Plato’s
concept of the tripartite soul has been extensively written about and studied
by scholars throughout the ages. It
influenced Aristotle (in his De Anima)
and all other subsequent Greek and Roman philosophers. Augustine and the Christians cherished it as
a means of showing the innate sinfulness (the appetitive) as well as our innate
divinity (made in His own image, or the cogitative). Even people as modern as Freud borrowed the
tripartite nature of the soul to develop his own theories of Id, Ego, and
Supergo,
as well as modern cognitive psychologist who have taken Plato’s faculty
psychology to heart. One possible explanation for the widespread
popularity and the everlasting nature of Plato’s theories on the soul lies not
as much in the theory itself (for indeed, Plato himself evolved or fixed the
mistakes in regards to his concept of the tripartite soul from the Phaedo to the Republic to the Timaeus),
but in the very conception of what the soul was or how to interact with
it. At times of rapid development in the
sciences and technologies, philosophers sometimes tend to mirror their
philosophies on these changes (such as Spencer and Social Darwinism). Plato lived not only in a time of rapid
philosophical and artistic development, but also in the birth of the scientific
tradition. More importantly, this birth
and triumph of reason and science took man out of the clouds of the mystical
and placed him within the realm of the world, able to be scrutinized and
understood by science. This notion was
especially true in regards to medicine, where men first began to rationally
look at their own diseases and find worldly cures for them. Plato took this rational, scientific, and
medicinal optimism and applied it to his own philosophy. For the first time in history, Plato set
forth the concept that not only was the soul real, but it also was able to be
treated of its illnesses and diseases in much the same was as the body. The wrongdoer was not possessed by demons,
but sick, and as such could be cured of his sickness by introspecting and
prescribing his own cure or by a doctor (judge) who, if the illness were
serious enough, could help him as well. His worldly, medical view of the soul is most evident in the Republic,
especially in Book IV, for it is within book IV that Plato fleshes out his idea
of the tripartite soul. Yet hidden
throughout the book in scattered parts, it is also possible to pick out the proper
modus operandi and cure from the Asklepios of the soul himself. For each part of the soul, it appears as if
Plato provided a proper medical behavior in response; of course though, like
all medicine, these treatments or behaviors could overlap. Nevertheless, Asklepian Plato set mankind
down the path to achieve psychic health.
Though
Plato hints at his tripartite division of the soul in the Phaedo,
it was not until the RepublicRepublic is 435b-441e, as well
as a further discussion at 611b-612a5. In sections 435b-441e, Plato divides the soul up into three distinct
parts: the appetitive (τό έπιθυμητικόν), the spirited (θυμοειδές),
and the cogitative (τό λογιστικόν). His discovery or justification for this
distinction is quite unique in the history of Western logical thought. For at 439b5-7, Plato introduced what
scholars call the Principle of Opposites,
stating, “For it cannot be, we say, that the same thing with the same part of
itself at the same time acts in opposite ways about the same thing.”
Plato used this principle to deduce the differences between the three
parts. The logic of this principle, of
course, was not fully fleshed out until Aristotle wrote his Metaphysics,
but nevertheless, the Principle of Opposites allowed Plato to differentiate not
between two obvious parts of the soul (the appetitive and the cogitative), but
to create or discover the third part which had previously been linked with
either the appetitive or the cogitative, or had just been dismissed as madness
or possession (the rage of Achilles, the insanity of Medusa, etc.). Thus Plato was also the first intellectual in
Western history to fully flesh out an emotional
theory. Now with this tool in hand and
the three parts identified, Plato was able to flesh out the three parts. that
Plato fully fleshed his theory out, describing in detail each of the three
parts. The critical section of analysis
in the
The first
part of the soul that he identified is the appetitive (τό έπιθυμητικόν),
which of course is the most obvious or self evident to humans due to the fact
that it is the inescapable natural impulses that we have. Plato himself states at 437d that the most
obvious of these desires are thirst and hunger, though Plato also includes
willingness or wishing. Obviously a more
complete list would include all volitional or semi-volitional operations of
human biology (from sex to urination to breathing). The text, however, is ambiguous about
biological needs that are out of our ability to control. It only states at 437e3-5 that, “That is
so…each desire in itself is of that thing only of which it is in its nature to
be. The epithets belong to the
quality-such or such.” It is safe to assume, however, that in a work
of an ethical nature, as well as in such a primitive state of the development
of psychology, Plato was only speaking of those things which our body desires
which are in our control to pursue or not. For example, we are not able to stop our body from digesting food, but
we can choose whether to eat or not; or, we are not able to stop our body from
processing oxygen, but we can hold our breath underwater and choose not to
allow oxygen into our system. This means
that, of the elements of our body which we have the ability to control, these
elements desiring a certain thing, we have the ability to give in to said
desire or not (this choice is fundamental to the tripartite soul). The combination of these desires forms the
first part, the basis of, and indeed the largest part of the soul.
