Plato on the Soul and the City

Plato on Immortality of the Soul

• The dialogue between Socrates and the slave boy in the Meno demonstrates that true knowledge is acquired by recollection, not experience.
• Recollection, for Plato, is from the soul’s acquaintance with the Forms.
• Forms, like the Form of Triangle, cannot be observed in experience.
• Particular triangular things are only more or less triangular, never perfect triangles.
• We know what a perfect triangle is supposed to be, so we must get it from our souls’ acquaintance with it.
• The soul must have existed before birth for recollection of the Forms to make sense.
• This reasoning only establishes the pre-existence of the soul.
• In the Phaedo, Plato argues for the immortality of the soul (existence before birth and after death).
• The Phaedo is one of the most widely studied dialogues written by Plato.
• The Phaedo is one of four works around the trial and death of Socrates:
  1. Euthyphro
  2. Apology (monologue)
  3. Crito
  4. Phaedo
• Plato believes that the soul is better off after death because:
  • Philosophy is the love of wisdom.
  • The body and its desires distract us from philosophy.
  • Death is the soul’s separation from the body.
  • We come closest to knowledge by dissociating from the body.
  • We acquire pure knowledge after death.
  • Anyone who engages in philosophy is willing to die.
  • No one should commit suicide except when necessary (when God requires).
• The soul is the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, and the human soul is regarded as immortal.
• In ancient Greece, death marked the soul's departure from the body, traveling to the underworld.
• The Greek word for soul is psyche, from which "psychology" is derived. Psyche means "breath" or "life."
• The Latin translation of psyche is anima, from which "animal" is derived. Anima conveys the sense of "that which animates."
• Psyche (the soul) in ancient Greece is personified by the Goddess of the Soul, Psyche.
• Pythagoras had the doctrine of Metempsychosis or the transmigration of the soul.
• The soul returns to the world but as the soul of a different body (human or animal).
• Plato adopted this view, believing that the soul will be rewarded or punished after leaving the body.
• Philosophers' souls will reside in heaven.
• Souls not as virtuous will be transferred into other bodies.
• Totally corrupt souls will be delivered to an afterlife of punishment or eternal damnation.
• This doctrine is supported by four arguments in the Phaedo.

The First Argument: Argument from Opposites (Phaedo, 70c-72d)

• Everything constantly changes into its opposite.
• Day changes into night, being awake changes into being asleep.
• Life and death are opposites.

1. Being dead comes from being alive.
2. If everything that was once alive were to die and never come to life again, everything would be dead.
3. Obviously, this is not the case.
4. So the souls of the living must come to be from the dead.
5. Therefore, souls exist after death.

• This assumes a continuous cycle of birth and death (cyclical argument).
• Plato takes the change between opposites as the only kind of change.
• Plato doesn’t consider the difference between “alteration” and “generation and destruction”.
• To speak of life and death being opposites, one must assume the existence of something (a soul) that is first alive and then dead.
• It is precisely that thing (a soul) that Plato claims to prove, and should not be postulated or assumed.

The Second Argument: Based on Plato’s Theory of Recollection

• Socrates helps the slave boy to arrive at the correct answer because the correct answer has been in the soul of the boy all alone, and the role of Socrates is merely to get it out.
• The learning process is nothing other than recollection.
• In order to recollect knowledge, we must have acquired it at some time before our soul acquired a human form.

1. We know standards and absolute norms, which is implied in our judgments of things in terms of more or less.
2. These standards and absolute norms do not exist in the sense-world (physical world).
   • We see things that are more or less equal in size; but we never see any two things in the world absolutely equal to each other.
   • On the other hand, in order to judge that two things are more or less equal in size, we must have the idea of absolute equality.
3. Since these standards and absolute norms do not exist in the sense-world, we cannot learn them from sense-perception, but only through the process of recollection.
4. Recollection requires the pre-existence of the soul.

• Simmias points out that this argument at most proves that the soul existed before it is united with the body at birth; it does not prove that the soul survives death.
• Socrates responds by saying that the argument from recollection should be taken in conjunction with the first argument.
• Socrates agrees with Simmias on this point: this argument only takes care of the pre-existence of the soul.

