Plato's Subordination To The Rational Nature

According to Socrates one of the most important things that identify with human being is their desire. Socrates argues that desire that can change people minds quickly and very abnormally. The three-part division of the soul is crucial to Plato’s overall project of offering the same sort of explication of justice whether applied to societies or individuals.

However, although this provides us with a way of categorising pleasure, it does not bring us any closer to a theory of happiness, as there is no suggestion that it too has three different forms. From this I conclude that Plato considers the notion of pleasure to be insufficient as an explanation of happiness, and that these instead represent two different, but interrelated, concepts.

In Book IV, Plato theorises individual justice to be a mirror reflection of political justice. Much like Plato’s three class structure of a just society, he also hypothesised there are three components to an individual’s soul. That is: the rational, the spiritual, and the appetitive. In this model, the rational soul seeks truth, and is accountable for philosophical tendencies. The spiritual component of the soul desires honour and is liable for feelings of anger. The third and final aspect of the the soul is the appetitive element that 's sole purpose is for satisfying it 's selfish desires, most of all it lusts after money what can be used to satisfy other desires (e.g. Food, shelter, clothing

The appetite is concerned with the pursuit of bodily pleasure. This aspect of the soul is satisfied only by the creature comforts such as food, sex, and drink (167). These three divisions are found in the individual, but in varying degrees. Some will lean more towards the appetite, while other are spirit-driven, and still others find greater fulfillment through the intellectual pursuits of reason (168). Plato clearly favors the reason in his three part soul, since it is with reason that one can grasp the Forms, which themselves are the ultimate in beauty and truth.

Plato’s moral theory consisted of the concept of the soul and the concept of virtue as function. To Plato, the soul has three parts; reason, spirit, and appetite. The reason we do things is to reach a goal or value, our spirit drives us to accomplish our goal, and our desire for things is our appetite. The three virtues that must be fulfilled to reach the fourth, general virtue are temperance, courage, and wisdom,

Alcohol use is associated with tremendous costs to the drinker, those around him or her, and society as a whole. These costs result from increased health risks (both physical and mental) associated with alcohol consumption as well as from the social harms caused by alcohol.

c. P) Since the good, according to Plato, is that which furthers a person’s real interests, it follows that in any given case when the good is known, men will seek it.

I contend that Plato 's theories on morality are persuaded by concerns he had about moral theory. Specifically, Plato rejects rationality as the boost of subjectively evaluated self-interest because, had he received such an account, his hypothesis of justice would be liable to reactions which he holds are lethal to the contractarian theory of justice. While detailing a hypothesis to stay inside ethical constraints in some cases disregards the groups of scientific theorizing, Plato maintains to avoid this mistake.

The premise of the same thing will not undergo opposites within the same part of itself in regards to the same thing at the exact same time, so therefore when the soul gives you two opposite urges (e.g. thirsty but you don’t want to get a drink) it proves that the soul must have different parts, is a premise that I do indeed agree with. I believe what Plato is saying here as I do not think the same part of one’s soul can be responsible for making someone have two completely opposite urges. I also agree with the premise that there is a third part to the soul, the spirit. At first I questioned it thinking that this was indeed one in the same with the rational but then the good point is made that small children are clearly full with spirit yet are not rational so therefore they cannot be one in the same. This argument sold me on the third part of the soul.

In this paper I will be discussing the tripartite (three parts) of the soul that Socrates discussed in chapter 6 of Plato’s Republic, and I will compare and contrast them to that of Aristotle and Anthony Kenny. In Plato’s Republic the three parts of the soul consist of the rational, spirited and, desire. In this dialogue the three parts of the soul go hand and hand with three parts of a just society.

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The battle of good and bad has been a debated topic for thousands of years, a fact evident in Plato’s dialogue, Crito. To become aware of the pretenses for this argument, it is significant to understand the meanings of the words good and bad. Good is a word referring to the virtue of an individual, a term meaning something is desired or pleasurable, or it can denote the moral right of a person or object. The term “bad” has negative connotations; it is everything good is not.

This portrayal of emotions, of the inferior part of the soul, in Plato’s beliefs, “awakens and nourishes and strengthens the feelings and impairs the reason.” (41) Plato considers this indulgence irrational and useless. The superior and rational person (the ideal statesman) would pride himself on the opposite qualities and in times of sorrow or passion would suppress urges to openly sorrow or indulge in pleasures. Summing up Plato’s philosophy, the imitative artist is a long way from the truth and can write or paint any and all things because he does not know about the subjects he creates; he denies the rational principle of the soul and overly indulges in emotion resulting in the neglect of justice and virtue, (45) and has not found a proper purpose in the ideal state.

Plato fails to realise that the three parts of the soul simultaneously interact with one another and that each part of the tripartite can exist within each other. It is not enough to distinguish the calculative, the passionate, and the desiderative, or with others the rational, or the irrational; for it is absurd to split the last mentioned ability because wish is found in the calculative part and desire and passion in the irrational; and if the soul is tripartite, appetite will be found in all three parts.

Plato recognizes that knowledge and understanding of the Forms is of momentous value, because they are pre-eminent and transcendent goods. Possession of the Forms, in a sense that does not imply ownership, is the product of reason — visualised as the most worthwhile attribute of the human soul — and it is this possession which leads to human happiness. A happiness shared by all of those who arrive at a true realisation of the Forms, through the supremacy and superiority of human reason [12]. For Plato, an action is approved of not simply because it is preferred by reason, but because reason will prefer it when reason has succeeded in apprehending the Good, and applying that apprehension to the task of choosing actions [13].