The
reasoning behind the appetitive being classified as the first or base part of
the soul is quite clear. When the
hierarchy of life is observed, one can see that from the very basic living
organisms, including plants (though these are not volitional beings), to the
more advanced living organisms such as animals (though once again, these are
not volitional beings), to man, the appetitive element is a common
element. A tree, a dog, and a human all
desire water and food. Freed from the
shackles of the supernatural unknown, Plato was able to see the common element
amongst all living organism (though it was not until Aristotle that the science
of biology exploded in the ancient world). Thus the appetitive element of the soul is purely corporeal and purely
animalistic. The proper functioning of
every living organism requires a fulfillment of the appetitive desire. Plato, however, understands than man has the
ability to choose the object that relinquishes his desire. At 438a-438d Plato brings up that others
might state that the desire of denotes the desire of something good and spends
a considerable amount of time defending this position. His response, tersely, is that the desire of
something is just the desire of that particular entity, good or bad and much or
less being mere attributes of that entity. With this view of the appetitive, it is clear why Plato placed so much
emphasis on the cogitative. The
appetitive desires drink: what to drink or how much of something to drink
(drunkenness versus teetotalism); the appetitive desires sex: with whom to have
sex or in what way (sexual monogamy versus sexual orgies); it is the cogitative
which directs and guides the appetitive into the proper venue of action.
It is
clear, then, that the appetitive can be either healthy (desiring the right
things, at the right times, for the right reasons) or unhealthy (desiring the
wrong things, at the wrong times, for the wrong reasons). It is also evident that the cogitative guides
the appetitive to a proper course of desire. What is not evident, however, is the relationship between the appetitive
and the cogitative, or more specifically, how
the cogitative guides the appetitive to a proper course of desire. Plato does not truly give an answer, merely
stating at 439b that the cogitative merely pulls the appetitive back from its
desires. It would be possible, however,
to look ahead to Plato’s prescription for the cogitative and trace it backwards
to the appetitive: or, it is also possible that the answer lies before the very discussion of the
tripartite soul. Either way, the answer
remains the same: education. Yet it is
outside of the nature of the appetitive to be educated, for education lies
within the realm of reason. A closer
examination of how education is a therapy for the mind reveals the key: it is
not so much the discovery of the new that is important here, but the
affirmation of the tried and true. Or
put more simply, it is through overwhelming evidence that the mind takes an
idea and turns it into an educational law, staying with the individual as if it
were permanent (notice how, through a change in modern values and the modern
education system, Rome is thrown out as a copycat empire of engineers as
opposed to the more ‘sophisticated’ Greeks-a view quite modern indeed!). Translated into the language of the
appetitive, education would be better understood as habituation. The cogitative
simply directing the appetitive to not have a desire for drunkenness may be
powerful enough one time, or a few times; it is not powerful enough, however,
to curb the impulses. To curb such an
impulse, an individual must create a habit of not drinking to get drunk by
repeatedly, over a long period of time, guiding the appetitive away from five
drinks, to four, to three, to two, and eventually reinforcing one as a proper
modus operandi. Akin to training a dog,
this action repeated over and over and over again will eventually yield a habit
of drinking in moderation. Though this
does not eradicate the impulse itself (one could argue that it is impossible to
eradicate impulses), habituation serves as a very powerful tool of the
cogitative by which, in most cases, it can easily overcome an impulse. From this it is also clear that the stronger
the impulse, the more diligent the cogitative must be in creating habits (walls)
strong enough to withstand the onslaught of impulse. Clearly, then, a healthy appetitive can be
attained through a proper creation of good habits.
Plato then
brings back the Principle of Opposites in order to reveal the spirited part of
the soul (θυμοειδές). At 439E, Plato brings up the issue of the
temper or the high spirit. To help
explain the difference between the cogitative and the spirited, he introduces
the story of Leontios. The man Leontios
was supposedly torn between his desire to see a pile of dead bodies and his
disgust at the bodies and at such an action. Thus we see a conflict between the innate appetitive desire to see the
bodies and the spirited, emotional disgust at such an action. Since it is clear that such an emotional
reaction is not a part of the reasoning element (for Leontios did not sit down
upon a rock and muse for a few minutes as to how to feel or respond to this
action), the Principle of Opposites requires that this indeed be a separate
element of the soul. Plato thus called
this the spirited element (θυμοειδές). The spirited is seemingly problematic, however, due to the fact that it
seems as if Plato had begun a theory of emotions, yet stopped after just a
few. Nowhere does Plato incorporate
sadness or happiness or any other emotion into the spirited. It seems as if the spirited has its special
place as temper or anger. Plato even
offers two other examples; one of Odysseus restraining his anger upon site of
the suitors at his house; the other of an infant born into the world containing
the appetitive and the spirited (a temper, as Glaucon says; an anger). A possible solution lies in the correlation
between the purpose for which a just spirited part acts. The spirited element is supposed to be the
“soldier” as opposed to the “general”, the cogitative, aiding it in whatever it
needs aiding and reinforcing the cogitative in its battle with the appetitive.
