Homo Oeconomicus 31(4): 463-478 (2014) 463

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Plato and the Causes of Excess

Anissa Castel-Bouchouchi
CPGE Fénelon, Paris, France
(eMail: [email protected])

Abstract: In  Plato’s  theory  of  the  soul,  reason  (logos) together with appetite
(epithymiai) and the spirit (thymos), are all three independent sources of
motivation. The contrast between reason and the two other parts of the soul is
not really related to the distinction, derived from Hobbes, between a belief,
an image or plain fact, and a desire, source of motivation. Each part has its
own desires. It is appropriate to present the bad and generally insatiable
desires that tend to lead to dissatisfaction with a double opposition. On the
one hand, there is much to be expected from the thymos in so far as it
demands self-respect and recognition; and on the other, since the desire to
have more (pleonexia) is the main threat to the city, intellect alone cannot
find any final solution to the anthropological, political, and metaphysical
problem that arises from it.

Keywords: Plato, disorder, desire, soul, justice

1. The Tripartite Theory

In his famous and often quoted paper, John Cooper has, it would seem,
laid   out   the   complexity   and   originality   of   Plato’s   theory   on   human  
motivation beyond the established cliché in the history of philosophy,
the famous tripartite theory of the soul (Cooper 2013). Everyone
knows that in the Republic, Plato describes the soul as made up of
three independent parts: reason (logos), the spirited or irascible part
(thymos), and appetite or, in the plural, the lower instincts (epithymiai)
(Renaut 2004: 15-16). The tripartition of the soul is mentioned
explicitly in three dialogues only: Republic, Phaedrus, and Timaeus;
the word thymos appears 4 times in Protagoras, 13 times in Republic,
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464 Homo Oeconomicus 31(4)

6 times in Timaeus, and 49 times in Laws; last but not least,

philosophically speaking, it is Republic which allows the best analysis
of the thymos (Renaut 2004, Introduction). Human virtue, taken as a
whole, lies in a balanced relationship between these three very d istinct
yet all necessary components. Each has its own specific role to play
within this orderly structure that, broadly speaking, distinguishes the
properly Platonic view of virtue from the Socratic theory. This is
detailed in the Protagoras, according to which virtue is essentially a
property of the intellect (the unity of virtue is developed in 328e ff.).
However, the idea that Plato defends in the Republic is in no way
intellectualistic. The point in that book is to show that actions are not
determined solely by the agent's ideas on right and wrong but also by
the manner in which he senses things and relates to them, whether he
thinks about it or not. This idea is grounded on two theses. First, the
reason for our actions resides in that part of the soul they come from.
Second, the principle of rational actions lies in the intellect, which is
itself one of the three sources of possible motives. It is therefore
impossible for desire to be in opposition to reason, as Hobbes or
Hume   thought:   “For the Thoughts, are to the Desires, as Scouts, and
Spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things Desired: All
Stedinesse of the minds motion, and all quicknesse of the same,
proceeding from thence”  (Leviathan I, 8, p. 110).
There is not, on the one hand, appetite as a place of desire and, on
the other, a rational entity that might be the abode of an inert belief.
Contrary   to   the   modern   theory   according   to   which   a   person’s   actions  
are   the   conjoined   product   of   beliefs   and   desires,   in   Plato’s   theory   the  
three parts, reason, appetite, and spirit are all independent sources of
motivation. The contrast between reason and the other two parts of the
soul is not really bound to the modern distinction between belief, inert
and purely factual, and desire, a source of motivation (Cooper 2013:
153). Therefore, virtue simultaneously comprises well thought out
ideas, thanks to the logos, and states or ways of being (thus
anticipating the ethical developments of Aristotle and his concept of
hexis). These depend on the other two parts of the soul whose function
is in no way concerned with thinking. Sometimes they satisfy an urgent
corporeal need, thirst, hunger, or sexual desire, for the epithymiai.
Sometimes they distinguish themselves, finding the required vigour to
act efficiently and boldly for the thymos −   tendencies   that,   as   will   be  
readily understood, represent many sources of sui generis motivation.
“Since, corresponding to the three types in the city, the soul also is
tripartite,”   as   the   philosopher   states   conclusively,   “the three parts have
also, it appears to me, three kinds of pleasure, one peculiar to each, and
similarly three appetites and controls”  (Republic IX, 580d).
A. Castel-Bouchouchi: Plato and the Causes of Excess 465

