Ethics, Meaning, Mind, and Human Nature
A collection of my thoughts on Philosophy, Meta-Ethics, Religion, and more.
This is a paper that I wrote for my first philosophy class (Intro to Ethics). It may be the first paper that I wrote in college.
Introduction to Ethics (Phil 1003)
First Written Assignment (1 of 3)
Winter Quarter 1984
Part of Plato’s account of justice as harmony of the soul is his argument that there are three parts of the soul corresponding to the three parts of his ideal state. What is Plato’s argument that the soul has these three parts and how adequate is it? (Make sure you state the general principle that provides the basis for Plato’s division of the soul into parts as well as his arguments for the distinctness of the three parts that he mentions.) Just how important for Plato’s overall argument of the Republic in his argument that the soul has these three parts.
Plato’s argument that the soul is composed of three parts is based primarily on his definition of opposites; anything while remaining itself can never be affected, or be, or act in opposite (contrary) ways at the same time, in the same part of itself in relation to the same frame of reference [436b-437a]. Plato claims that the three parts of the soul are desire, spirit, and reason.
First Plato shows that the soul has a desiring part, in control of the bodily pleasures. He does not need to make use of his definition of opposites to show this because everything must have at least one part if it is to be anything at all. So, since there is desire in the soul, Plato chooses this as his starting point.
Plato next finds the reasoning part of his soul in his investigation and goes on to discuss its nature. Plato shows that there is conflict in the soul when someone has a desire to drink and satisfy the body but also knows that it would not be good to drink and so does not. The part of the soul created by this conflict is called the reasoning or rational part and is put in charge pf rational and reflective thinking and is the seat of wisdom.
The last part of the soul that Plato discovers is the spirited part. He uses the story of Leontius looking at corpses and examples of how anger can motivate a man to ignore his need for food or drink. These conflicts set out that the spirited part of the soul is different from the desires. However, Plato fails to give a proof that the spirit is not part of reason. This doesn’t present any real problems for Plato’s argument, though, because there are numerous examples that he could use to show this. Take the following illustration: suppose that the spirited part of a man’s soul is angry and he wants to hit the person he is angry with. Possibly, at this same time the rational part of his soul would be telling him that the other man is bigger and that it would not be a good idea to fight him.
At this point Plato seems to be doing a good job. He has set up his definition of opposites, which has held true for all of the examples so far, and he has made three divisions of the soul. Something seems to go wrong at this point though. Why should Plato stop his divisions here? Why should three be the “magic number”? There really doesn’t seem to be any reason other than that Plato’s ideal state has three classes, which really doesn’t seem like a very good reason. It looks almost like Plato is trying to make the data fit the theory.
In a way Plato (Socrates) comes out looking like nothing more than a fast talker. Glaucon and Adeimantus allow themselves to believe that Socrates has proven them wrong too soon. So as a result they stop questioning him and start agreeing with everything he says. If Glaucon and Adeimantus would have held onto their skeptical viewpoint a little longer they might have caught on that Socrates could keep on dividing the soul into even more parts. It seems that this would have been easy for them to do since there are so many examples that can be used to divide the three parts further.
A good idea of dividing the desire would be a person who loves to eat chocolate cake and has not been able to have any for a long time. If this person then had an opportunity to have some cake they might eat two or three pieces in a frenzy trying to satisfy their desire for cake. The richness of the cake would soon catch up with this person and there would be a conflict within the desiring part of the soul. This person’s taste buds would be telling the this person to eat more because chocolate cake is his favorite food, but his stomach would be telling him to stop because he’s going to get sick.
One of these desires will of course win out over the other, but for a time, at least for a moment, there will be conflict which proves that the desiring part of the soul is really more than one part. The spirited part of the soul can can also be shown to be more than one part in much the same way as the desiring part.
This example is like the example used to show that the spirited part was different from the rational part, except instead of a man wanting to hit another man, there is an angry man wanting to punch a woman. This man has no reason to fear loosing a fight, so why doesn’t he go ahead and punch her? The reason he doesn’t is because his sense of honor tells him that he should not hit a lady. A sense of honor certainly arises from the spirited part of the soul, just as anger does. The spirited part wants to both punch the woman and not punch the woman. Therefore there is conflict within the spirited part, so it must be more than one part.
The two lower parts of the soul have been divided and have been shown to consist of more than one part each. This leaves only the rational part of the soul undivided. The rational part of the soul is the hardest part of the soul to divide. This is so because it is better defined than the other parts and because there really aren’t any emotions to play off against each other to create the conflicts. If this line of thought is to get anywhere it seems most important the rational part of the soul be divided. If it isn’t then it can still rule over the lower parts of the soul , and Plato’s argument will still be mostly all right because to Plato the most important factor in his argument seems to be that the rational part always be in control of the other parts.