Regardless, what is evident is that there is a second element of the soul, the
spirited, and that its function is to assist the cogitative.
The health
of the spirited at first glance seems quite elusive. It is truly not possible to form a habit from
the spirited, because the spirited has more of a reactionary nature (by
reacting to something, the spirited
is ultimately dependent upon that with which it reacts, and because each
incident for which the reaction occurs will be different, the spirited in turn
will act in a differing manner, being only related by the common element of
anger or temper). The answer to the problem of spirited health, it seems, lies
in two elements of Platonic education: music and gymnastics. Music especially plays a key role in relation
to the spirited element, and it is possible that a deeper understanding of this
connection could further elucidate the shadowy figure of the spirited part of
the soul. In a later commentary on the Republic by the Muslim scholar Averroes,
the image of war in regards to the spirited element is brought up:
“It is also evident in that
spiritedness often wars against desire and rules over it as though it were an instrument of ascendancy [by] which it rules
over them. Hence it is that we
frequently grow angry at what the
desires bring [us] to thoughtlessly…And the spirited kind will obey and submit to it, heatedly arouse by it [and]
battling with the other kind. This
harmony in the individual soul is achieved through music…music renders it disciplined, submissive to cogitation.”
According to Averroes, music then is the tool by which the
cogitative forces the wild spirited part into submission (even in the Phaedrus, Plato uses the image of horses
to describe the appetitive and spirited, with the cogitative charioteer rearing
in and steering the wild beasts). Though
Averroes uses a more war-like vocabulary than Plato (understandable), the
element remains the same: the relationship between the different parts of the
soul is a relationship of tension, much akin to the relationship between the
different notes in a unified chord. Plato himself hints at the link between music and the spirited at 411d,
when he states:
“But what if he does nothing
but this [gymnastics] and has no contact with the Muse in any way, is not the result that even if there was
some principle of the love of knowledge [the cogitative] in his soul, since it tastes of no instruction
nor of any inquiry and does not participate in any discussion or any other form of culture, it becomes
feeble, deaf, and blind, because it is not aroused
or fed nor are its perceptions purified and quickened…and so such a man, I take
it, becomes a misologist and
stranger to the Muses.”
As well as at 441e-442a:
“Then is it not, as we said,
the blending of music and gymnastics that will render them concordant, intensifying and fostering the
one with fair words and teachings and relaxing and soothing and making gentle the other by
harmony and rhythm?”
Music thus plays two roles: it unifies or brings into
harmony the tension between the different parts of the soul, as well as soothes
or guides the spirited element, aiding it in its purpose. Speaking more broadly, the spirited element
is not only the aid of reason, carrying out its commands in directing the
appetitive, but also it enjoys a seeming symbiotic relationship with the
cogitative in that it fuels the fire, so to speak, culturing or refining the
intellect and grounding it into this world. Plato hints that the person who does not listen to music, and thus does
not cultivate the spirited within him, will not have the proper link between
his appetitive, corporeal, worldliness and his cogitative, incorporeal,
divineness. What one can see, however, in the evolution
of or the change in Plato’s beliefs regarding the soul from the Phaedo to the Republic and Phaedrus to
the Timaeus is a distinct break from
the pre-Socratic view of Pythagoras and Heraclitus concerning the soul and harmonia to a more modern, medical view
of the soul, begun in the Republic
and finished in the Timaeus. Ironically,
it appears as if Plato is stating that, were the spirited ever to become
diseased, the answer would lie in a deep immersion into proper music (for of
course, like habituation and education, these healing processes take time).
Nevertheless, the importance of the spirited in controlling the appetitive and
in nourishing the cogitative is undeniable.
