# Tripartite Soul --- ## Three classes in the city 1. producers 2. auxiliaries - "soldiers" 3. rulers - guardians (Where's he getting this from? Athens? Sparta? Egypt?) --- ## The definition of justice! - "justice is doing one's own work and not meddling with what isn't one's own" (433a-b) - "For the money-making, auxiliary, and guardian classes each to do its own work in the city, is the opposite -- that's justice, isn't it, and makes the city just." 434c --- ## Tripartite soul 1. Humans have souls (that are responsible for willing, willing...) [assumed - "assent" passage] 2. The same thing cannot do or undergo opposite actions with respect to the same part of itself at the same time. [examples: man standing still but moving arms; spinning top - 436a-437a] 3. Wanting and rejecting something are opposite actions. --- 5. Scenarios / conflict cases: sometimes we... (a) want a drink and reject a drink (b) want to look at corpses but are angry at ourselves (Leontius); strike our chest and speak to our heart (Odysseus) 6. Therefore we (sometimes) both want and reject the same thing at the same time (interpretation of 4) --> we undergo opposite actions (3,6, substitution) 8. But we can't undergo opposite actions w/ the same part of ourself (2 439b) 9. Therefore we must have a different part responsible for each of the actions. (Conclusion - 439b - e) --- 3 parts of the soul: 1. rational / calculated (log/istikon) 2. appetitive / desiring 3. spirited --- ## Non-tripartite soul - is Plato wrong? - **1 part**: give a different interpretation of conflict cases in (4) - **2 parts**: reinterptet 4b conflict cases - **>3 parts**: come up with additional conflict cases --- **The soul has >3 parts:** - rescuing someone from a burning building - our spirited / courageous part would urge us to rescue - our appetitive part...?? maybe just wants to get out of the smoke and get some water? - our rational part is trying to calculate our chances of survival - our *instinct* is telling us to flee (not rescue) --- **The soul has >3 parts:** - mixed emotions at someone's funeral - on Plato's account, no other part than the "spirited" part could be responsible for our feeling grief - but that also seems to be the part that is responsible for our feeling joy - Can we imagine how Plato might try to respond to a scenario like this? --- **The soul has 2 parts** --- **The soul has just 1 part** --- **Where we are in the *Republic*** 1. what justice looks like in a city (II.368c-IV.435e) 2. what justice looks like in a soul (IV.435e-IV.443c) 4. INTERRUPTION: wait up, let’s return to some details of the just city (Book V) - equality of women (Monday) - family (or lack thereof) and war - philosopher kings - **what the philosopher knows: FORMS** --- ## Plato on Forms *ont*/olgy - the return to a Presocratic project 1. Why posit forms? 2. What are forms like? 3. Some analogies --- ## Why forms? They help answer some questions: 1. What is F? (Remember *Euthyphro* 6d) * "looking for that form in virtue of which pious things are pious" Also, "What makes F and -F *opposites*?" --- 2. Why...? (*Phaedo*) "I thought it splendid to know the causes of everything, why it comes to be, why it perishes, and why it exists" material vs. teleological explanation --- ## What are forms like? - exclude their opposite - problem: are there only forms of things w/ opposites? - not susceptible to change more broadly - --- ## The sun - 2 terms: "form," e*id*os; and *id*ea - suggests parallel btwn vision & knowledge --- ## The line