PLATOS REPUBLIC THE TRIPARTITE THEORY OF SOUL III

PLATO’S REPUBLIC THE TRIPARTITE THEORY OF SOUL (III) 陳斐婷 清華大學哲學研究所專任助理教授 ftchen@mx. nthu. edu. tw 1

Interpretations of Plato’s Tripartite Theory of the Soul 1. The active-passive model vs. the anthropomorphic model? 2. The Humean reason vs. the Platonic reason 2

1. a. The active-passive model • Reason in Book 10 is said to enable us to correct visual impressions of a misleading kind by appeal to objective procedures of counting, measuring and weighing (602 c-603 b). Desire appears the part which unreflectively accepts visual appearances without checking up by objective standards; and also as the part which indulges in emotions, thereby both enjoying theatrical shows and providing material for them. • “Book 10 is hard to fit with the rest of what Plato says in many ways…. ”(Julia Annas, 131) 3

1. b. The anthropomorphic model • Each part has its own desires and pleasures (580 d-587 e). They are aware of one other; desire can outwit the others; reason can control them; and they can conflict, producing “civic war in the soul” (440 e). Spirit and desire can try to usurp what is not their proper role (442 a-b, 443 d-e). Ideally they should agree (442 d); spirit can be said to retain what reason declares (442 c). Reason has desires of its own; desire can carry out enough reasoning to attain its goals. All three pars have enough cognitive capacity to recognize one another, conflict or agree, and push their own interests. This has worried many scholars, who fear that the parts have been “personified, ” that is, that they are just little replicas of the whole person. 4

Justice as psychic harmony • As well as describing the just person as unified and harmonious, Plato makes a comparison with health (444 c 445 b); he wants us to think of justice as a state where the person is completely fulfilled (or we might say fully realized) because no aspect of him or her is being repressed or denied its proper expression. • Plato’s basic idea of thinking of the best way of life as one in which the individual is “healthy, ” “functioning properly, ” and “integrated, ” which establishes a notion of mental as well as physical health, is an ideal that is not only acceptable to us but part of our familiar way of thinking. • Problems of defining justice as an internal state? 5

2. a. Humean reason • Reason in this role is what organizes and harmonizes other motives and makes it possible for us to attain all or most of our important ends with conflict. However, for reason to act in this role is not for it to have any motivational power of its own, as Hume clearly saw when he said that reason is and ought to be the slave of the passions. The faculty that enables us to attain our desires most rationally is not itself a desire, or a motivation with any particular end of its own. • The Humean role of reason takes the goals of the other parts of the soul as given, with no motivational force of its own, merely tries to achieve them in an efficient and organized way. 6

2. b. Platonic reason • Reason has another role (not much stressed in Book 4) : to love and search for the truth in all its manifestations in theory and practice. This love of truth gives reason its own end, which it delights in pursuing (581 b). So for the reason to rule, it does not have to be limited to carrying out other ends efficiently; it will judge for the whole person in the light of the attainment of its own ends. • Reason as Plato conceives it will decide for the whole soul in a way that does not take the ends of the other parts as given but may involve suppressing or restraining them. • Reason, which is thought of as always straining towards the truth, is thought of as having consideration motivational force of its own. 7

Platonic reason: decision and freedom • In a soul ruled by reason, it is not just the a matter of the strongest desire winning out—something which happens in the various unjust men. Reason enables a person to make a critical and informed decision, rather than letting the strongest desire win the day. • Because reason chooses, rather than mechanically following the strongest desire, we can see why later Plato will characterize the person ruled by reason as free, whereas the person ruled by another part of the soul is unfree and passive. 8

Problem about the Platonic reason: are all the citizens just in the ideal city-state? • Are all the citizens just in the ideal city-state? There has been no suggestion that justice is only to be found in the Guardians. • As the Republic proceeds, Plato in fact loses interest in anyone but the Guardians, and there is some truth in the charge, often made, that he identifies the just person with the Guardian type and does not seem to care the others. • If justice requires that the soul be ruled by reason, not just in the Humean sense but in the stronger sense in which the person’s life is shaped by pursuit of the ends of reason, can anybody be just except the Guardians, who alone have souls ruled by reason rather than by one of the other two parts? 9

Solution • Self-motivated justice vs. justice that requires external sanctions. • Plato possibly means us to understand that only the Guardians, whose souls are ruled by reason in the strong sense, are self-motivated to be just. The other classes are just only in a city where the Guardians’ justice is imposed on them and thus counteracts the natural tendency of their souls to go wrong because they are led by goals that do not on their own ensure justice. • The Guardians too require a political context to be just, but not because they would otherwise go wrong without external direction, rather because they would otherwise be ineffective and not be able to exercise their justice. 10