Plato also feels that there are rational desires. Where else would the desire for knowledge and wisdom arise from? It seems that these must come from the rational part of the soul. If there are rational desires then there is also the possibility of rational conflicts. Plato has failed to look into these possibilities and if he would have he may have run into something like the example that follows.
Imagine a very dedicated chemist who also seems to be a very just man. He satisfies the desires of the lower parts of his soul only as much as necessary and the rational part of his soul definitely is the dominant part. The chemist might develop an interest is some obscure branch of chemistry where the chances of self gain through practical applications or prestige would be minimized. Getting funding for an obscure branch of chemistry could be rather difficult. This could then lead the chemist to contemplate stealing or embezzling some money for his research. He could easily justify this by saying that a desire for knowledge is a just and good desire. At the same time, though, he would also be thinking that these actions would be crimes, and if he were caught it would greatly hinder any research he may have planned on. This man would have a great conflict going on within the the rational part of his soul. The spirited and desiring parts have nothing to do with it. So this shows that the rational part of the soul has to have more than one part.
This has serious consequences for Plato’s argument. How could one decide which of the two rational parts of the soul should be in charge? Under some circumstances embezzling or stealing or other crimes could be justifiable means to an end, other time they would not be. The only way to decide would be to say under what circumstances crimes are justifiable. If that were to be done, though, there would be no need for Plato’s definition of justice or for his three parts of the soul.
Another point this brings up is that there is no reason to believe the parts of the soul (now numbering six) could not all be divided again. Of course as each part of the soul becomes more and more well defined it would be harder and harder to make divisions, but in theory it seems that the soul could have an infinite number of parts. So it seems that Plato has made some crucial errors in his argument.
Plato has also failed to examine the idea that the soul may have only one part and that there may not be any conflict at all. This can perhaps best be understood by an analogy. When an airplane propeller is spinning it looks as if it fills the whole area of the circle around the blades. If one didn’t know any better this would surly seem to be a reasonable explanation. But in fact the blades don’t fill the whole area. At any given moment they occupy one exact place, but since they are moving so quickly it is impossible to tell this.
Now compare this to a soul with only one part which changes states so quickly that is seems to be in many states at once, just as a spinning propeller seems to be in many places at once. This theory seems to be every bit as valid as Plato’s and even more so because it escapes some of the criticisms. It seems to be able to explain every situation. Take for example the chocolate cake eater discussed earlier. At one moment he would want to eat the cake and a the next moment, almost at the same instant but not quite, he would not want the cake, then he would want it again, and so on. This seems to describe the situation perfectly, because the changes are occurring much too fast for him to be aware of them. So to him it seems as though his soul is in two states at once, even though it really isn’t.
There is one more important point to be brought up. It is the possibility that justice belongs among the forms. Perhaps justice is something that can’t really bee define by mere words, but must be experienced to be understood. Just as Plato believe this to be true of beauty and goodness. This can be shown in a way that Plato would be forced to accept because the proof relies on something else that Plato strongly support, and that is the immortality of the soul. There is really no question that Plato believes the soul to be immortal, as he argues this position in book X of The Republic.
Plato believes the soul to be immortal because it can’t be destroyed. Since all material things can be destroyed (this seems almost axiomatic) then the soul must be immaterial. If it is true that the soul is immaterial then all the argument presented so far, Plato’s, as well as all the others, have relied on a fallacy for their proofs. What justification is there that things derived from a material world (things such as the definition of opposites or analogies based on airplane propellers) have any relevance to a totally immaterial soul? The answer is that there isn’t any justification for it. There is no reason whatsoever that can show that something material and something immaterial, two things which by definition have nothing in common, should in any way have to be subjected to the same rules or properties. If there isn’t necessarily any common ground between the soul and the real world then there isn’t any way to draw a relationship between the two without first assuming some things, and no one can get away with doing that and have an airtight proof. Therefore justice is better off left to the forms.
There is of course the possibility that Plato is wrong in believing the soul to be immortal. If the soul isn’t immortal and is only a material part of the universe this could have an effect on the relevance of justice and injustice and goes beyond the scope of this paper.
Plato’s argument for the three parts of the soul is very important to The Republic because he uses this as his definition of justice and then goes on to relate everything else to what he thinks justice is. The Republic has some very good ideas in it, even if some of them are built on shaky ground and deserves far more attention than this brief paper can give to it.
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Republic
Read Republic online at MIT classics
Categories: Personal Entry, Philosophy, Political Philosophy
Tags: College paper, Plato, Republic
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