The highest
part of the tripartite soul is the cogitative (τό λογιστικόν), the
lofty seat of reason reigning supreme above the more barbaric appetitive and
spirited. Unlike the largest section,
the appetitive, or the middle section, the spirited, the cogitative is the
smallest element within the tripartite soul. Plato speaks very briefly of the cogitative, in part because most Greeks
at the time would have been very familiar with reason (it was indeed the new
religion), and also in part because he had written about it so extensively
before. Thus the cogitative did not need
much explanation because it was taken as self-evident or repetitive. What he does say of the cogitative part in
terms of explanation he reveals in a very peculiar fashion. At 439b, Plato states that if there is
something within the soul that pulls back a man from his natural impulse for
water, this thing that is pulling back must indeed be a distinct entity from
the impulse for water. He uses this as a
preface for the Principle of Opposites, but also, taking volition as self
evident, states that if you have the choice to do something contrary to an
impulse, this must be the cogitative part which is doing the pulling away (by
aid of the spirited).
The
cogitative soul thus has only one function: to rule via reason, or more
appropriately, to use its power of reason to calculate out the best venue to
pursue within the appetitive via the spirited. The cogitative soul is the last part of the
soul that is developed (Glaucon even remarks that some people never develop
it), and is particular to humans. In the
Republic, however, Plato depicts a
cogitative that is not as much the charioteer as in the Timaeus, but rather is more of a lighthouse that, through
education, guides the appetitive and the spirited to the right path. Indeed, the cogitative could actually be
likened more to the legislative branch of modern democracies, which discovers
and debates what the laws should be, and then passes them into effect; by
listening to the other parts, as well as listening to and learning from
education, the laws of the body are put in place. The spirited could be seen more as the
executive branch; the enforcer of the laws that the cogitative has put into
place. Though this comparison may sound antithetical to Plato, it is not to be
taken literally. Rather, one must look
at the function of the guardians, or the spirited, and see that this can be
compared to what now is our leader today (which indeed could be a fascinating
area of study: if the executive is meant to be the head of the state, or the
legislative, especially in regards to the Platonic theory of the soul or
individual and the polis or the
state). Perched atop its throne, the
cogitative guided or negotiated with the other parts of the soul in order to
lead the body as a whole to its proper course.
The health
of the cogitative has been discussed in short earlier. The modus operandi of the healthy soul would
be a dedication of its reasoning powers to education. Indeed, in many places in the Republic, Plato stresses the importance
of education and learning. Beginning at section 376c-414a, Plato discusses the
proper education for a guardian in the Republic. He includes music and gymnastics and later
on, at 503b, includes knowledge of the “good”. His description here of music is different than his descriptions of
music earlier; it seems as if Plato, by including story telling, was accepting
the bard tradition of poetry and incorporating it into his music. This would
indeed make sense due to the fact that Homer, a bard whose poetry was recited
to music, would have been the standard fair education of most boys in
Greece. But what would Homer and Aesop
(another standard faire story teller), and much later on, the Seven Sages and
philosophy do for the cogitative? Both
Homer and Aesop wrote their literature in such a way that they could be used as
a guidebook for moral action. As it is
today, that children find the stories of Aesop and Homer fascinating, so too in
the Greek world. Children would probably
have picked up sticks trying to gorge the eye of the evil Polyphemus, while
parents at home would quote lines from Homer as moral lessons for the children
to remember. At 395d, Plato states, “Imitations, if they are practiced continually
from youth onwards, become established as habits and nature, in body and in
thought.” Thus it is evident that
education is the means by which the mind is molded, shaped, and strengthened to
become the master of the other parts of the soul.
Whether
Plato began the medical view of the soul movement or not is unclear. It is
known that, after Plato’s death, many schools of philosophy (the Stoics and
Epicureans especially) had a belief in pneuma,
the Greek word for breath. In the views
of these schools, pneuma was actually
a physical organ within the body that contained the elements of the soul.
What this belief makes clear, though, is that the Greeks had certainly brought
the soul out of the sky as some mystical entity and placed it within the realm
of the world, free to be observed, diagnosed, and treated. Any vice, or disease, could find its
appropriate cure in order to achieve a state of absolute health, or virtue. In
addition, Plato laid out in his Republic the
proper means by which each element of the tripartite soul should act in order
to maintain a healthy course. Plato’s
ideal city was not only ideal but also real. His prescription for a healthy soul was taking place every day all over
the Greek world (music and Homer were even elements of the education of
children in Sparta, a city known for its disdain of philosophy and the
arts). Growing up around Plato were
bright and healthy men of the soul who would continue the world down a path of
amazing intellectual and technological advancement. Plato was the first, however, to begin the
philosophical analysis of the soul in a non-mystical or religious way. His division of the soul into three parts
could be considered the first psychological theory in human history. Thus it is Plato whom we have to thank for
freeing us from the shackles of religion and allowing us to introspect within
ourselves, to observe and understand ourselves, and to realize what is needed
in order to overcome and cure the diseases of our own souls.
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