Abstract

In the Republic, IV, Plato divides the soul into three parts, which can be translated as three probable origins of agency. The soul is the agent of both rational agency and non-rational agency. How is it possible for the soul to have contradictory aims, and act? In order to survey a possible answer, the paper gives an outline of the relation between soul and agency, agency and its threefold origin, and the resemblance of Plato’s theory of soul to the psychoanalytical model.