Eric Brown

Washington University in St. Louis, Philosophy, Faculty Member

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The unity of the soul in Plato's Republic

Plato and the Divided Self

In Book Four of Plato's Republic, Socrates divides the soul. He argues that 1 because one thing c... more In Book Four of Plato's Republic, Socrates divides the soul. He argues that 1 because one thing cannot do or undergo opposites in the same respect, in the same relation, and at the same time, some cases of psychological conflict can only be explained by supposing that the soul is actually more than one thing. But Socrates does not deny that the soul is a unity. Rather, he holds that the soul, like so many entities, is both a many and a one. He refers to the divisions as parts of the soul, and 2 even when he ascribes actions and attitudes to a part of the soul, he also ascribes them to the whole soul (esp. 439a-b, 439d). Although few souls enjoy the unity that virtue earns, every human soul possesses an unearned unity. 3 4 I thank the organizers of the Toronto conference and the editors for including me. I also thank Jennifer Whiting for the paper on which I commented in Toronto and Devin Henry for the opportunity to present a successor to those comments at the University of Western Ontario. Finally, I thank those who offered helpful comments on the successor, especially Verity Harte and John Mouracade in Ontario, and Clerk Shaw, Rachel Singpurwalla, Eric Wiland, and the editors by correspondence. For the Republic, I cite the text of Slings 2003, and translations are mine, though I have 1 borrowed heavily from Grube's translation, as revised by Reeve, which appears in Cooper 1997. Socrates calls the divisions εἴδη, γένη, and μέρη: εἴδη in 435c1, 435c5, 435e1, 439e1, γένη in 2 441c6, 443d3, μέρη in 442b10, 442c4, 444b3 (cf. 577d4, 581a6, 583a1, 586e5). He also refers to the whole soul in 436b2 (cf. σύνθετον at 611b5-7). For earned unity, see especially 443d-e. That it is rare follows from these three points: virtue 3 requires knowledge (442c), knowledge requires philosophy (474b-480a), and philosophy is rare (491a-b). I discuss an apparent exception (554d) in the last section. 4 2 What explains this unearned unity? How do reason, spirit, and appetite constitute a single whole? This question has received little attention. My first aim here 5 is to establish that it is an important puzzle, and my second is to venture an answer. 2. The importance of the soul's unity My question is in part mereological. Plato assumes that my reason, spirit, and appetite constitute a complex unity, and that my reason, spirit, and appetite together with your spirit do not. What explains which psychological elements constitute a whole soul and which do not? The interest of my question, however, is not exclusively mereological, and Socrates' talk of "parts" and "wholes" does not exhaust the reasons for asking it. Plato needs to explain the unearned unity of the soul. First, if the soul is, for all that he can explain, three distinct entities, then he cannot account for the felt unity of consciousness. As Descartes puts it, "When I consider the mind, or myself insofar as I 6 am merely a thinking thing, I am unable to distinguish any parts within myself; I understand myself to be something quite single and complete." In the Republic, 7 Socrates does not address this unity of consciousness directly, but he assumes that a human agent is somehow aware of what every part of his or her soul thinks and feels. Unless the human agent is something over and beyond the parts, it is somehow composed of the parts. How? Second, if Plato cannot explain the unity of the soul, then he cannot treat the whole soul as the locus of moral responsibility. Socrates speaks as though our ordinary practices of praise and blame correctly take the same agent to be responsible whether he pursues wisdom, reacts angrily, or seeks a yummy dinner (cf. 436a8-b4, quoted But see Aristotle De an. I 5 411b5-7, Archer-Hind 1882, 124, and Lorenz 2006, 38-40. Some 5 scholars offer a principled excuse: they maintain that the soul is a simple unity with three different kinds of psychological states and activities that are mere conceptual parts (e.g., Shields 2001). I argue against this reading in §3 below.

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