The Third Argument: Based on the Distinction Between the Visible and the Invisible (Phaedo, 78b-80d)

1. Invisible, immortal, and incorporeal things are different from visible, mortal, and corporeal things.
2. Visible things are composite and subject to dissolution and death.
3. The invisible always remains the same.
4. Forms are invisible.
   • Beauty itself is invisible, whereas particular beautiful things are visible.
5. The soul can survey the invisible and unchanging and imperishable Forms.
6. The soul is invisible, because it is able to be in contact with the invisible, the Forms. The body is visible.
7. So when the body dies and decays, the soul will continue to live.

Objections from Simmias and Cebes

• Simmias’ objection:
  • As the soul resembles the harmony in its being invisible, once the lyre has been destroyed, the harmony too vanishes.
  • By analogy when the body dies, the soul too vanishes.
• Cebes’ objection:
  • Though the soul may last longer than the body, and so continue to exist after certain deaths, it may eventually grow so weak as to dissolve entirely at some point.
  • That is not immortality.

Socrates’ Responses to Simmias’ Objection

• If learning is recollection and the soul preexists the body, then the soul must be something more than the harmony of the body.
• The soul rules the body. But harmony is ruled by the elements of the object of which it is the harmony.
• Socrates tries to show that analogy doesn’t work, as the things compared, the soul and harmony, though superficially alike, are essentially different.
• Specifically, “It is the tension of the strings that causes the lyre to be in tune, but in the human case the relationship goes in the other direction: it is the soul that keeps the body in order."

Socrates’ Responses to Cebes’ Objection

• Socrates’ responses to Cebes’ objection in fact constitutes the fourth argument:

1. A particular thing can become its opposite.
   • A beautiful object can become ugly, or tall man can become short.
2. A Form does not become its opposite.
   • Beauty itself never becomes ugliness, and the number 3 never becomes an even number such as 2.
3. There are only two ways to participate in Forms: essentially and non-essentially.
   • A particular person participates non-essentially in the Form of Beauty.
   • A triangle participates essentially in the Form of Triangularity. Unless it is triangular, it is not a triangle.
4. The soul participates essentially in the Form of Life.
5. So the soul is essentially alive.
6. Therefore, the soul is immortal.

• The gist of the argument is that since it is an essential property of the soul to be alive, the soul cannot die.
• Socrates’ argument relies on two very important premises:
  • A Form does not become its opposite.
  • The soul participates essentially in the Form of Life.

The Doctrine of the Tripartite Soul

• In the Phaedo the soul is treated as a single, unified entity.
• Elsewhere, Plato offers us accounts of the soul in which it has different parts with different functions.
• Plato gives a detailed account of the structure of the soul in the Republic, Book 4, 435–41.
• That account is known as the doctrine of the tripartite soul.
• It asserts that the soul consists of three parts:
  1. Logos, the rational part
  2. Thymos, the spirited part
  3. Eros, the appetitive part
• They are really aspects of the immaterial soul.
• The three parts of the soul are located in the parts of the physical body, the head, the heart and the stomach respectively.
• For Plato, only eros, the appetitive part or aspect of the human soul is present in all living things.
• Eros, the appetitive part includes all desires for various pleasures, comforts, physical satisfactions, and bodily ease.
• Thymos, the spirited part includes what we would call emotions. It is shared by all sentient beings.
• What distinguishes animals from plants is that animals can move about by themselves (otherwise called locomotion), whereas plants only stay where their roots are.
• In humans, the spirited part includes anger, indignation, courage, ambition, aggression, and the desire for power, honor, esteem, status, etc., which motivate humans to act.
• Logos, the rational part is what distinguishes human beings from all other beings, and is the aspect the soul that is the highest in the hierarchical structure of the soul.
• This part of the soul thinks, analyses, looks ahead, rationally weighs options.
• When this part is dominant, the person is able to distinguish fantasy from reality, and to make decisions that are just.
• It develops slowly. Children and some defective adults (idiots) lack this part.

