Plato: Moral Psychology

Frisbee Sheffield argues that the Symposium has been unduly marginalized by philosophers. Although the topic - eros - and the setting at a symposium have seemed anomalous, she demonstrates that both are intimately related to Plato's preoccupation with the nature of the good life, with virtue, and how it is acquired and transmitted.

Frisbee Sheffield argues that the Symposium has been unduly marginalized by philosophers. Although the topic, eros, and the setting at a symposium have seemed anomalous, she demonstrates that both are intimately related to Plato's preoccupation with the nature of the good life, with virtue, and how it is acquired and transmitted. For Plato, analyzing our desires is a way of reflecting on the kind of people we will turn out to be and on our chances of leading a worthwhile and (...) happy life. In its focus on the question why he considered desires to be amenable to this type of reflection, this book explores Plato's ethics of desire. (shrink)

Long understudied, Plato's Laws has been the object of renewed attention in the past decade and is now considered to be his major work of political philosophy besides the Republic. In his last dialogue, Plato returns to the project of describing the foundation of a just city and sketches in considerable detail its constitution, laws and other social institutions. Written by leading Platonists, the essays in this volume cover a wide range of topics central for understanding the Laws, such as (...) the aim of the Laws as a whole, the ethical psychology of the Laws, especially its views of pleasure and non-rational motivations, and whether and, if so, how the strict law code of the Laws can encourage genuine virtue. They make an important contribution to ongoing debates and will open up fresh lines of inquiry for further research. (shrink)

The Phaedrus’s Palinode ascribes to the wing the double function of lifting the soul towards truth while itself being nourished by truth. The paper concentrates on the role Socrates ascribes to the wing in the structure and ‘physiology’ of the soul—mortal and divine—as well as on the role it plays in Socrates’ subsequent phenomenological description of falling in love. The experience of love described in Socrates’ first speech—an experience dominated by envy—is examined in light of Socrates’ Palinode, by reference to (...) Socrates’ account of the different ways souls can relate to truth before incarnation. (shrink)

Despite Diotima’s irresistible virtues and attractiveness across the millennia, she spells trouble for philosophy. It is not her fault that she has been misunderstood, nor is it Plato’s. Rather, I suspect, each era has made of Diotima what it desired her to be. Her malleability is related to the assumption that Plato invented her, that she is a mere literary fiction, licensing the imagination to do what it will. In the first part of my paper, I argue against three contemporary (...) ‘majority views’ about Diotima that I regard as false. The first is that we can be certain she is fictional;1 a second is that Diotima is our best evidence for Plato’s feminism; the third, that she is Plato’s mouthpiece for the higher mysteries in the Symposium. After I have set aside what I regard as false, I proceed in the second half of my paper to develop Diotima’s positive contribution to philosophical psychology, her naturalistic account of the psyche as mortal, unified, and developmental. Whether the view Plato assigns to her is one that he held I do not pretend to know; but it is a powerful, defensible, and coherent view that inspired positive aspects of Freudian psychology in the twentieth century. Freud’s insight, in fact, makes clear how erōs can be developed in relation to the bad as well as the good. (shrink)

Plato’s tripartite soul plays a central role in his account of justice in the Republic. It thus comes as a surprise to find him apparently abandoning this model at the end of the work, when he suggests that the soul, as immortal, must be simple. I propose a way of reconciling these claims, appealing to neglected features of the city-soul analogy and the argument for the soul’s division. The original true soul, I argue, is partitioned, but in a finer manner (...) than how we encounter it in our everyday lives. (shrink)

Contains essays on topics in moral philosophy from Plato, Aristotle, Stoicism and Plotinus. See the review at NDPR for detailed descriptions http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/virtue-and-happiness-essays-in-honour-of-julia-annas/.

In response to woozley's paper in "philosophical quarterly" 22 (1972), 303-17, This article argues: (a) that plato's penology in the laws is radically 'reformative'. (b) that his overriding concern is not with blame or guilt or moral responsibility, But with an exact diagnosis and then 'cure' of the criminal's 'unjust' state of mind. (c) that he uses 'hekousios' and 'akousios' in effect in the sense 'prompted by injustice in the soul of the agent' and 'not thus prompted' respectively. (d) that (...) accordingly laws 866a5-867c2, On killing in anger as midway between 'hekousios' and 'akousios' homicide, Should be read not in woozley's manner, As a tentative extension of the area of diminished responsibility, But as a grading of four possible states of mind in a killer: (1) no intention to kill; (2) a brief intention to kill; (3) a long-Standing intention to kill; (4) a full intention to kill, Inspired not by anger but by full 'injustice'--Greed, Lust, Envy etc. (e) finally that on this analysis, Certain terminological distinctions of modern english, Employed by woozley in an attempt to elucidate the passage, Are irrelevant. (edited). (shrink)

Daniel Russell develops a fresh and original view of pleasure and its pivotal role in Plato's treatment of value, happiness, and human psychology. This is the first full-length discussion of the topic for fifty years, and Russell shows its relevance to contemporary debates in moral philosophy and philosophical psychology. Plato on Pleasure and the Good Life will make fascinating reading for ancient specialists and for a wide range of philosophers.

