Reflect on yourself: your personality, your desires, your actions and thoughts, your body, whatever you care to think of as being something that makes you what you are.
Do you find it to be in unified agreement, pushing you in the one same direction, or do you find it to be in disagreement, pulling you in different directions at one time or another or even at the same time?
For me, as I suspect would be true for many people, it is the latter. Most of the time I find myself being dragged in different directions for a wide variety of reasons. Sometimes I want to do something because I think it is the right thing to do; other times I really don’t want to do something because it’s fearful or difficult; other times I want to do something because it’s comfortable and easy; other times I want to do something precisely because it’s difficult. I want cheese, but I also want to lower my body fat percentage. I want to be thought of as a good public speaker, but I don’t want to do any public speaking. I want to sit at home in my dressing gown, but I don’t want people to think I’m slovenly. Etc., etc. These are trivial examples but they make a point.
If I were a single unified thing, it would make sense that I would be in agreement with myself. It takes two to tango, as they say, and a disagreement is nothing more than a mismatch between two things. So if there is only one thing, there should be no disagreement. Or so reasons Plato.
Consider a simple illustration. Look at your hand. Move it around: the hand is moving. Hold it still: the hand is still. Can the hand be moving and still at the same time? No: if it’s moving, then it’s not still; if it’s still, then it’s not moving. It cannot contradict itself.
But now move just a finger without moving the rest of the hand. Is the hand moving, or not?
It’s not clear how to answer. The hand is still, at least compared to the finger, but the hand is moving because the finger is moving. It is in contradiction with itself.
How do we resolve this contradiction? We say that the finger is merely a part of the hand. A part of the hand is moving, but the other parts of the hand are still. Thus, the hand is moving and the hand is still and we have resolved the contradiction.
Plato applies a similar line of reasoning for the parts of the human soul. No one thing can be in contradiction with itself. But if there are parts to that thing, then those parts can differ and that can generate a disagreement within the whole.
So, given that I am often in disagreement with myself, it stands to reason that I cannot be a single unified thing: I must be a thing that has various parts. Each part wants distinct things and they are all competing for attention. It’s this that causes me to be dragged in different directions and for different reasons.
The Tripartite Soul
Cataloguing these parts in any great detail would be a big and very complicated task. Let’s leave that to the neuroscientists. And whatever answer they give, it’ll still be me who has to decide what to do with the data. A brain scan can show me how my mind is made up, but it cannot make up my mind for me.
What Plato offers – in a time long before neuroscience – is a simple but effective way of organising the parts of yourself based on what they want.
Sometimes you want things that relate to bodily goods. These are the more evolutionarily ‘basic’ desires, you might think. It starts with food and water and shelter, but quickly mutates into a desire for pleasant tastes, sensations, and comfort. Colloquially, this means sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Or at least sitting on the sofa in a dressing gown eating pizza and watching TV. Your body is happy with this.
At other times you want more. You want respect, admiration, glory. You want to be liked. You want to have a certain standing in the world. You want to compete and win; you want to make yourself better so that you can compete and win. You want a reason to be proud of yourself. You want to be free. You want justice. None of these desires directly satisfy any bodily goods; or at least, not in a way that’s obvious. They might still be driven by evolved dispositions, but we might say they come later in the evolutionary story. They are social goods, mainly.
Put an arbitrary label on each. Call the desires relating to bodily goods ‘appetite’ and the desires relating to non-bodily goods ‘spirit’. These are the parts of your self that disagree with one another. Your body wants cheese but your spirit wants to be lean. Your body wants to be calm, and wants to do whatever will make and keep it calm, but your spirit wants to be thought of as a good public speaker, even if that requires some anxious discomfort. Your body wants to be comfortable, but your spirit doesn’t want to be lazy.
What results is conflict within the self. How do we resolve this conflict? For Plato, the answer is obvious, and it comes by identifying a third part of our selves: the mind, or reasoning faculty. This part of ourselves wants only the truth. It just wants to know the right answer. There’s no glory in it, no bodily good, often no obvious reason for it at all, but it demands to be satisfied all the same.
This reasoning part of our selves can recognise the competing desires and weigh them against one another, ultimately deciding which desire should be followed.
The Allegory of the Ideal Society
Plato introduces this theory of the soul with an allegory.
In Plato’s political philosophy, a society is composed of various parts: the parts that rule, the parts that protect, and the parts that provide. In simple terms, these are the rulers, the warriors, and the workers. The rulers decide what should be done and give instructions. The warriors obey and enforce these instructions, and protect the rulers and workers. The workers provide food and any other material goods, under the protection and enforcement of the warriors. A well-functioning society is one in which each part fulfils their role in harmony with the whole. This is an allegorical picture of the human soul.
Each part of yourself serves its purpose for you in the same way as each part of society serves the purposes of the collective whole.
Your bodily appetites are like the parts of society that provide material goods: they ensure you are fed and watered and rested, and that you have pleasant things to enjoy.
Your ‘spirit’ is like the warrior, wanting to fight and win and gain glory, enforcing discipline and making you strong in order to defeat your enemies and protect you from harm.
Finally, your mind or reasoning faculty is and ought to be the ruler, deciding what to do and giving instructions. It will weigh up the competing demands of the ‘appetite’ and ‘spirit’ and will balance them in the most harmonious way possible.
A well-functioning human being is like a well-functioning society: each part fulfilling its role for the benefit of the whole.
In his political philosophy, Plato argues that only philosophers should be rulers because only they have knowledge enough to know what they’re doing. He says we will never be rid of our troubles until our kings are philosophers and our philosophers are kings.
It is exactly the same story with an individual human being: we should put our inner philosopher in charge and rule ourselves by the power of reason.
When we do this, Plato thinks this reasoning faculty will give an obvious answer here, and has classically Greek reasons to prioritise the desires of ‘spirit’. We might feel a little differently nowadays, in our comfortably forgiving modern world, but we don’t need to agree with Plato’s conclusions to use the tripartite structure of the soul as a helpful tool for therapeutic reflection.
Read more: Think Well, Live Well: A Free Introduction to Philosophy
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