Solution (cont’d) • So in a sense the Guardians are the only class that is just— that is, they are the only class that can be just from their own resources, without having to be controlled from outside. • Plato drifts into proceeding as though the other two classes were not really just, and loses interest in them, because he is not very interested in justice that requires external sanctions to exist. Plato is only interested in people who can be freely and autonomously just—the Guardians, whose souls are ruled by reason. • See Julia Annas pp. 135 -137. 11

Principle of Conflict • “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. ” (436 b) Sometimes this is referred to as the Principle of Non-contradiction. • A man may desire to drink, yet control this urge. Thus there is a conflict: he both accepts and rejects the same thing at the same time. This can only be explained by saying that he is not a unity, but contains distinct parts. • But does every conflict in motivation show that there are really distinct parts of the soul? • Plato wants to stress that reason, spirit, and desire are utterly distinct kinds of motivation. He makes it clear that the conflict is not due to the nature of the object of desire, but lies in the way that the person relates to that object—with attraction on the one hand, and repulsion on the other. 12

The Homunculus Problem • The anthropomorphic model explains the behavior of a person by introducing in the person homunculi, little people to bring about the behavior. The Homunculus Problem has led many interpreters to conclude that Plato’s tripartite theory of the soul is a mistake, and that it cannot ever get off the ground. Is the Homunculus Problem a real problem? • Solution. This leads to no regress of explanation, just because the homunculi are simpler than the whole person: they are precisely limited to a single function. We are in trouble only when the homunculus reproduces the features that were found puzzling about the whole person. But if one can get a team or committee of relatively ignorant, narrow-minded, blind homunculi to reproduce the intelligent behavior of the whole, this is progress. (Julia Annas, 144) 13

Relation of Justice in the Soul and Justice in the City-State 14

Which is prior in Plato’s thought, the state or the individual? • “Is it not, then, ” said I, “impossible for us to avoid admitting this much, that the same forms and qualities are to be found in each one of us that are in the state? They could not get there from any other source. It would be absurd to suppose that the element of high spirit was not derived in states from the private citizens who are reputed to have this quality as the populations of the Thracian and Scythian lands and generally of northern regions; or the quality of love of knowledge, which would chiefly be attributed to the region where we dwell, or the love of money which we might say is not least likely to be found in Phoenicians and the population of Egypt. ” (435 d-436 a) • A city has a virtue V because the individual citizens have V. 15

The individual is prior to the city • “Are you aware, then, ” said I, “that there must be as many types of character among men as there are forms of government? Or do you suppose that constitutions spring from the proverbial oak or rock and not from the characters of the citizens, which, as it were, by their momentum and weight in the scales draw other things after them? ” “They could not possibly come from any other source, ” he said. “Then if the forms of government are five, the patterns of individual souls must be five also. ” “Surely. ” “Now we have already described the man corresponding to aristocracy or the government of the best, whom we aver to be the truly good and just man. ” (Book 8, 544 d-e) • A city has a virtue V because the individual citizens have V. 16

The city is prior to the individual • On the other hand, the city’s being V does not just come down to their being V people in it, but is a fact about the city and the role it gives to the V people. • Just before the first of the above two passages, Plato stresses again that they began by looking for justice in a city, because there it would appear in larger form. He proposes to transfer the account to the individual to see if the results there agree. If it doesn’t, they must return to the city and see what adjustments are needed there. 17

Neither soul nor state is prior • “Then, ” said I, “if you call a thing by the same name whether it is big or little, is it unlike in the way in which it is called the same or like? ” “Like, ” he said. “Then a just man too will not differ at all from a just city in respect of the very form of justice, but will be like it. ” “Yes, like. ” “But now the city was thought to be just because three natural kinds existing in it performed each its own function, and again it was sober, brave, and wise because of certain other affections and habits of these three kinds. ” “True, ” he said. “Then, my friend, we shall thus expect the individual also to have these same forms (τὰ αὐτὰ ταῦτα εἴδη) in his soul, and by reason of identical affections of these with those in the city to receive properly the same appellations. ” (435 a-c) • Justice in person and city is the same kind of thing. (Julia Annas, 148) 18

Metaphysical assumption and further problem • Plato is bringing in a metaphysical assumption from outside the immediate discussion by making a direct claim about the real nature of things. Justice, he thinks, must be single in form; if cities and people are truly just, then they cannot be just in radically different ways, even if cities and people are very different kinds of thing. • Further problem. If city and person are just in exactly the same sense, then their justice will have a common structure which is discernible in each. It makes no difference, whether we begin with the state’s justice and try to find it in the soul, or being with the soul’s justice and try to find it in the state. But Plato seems to assert that we have to begin with the state’s justice. • 斐婷老師的立場 19