I argue that Plato holds a medical model of virtue as health which does not have themorally unacceptable implications which have led some to describe it as authoritarian.This model, which draws on the educational virtues of the elenchos, lacks anyimplication that all criminals are mad or all mad people criminals – this implication beingat the source of many criticisms of Plato’s analogy of virtue and health. After setting upthe analogy and the model, I defend my argument against two objections. The (...) firstclaims that Plato's picture of virtue as health is unacceptable because it entails that vice isa defect and therefore that criminals are all mad. The second resists Kenny'sinterpretation but does so by attacking its first premise, i.e. that Plato believes virtue issome kind of health. I reply that both objections are misguided. (shrink)

Republic 554c-d—where the oligarchic individual is said to restrain his appetites ‘by compulsion and fear’, rather than by persuasion or by taming them with speech—is often cited as evidence that the appetitive part of the soul can be ‘persuaded’. I argue that the passage does not actually support that conclusion. I offer an alternative reading and suggest that appetite, on Plato’s view, is not open to persuasion.

Plato presents a hierarchy of five cities, each representing a structural arrangement of the soul. The timocratic soul, characterized by its governance by spirit and its consequent desire for esteem and aversion to shame, is ranked as the second-best kind of soul, though this should strike us as surprising since the timocratic figure would seem to be duplicitous, intellectually passive, and at the mercy of the fortuitous opinions of others. This timocrat's position thus raises problems concerning the intrinsic value of (...) the spirited part of the soul, problems that are best solved by comparing the auxiliary to the timocrat, both of whom represent different forms of second-best morality. A lengthy discussion of the early education's effect on the spirited part shows how the auxiliary represents the best kind of moral agent that the second-best nature (silver-souled individuals) can develop into. This is because the early education ensures that the auxiliary and the philosopher share the same basic structure of soul, with reason being in control of each, though the auxiliary's natural deficiencies create some limitations in terms of his or her moral self-sufficiency. The timocrat by contrast represents the second-best kind of moral agent that the best nature (gold-souled individuals) can develop into. The timocrat is morally inferior to the auxiliary and seems to embody Homeric shame-culture. Plato is critical of this approach to morality, but the timocrat justifiably occupies the second position in the hierarchy on account of his or her concern for the opinions of others. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us Digg Reddit Technorati What's this? (shrink)

A review of Hendrik Lorenz, The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2006.

Since the arguments that Plato provides in the Republic for the thesis that the human soul consist of three parts (reason, spirit, appetite) are notoriously problematic, I propose other reasons for accepting tripartition: reasons that we too could endorse, or at least entertain with some sympathy. To wit, (a) the appetitive part of Plato's divided soul houses desires and tendencies we have because we are animal bodies programmed to survive (as individuals and as a species) in disequilibrium with a variegated, (...) often varying environment, (b) the spirited middle part houses status concerns that belong to us as social animals, while (c) what makes us rational animals is a faculty of reason, conceived in strikingly non-Humean terms, which determines what is best all things considered. Other psychic tendencies may then be explained in terms of the education and mutual interaction of the three parts we are 'programmed' for from birth. (shrink)

in the tripartite psychology of the Republic, Plato characterizes the “spirited” part of the soul as the “ally of reason”: like the auxiliaries of the just city, whose distinctive job is to support the policies and judgments passed down by the rulers, spirit’s distinctive “job” in the soul is to support and defend the practical decisions and commands of the reasoning part. This is to include not only defense against external enemies who might interfere with those commands, but also, and (...) most importantly, defense against unruly appetites within the individual’s own soul.1 Spirit, according to this picture, is by nature reason’s faithful auxiliary in the soul, while appetite is always a potential enemy to be watched .. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that although the Republic’s tripartite theory of the soul is not explicitly endorsed in Plato’s late work the Laws, it continues to inform the Laws from beneath the surface of the text. In particular, I argue that the spirited part of the soul continues to play a major role in moral education and development in the Laws (as it did in earlier texts, where it is characterized as reason’s psychic ‘ally’). I examine the programs of (...) musical and gymnastic education in the Laws and highlight parallels to the accounts of the spirited part of the soul and its role in moral education and virtue that are offered in Republic and Timaeus. I also examine the educational role given to the laws themselves in Magnesia, and I suggest that the education provided through them is largely directed at the spirited part of the soul as well. (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)

The article discusses two puzzles about Plato''s account of the democratic person: (1) unlike his account of the democratic city, his characterization of a democratic person is markedly incorrect. (2) His criticism of a person so characterized is criticism of a straw man. The article argues that the first puzzle is resolved if we see it as a result of Plato''s assumption that a democratic person is a person whose soul is isomorphic to a democratic constitution. Such a person has (...) a desire satisfaction theory of good and adopts liberty and equality of desires as a basis for action. The article then argues that Plato''s criticism brings up two problems endemic to desire satisfaction theories of good, the problem of bad desires and the problem of conflicts of desires. The criticism is that the democratic person''s way of dealing with these problems, by applying the social principles of liberty and equality to his desires, is irrational. (shrink)