Relations Between the Three Parts

• "… isn’t it appropriate for the rational part to rule, since it is really wise and exercises foresight on behalf of the whole soul, and for the spirited part to obey it and be its ally? It certainly is."
• These two parts, allied together, “will govern the appetitive part, which is the largest part in each person’s soul and is by nature most insatiable for money.”
• The rational part of the soul is like the cool head, the spirited part is like the hot blood in the heart, and the appetitive part would be best represented by the stomach and genitals.
• Plato, like the rest of us, is not satisfied with such an understanding of the soul. He believes that conflict within the soul does exist and it is possible to resolve it and achieve inner harmony.
• The reason that a thief who clearly knows that stealing is wrong commits theft is that his the appetitive part (desire for profit) overwhelms his rational part.
• On the other hand, a virtuous person is someone whose rational part is in control.
• There is self-disgust involved, not an intellectual recognition of the irrationality or undesirability of the desire.
• Self-disgust is an emotion and belongs to the spirited part.
• Plato thinks that children display emotions (the spirited part) before they are able to make rational judgments.
• The spirited part can align with the rational part against base desires, the appetitive part.
• The rational part can be in conflict not only with the appetitive part, but also with the spirited part.

The Chariot Allegory

• Plato compares the soul to a chariot, pulled by a white horse (the spirited part) and a dark horse (the appetitive part), driven by a charioteer (the rational part) who struggles to keep control.
• As a chariot allegory shows, it is the charioteer (the rational part) that should rule over both the white horse (the spirited) and the black horse (the appetitive).
• However, the charioteer and horses need each other. A charioteer without horses cannot move, and horses without a charioteer will run wild.
• According to Plato, in each human soul, the three parts are present in different “proportions.”
• Depending on which part is dominant, three kinds of people can be distinguished: (1) the philosophical, (2) the victory-loving, and (3) the profit-loving.

Analogy of the City and the Soul

• Plato believes that the city as a political entity has a tripartite structure similar to that of the human soul.
• Like the soul, the city should have three parts or classes of people, corresponding to the rational part, the spirited part and the appetitive part in the soul.
• Each class of people plays its distinctive role, in harmony with the other classes.
• People with the most highly developed reason, which includes moral wisdom constitute the rational part of city, and are therefore qualified to rule in the best interests of everyone.
• People of the ruling class are called guardians, and they perform the executive function in the city as the rational part does in a soul.
• The military or auxiliary forces correspond to the spirited part, and they are expected to display the virtue of courage.
• The artisans who are only concerned with basic needs and pleasure correspond to the appetitive part.
• A human being with a soul whose three parts are harmonized is one who is virtuous, well functioning, or simply mentally healthy.
• A just city is one whose three classes work together harmoniously. An unjust society is unhealthy, deformed or impaired.
• Plato offered to the city of Athens, his home state, now decadent and decaying a means by which the city’s health could be recovered: the restoration of order and harmony.
• Plato appears quite hostile to democracy as a form of governance.

Five Forms of Political Systems (Republic, Book 8, 543-76)

1. Aristocracy: It actually means meritocracy, rule by people of talent rather than birth. Aristocracy is the ideal form.
2. Timarchy: It is a state where only property owners may participate in government, and where honor and fame are valued above all.
3. Oligarchy: This is a degenerate form of Timarchy. The love of honor in Timarchy is replaced with a selfish and insatiable love of money.
4. Democracy: This is a state where the government operated at the whim of individual desires.
5. Tyranny: It is the form where the tyrant come to power by masquerading as the “protector” of the people.

• In such a democratic society, every adult male citizen can vote and therefore is able to determine policy and law according to their desires. Democracy corresponds a soul ruled by the appetitive part.
• Plato does not value equality as a virtue.
• A healthy society for him is intrinsically unequal, as not every citizen is fit for a leadership role or decision making.
• Modern democracy is founded not only on freedom and equality, but also on the rule of law, multiparty systems, periodic elections, as well as civil service which consists of experts.
• However, what is still hugely relevant in Plato’s political philosophy is his conviction that the moral and spiritual dimension is indispensable for any political system, and that virtue is the lifeblood of any healthy society.
• We should take Plato seriously and should not think that his criticism of Athenian democracy is simply a defense of authoritarian rule understood in the modern sense.
• The Platonic Academy was founded by Plato in 387 BC, located on the northwestern outskirts of Athens, outside the city walls.