Defense of Justice 20

Fallacy with equivocation • Justice is what produces inner harmony in a person (443 d-e) and is to the soul what health is to the body (444 c-445 b). • Plato has been widely accused of a fallacy in his reasoning here-–the fallacy of equivocation, proving something different from what one is asked to prove. For the answer offered here (in terms of psychic harmony) to Thrasymachus’ defense of ordinary injustice does look irrelevant. • Psychic harmony is a condition of your own soul—that is why having it benefits you—whereas ordinary justice concerns behavior to other people. Plato has to prove: why should having a rightly ordered soul make you keep hands off other people’s property? 21

Justice as psychic harmony • One important point is that it is a mistake to take the analogies of health and harmony to suggest that justice, conceived of as psychic harmony, is being thought of as a static state of feeling good. Reason does not just organize the various desires into a harmoniously attainable whole; it also has aims of its own, and the person in whose soul reason rules will be a person led to do certain things and choose certain alternatives. Plato’s own analogy of health makes clear the benefits of justice, but on any view it is limited and misleading. 22

Solutions? • Solution One. The just man will have no interest in the pleasures of the body, or the money needed to obtain them. Concentration on the aims of reason makes one lose interest in other things. • Solution Two. In the ideal state things are so organized in such a way that all “do their own” and recognize their due position; the rule of the Guardians means that things have been organized in such a way that each gets what is appropriate. The Guardians will not be offending against ordinary justice because in the ideally just state conditions are such that there is no occasion for ordinary injustice. • But would any of the above two satisfy Thrasymachus? Surely not, for he wanted a defense of justice in the world as it is, not in utopian condition. 23

Act-centered vs. agent-centered • Act-centered theories begin from a focus on the notion of the right act. “What is the right thing to do? ” Recall that Cephalus and Polemarchus see justice as a matter of the performance of acts. • Agent-centered theories focus on the notion of the good agent or the good person. “What kind of person should I be? ” • Books 2 through 4 has been an attempt to build up a notion of the just agent. Recall that Glaucon concentrates on the two lives (360 e-362 c) entirely in terms of what the people do and what happens to them—the just man is tortured, the unjust man is doing all right. It is left to Socrates to turn our attention to the just man’s inner life rather than his external face, and ask what kind of person he is. In Books 2 -4 Plato concentrates on the individual’s soul, goodness, and virtues. 24

From act-centered to agent-centered • We can now see why there is no simple answer to whether Plato changes the subject and commits the fallacy of equivocation. • Plato cannot answer these questions precisely as they were posed, for the problems were raised over just acts, and Plato thinks that the basic questions about justice have to be posed answered in terms of the just agent. • Plato has not changed the subject, but he has changed the method of approach. He is trying to replace the inadequate act-centered concept of justice, held by people like Cephalus and Polemarchus, by a more adequate theory, and he thinks that such a theory must be agent-centered. 25

Two aspects of the role of ordinary justice • There are two aspects in which ordinary justice plays a role in constraining the account of Platonic justice. • Firstly, Plato claims emphatically that the condition of having a just soul is created, fostered, and maintained by the doing of just actions—see 485 d ff. , 443 d-444 e, and 588 e-591 e. The analogue here is health: as healthy actions produce health, so doing just actions produces justice. • Two issues are involved here. One is the point that we become just by doing just actions. The other is the point of justification: will doing actions recognized as ordinarily just make you a Platonically just agent? But the answer is no. Following rules does not suffice to make you a just agent. This is why we need to turn to focus on the just agent. 26

Two aspects of the role of ordinary justice • Secondly, Plato does appeal at the end of Book 4 to “common -place” judgments of what is ordinarily just, and claim that Platonic justice will meet them (442 d-e). He thinks that ordinary justice constrains the content of Platonic justice. But it provides only a constraint, and of a rather negative kind at that; common beliefs are appealed to only on what is absolutely ruled out, not on what is either permissible or desirable. Plato trusts our intuitions only clear-cut cases of what the just person will never do. 27

Conclusion • The Book 4 account of justice will not do on its own as an answer to Thrasymachus. It has deepened out understanding of justice by insisting that what matters is not observance of external demands but the kind of person the just person is; what really matters is not what he or she does but why it is done, what the person’s motivation is. • The Book 4 account does, however, meet the first part of Glaucon’s challenge: justice has been shown to be a state that is worth having for itself and not only its consequences. • April 25 th Book 5, 473 c ff (i) Knowledge and what is (476 d-478 e) (ii) Forms and what is (478 e-480 a) May 2 nd Theory of Forms 28