Plato's account of the tripartite soul is a memorable feature of dialogues like the Republic, Phaedrus and Timaeus: it is one of his most famous and influential yet least understood theories. It presents human nature as both essentially multiple and diverse - and yet somehow also one - divided into a fully human 'rational' part, a lion-like 'spirited part' and an 'appetitive' part likened to a many-headed beast. How these parts interact, how exactly each shapes our agency and how they (...) are affected by phenomena like erôs and education is complicated and controversial. The essays in this book investigate how the theory evolves over the whole of Plato's work, including the Republic, Phaedrus and Timaeus, and how it was developed further by important Platonists such as Galen, Plutarch and Plotinus. They will be of interest to a wide audience in philosophy and classics. (shrink)

Starting with the reference to “Plato’s dictum” that Freud added in the second last page of the first edition of The Interpretation of Dreams, the author explains the convergences between the conception of dreams expounded by Plato in the Republic and Freud’s fundamental insights. The analysis of bibliographic sources used by Freud, and of his interests, allow than to suppose not only that Freud omitted to acknowledge the Plato’s theoretical genealogy of “the Via Regia to the unconscious”, but also the (...) possibility that the Republic constituted a tacit source of inspiration for the composition of The Interpretations of dreams. -/- Muovendo dal richiamo al «detto di Platone» inserito nella penultima pagina della prima edizione de "L’interpretazione dei sogni" di Freud (1899), vengono preliminarmente esposte le convergenze tra la concezione del sogno di Platone esposta ne "La Repubblica" e le intuizioni poste alla base dell’edificio freudiano. Alla luce delle fonti testuali citate e utilizzate da Freud, e dei suoi interessi, viene poi avanzata l’ipotesi che egli non soltanto abbia omesso di riconoscere la genealogia teoretica platonica della «via regia che porta alla conoscenza dell’inconscio» (p. 282), ma che l’antico dialogo abbia potuto rappresentare una fonte tacita di ispirazione per la composizione de "L’interpretazione dei sogni". (shrink)

In his exciting new book, Plato’s Anti-hedonism and the Protagoras, J. Clerk Shaw paints a masterful portrait of the Athenian majority, or “the many,” as portrayed by Plato not just in the Protagoras (as the title advertises), but throughout the Platonic corpus. Shaw offers an incisive diagnosis of popular “double-think,” which balances the incoherent complex of commitments to hedonism (the view the pleasure is the good), to the possibility of akrasia (weakness of will) and to the belief that injustice is (...) prudent, i.e. in one’s own self-interest to do. Shaw also puts the dialectical context of the Protagoras to good use in identifying the double-talk that Protagoras is forced into by his own conflicting claims and commitments. The central thesis I question is that the sophists have internalized the opinions of the many, thus absorbing conventional morality as their own as opposed to waking the tightrope of popular opinion. Certainly the sophists’ currency is the opinions of the many, reflecting their own views back to them, and this creates difficulties and tensions in their stances (not least because they are reflecting the incoherent double-think that Shaw so beautifully brings out). However, all this can be true independently of the possibility of the sophists’ actually internalizing the views of the many, i.e. without speculating about their psychology at all. I argue that this thesis of Shaw’s is not necessary for his core insights about the many, and (likewise) that we can resist two other interpretative moves he makes. Shaw’s readings of the Protagoras—of Socrates as committed to spirit (thumos), and of the argument that akrasia is ignorance and courage is wisdom as independent of the commitment to hedonis—reveal his sympathies for a so-called “unitarian” interpretation of Plato, which takes the corpus to provide a unified doctrine rather than reflecting the author’s intellectual development. Here too, I suggest, Shaw’s insights can be preserved without running afoul of this interpretive disagreement. (shrink)

In book 9 of Plato's Republic, Socrates describes the nature and origins of the ‘tyrannical man’, whose soul is said to be ‘like’ a tyrannical city. In this paper, I examine the nature of the ‘government’ that exists within the tyrannical man's soul. I begin by demonstrating the inadequacy of three potentially attractive views sometimes found in the literature on Plato: the view that the tyrannical man's soul is ruled by his ‘lawless’ unnecessary appetites, the view that it is ruled (...) by sexual desire, and the view that it is ruled by a lust for power. I then present my own account. On the view I defend, the tyrannical man's soul is to be understood as ruled by a single, persistent, powerful desire for bodily pleasure: as much as he can get, and however he can get it. Finally, I show how understanding the tyrannical man's soul in the way I recommend helps resolve some commonly expressed concerns about this part of the Republic. I suggest, on this basis, that Plato's procedure in constructing his catalogue o.. (shrink)