right from birth while as far as reasoning and calculation are concerned some never seem to get a share of it while the majority do so quite late so what's going on here well we have this part of the soul that we're gonna call that Plato calls the spirited part of the soul and so reason and let's go back to the Leonidas story right reason is saying no don't look at those corpses it's only gonna scar you you don't need to like deal with that this ugly scene right your appetite is saying yes look I want to see the carnage right I have a desire to see this I'm curious right I'm being led by temptation and then there's this third part the spirit that is saying okay I feel what the body the appetite wants me to do and I'm mad about having that right it's the seed of his emotions it's something like his will and in the case of Leonidas the will failed right he couldn't keep his will he ends up breaking down and looking at the bodies but if the spirited part was stronger than Leonidas would have maintained his will and refrained from looking at the bodies okay so now we see an appetitive part this spirited part and the reasoning part so let's look at these just a little summary of each part for you to understand what's going on here so the reasoning part most closely resembles the soul as discussed by Socrates in the previous dialogues right the reasoning part of the soul is the part that's responsible for using our rationality to figure out what plans are worthwhile to pursue and then forming plans of action to pursue them so this reasoning part is making judgments about what is good and bad for us so this part of the soul is going to be generating desires for us based on these judgments about what's good and bad for us the spirited part does not reason doesn't reason at all it's best described as the will of the person and it's also the seat of your emotions as we were seeing in the Leonidas story right he had a failure of the spirited part because his will could not be tained and he was anger angry so we get to see this as a sea of emotions so the spirited part being that it contains our will allows us to carry out the desires that are put forward by the other parts or refrain from carrying them out so in other words the spirit gets desires her recognizes the desires that are coming from both the reasoning part in the a pet ative part and the spirited part is the will that decides to carry through on one of those desires it could decide to carry out on the desire from the reasoning part or it could like in the case of Leonidas decide to carry through on the desire generated by the appellative part but either way the spirit is the will that's responsible for carrying out one of these types of desires then finally you get the ax Pettit of part and this part of the soul also and doesn't reason at all it's just the part of the soul which forms desires based on the dispositions of the body so in other words when your body feels hunger thirst sexual desire right the a pet ative part of the soul just generates a desire to match alright so if your body feels hungry then the appellative part of the soul generates a desire to eat and this isn't because the appellative part is reasoning that okay the body feels this way and the best way to overcome it is to eat some food okay let's go eat some food no it's not reasoning that way it's just an automatic process it doesn't require reason whenever your body feels something like that the appendage of partridge generates automatically a desire so you have the reasoning part this generates desire the appellative part no reason but also generates desires the spirited part no reason does not generate any desires but is responsible for carrying through on our desires okay so remember we're working with an analogy with the city here so how does that all match up well the reasoning part of the soul is analogous to the rulers why is that well because both are exercising the virtue of wisdom whereas the rulers are exercising wisdom about justice and how to structure a city the reasoning part of the soul is exercising wisdom in finding out what is best for the individual to do and so they're both taking care of something right the ruler takes care of the city by trying to make it as good as possible and the reasoning part of the soul takes care of you by trying to make you as good as possible the spirited part of the soul is analogous to the auxiliaries both exercise the virtue of courage in carrying out the dictates of the wise all right so whether it is the soul or the military class both are exercising courage because they are enforcing and implementing the dictates that have been put down by reason and then finally the appellative part of the soul is most analogous to the craftsman and that's because both must exercise the virtue of moderation by submitting to the rule of the other parts for the good of all and so the craftsman should not try and take control of political power because they don't understand justice and they'll screw everything up in the same way the a pet ative part of the soul should not try and take control of the soul over all right it shouldn't try and become the dominant part because it will lead you into a life of sort of just temptation and lacking virtue and the appellative part doesn't reason about what's best for you so it can't possibly lead you to the best life it just forms desires based on appearances not on the truth good so we now know that justice and the individual is the appropriate organization of these parts of the soul and we will finish up why or how these parts should be organized in the next video thank you

Channel: James Hall

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Length: 12min 57sec (777 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 15 2020