The assertion that the Platonic conception of desire presents a

complex and differentiated theory of the sources of motivation
amounts to taking seriously the tripartite theory of the soul instead of
making it into a topos, nowadays irrelevant, of Platonic idealism. It is
not an oddity, understood at best through an analogy or at worst
through  “forcing,”  in  order  to  justify  a  political theory written in small
print in the individual soul (Republic IV, 434d) and in large print large
in the City State (II, 368d ff). Such an approach requires that justice
depends on the existence of three separate classes of citizens, each
with its own contribution to the common good. In these hypotheses,
either Plato artificially copies in his psychology some pre-existing
political concerns, or he develops a theory whose only merit would be
to act as a premise to the Aristotelian theory of desire (orexis) that is
sub-divided into three parts, boulesis (will), thymos, and epithymia.
Here the will is the rational element, whereas the other two belong to
the realm of the non-rational (see Aristotle, De Anima II, 3, 414b2 and
III, 9, 432b3-7).
Now, to start from the Platonic tripartite theory without deriving it
from something else or allowing it to give way to a later philosophy
amounts, according to Cooper, to reversing the psycho-political order
of The Republic. It also amounts to suggesting that the myth of the
three metals or classes rests on the tripartite conception of the soul
instead of the latter being a rationalisation aimed at confirming it.
Instead,   once   it   is   properly   understood,   Plato’s   theory   offers  
undeniable   facts   on   the   “psychology”   of   human motivation and
accounts better than many later theories for some of the fundamental
human traits (Cooper 2013: 152). In the Republic, there is a need for the
rulers  to  promulgate   a   “noble  lie”  (414c)  that  consists  of  two  parts. First,
the citizens are told that their true parent is the earth, that is, the city
(414d), so that they consider each other as brothers and sisters. Second,
according  to  the  “myth  of  metals,”  the  citizens  are  born  with  one  of  three  
kinds of soul: gold, silver or bronze, metal which determines their worth
and function in the polis. Thus, if there should happen to be three
psychological determinants of choice and voluntary action, then there
must be a virtue of the whole soul that will be a conjunction
(symphonia) and agreement (harmonia) between the parties aiming at
the proper order of the soul. Plato calls it moderation or justice and
describes it as an internal action where each part that is within man
does what it must do (Republic 443d). Nowadays, we would talk of
psychological equilibrium and agree that it consists not in eradicating
passions or suppressing impulses but in turning them into something
that would permit the attainment of a viable, bearable, and if possible
466 Homo Oeconomicus 31(4)

improving mental state. Basically, it is the quest, by means of

sublimation and inhibition, for a stable mental structure that Plato lays
before us in the form of a tripartite theory. This has its links to
Freudian topics.

2. Multiplicity and Heterogeneity of Desires

In the fourth book of the Republic, the nature of desire becomes the
subject of particular analysis. At the outset, desire is acceptation, as
opposed to aversion, which is negation:

For example, will you not agree that the soul of someone who
has a desire always longs for what it desires, or draws it toward
whatever it wishes to possess, or again in so far as it wants
something to be supplied to it, approves this for itself, like
someone making a request, reaching out for its realization?
(Republic IV, 437c).

In propositional terms, we can say that a desire is satisfied when the

proposition that describes the desired state of affairs is verified. At the
beginning, it is quite simple. But the case of thirst and hunger will
show a difference between the desire to drink, which designates
indeterminate thirst, and the desire for a particular drink, which
presupposes knowledge of the thing. It actually happens that thirsty
people refuse to drink (Republic IV, 439c).
A conflict of desires then arises and brings to mind the image of an
archer whose hand, bending the bow, draws the bow towards him while
the other hand pushes it away. If I want no drink other than champagne
and no food other than strawberries, my desire has nothing to do with
thirst or hunger, as such, but with thirst and hunger modified by the
addition of something else. Therefore, within my soul exist two
separate forces, an element that orders me to drink, and on the other
hand an element that prevents me from doing so, which is none other
than the one that orders and acts from reasoning (Republic IV, 439d).
This experience of negation or rather of internal conflict leads us to
oppose a reasonable element of the soul to an element devoid of
reason: one is thirsty for drink and hungry for food without asking
questions or being fixed upon a particular object to the exclusion of all
others.
Here, one is reminded of the Kantian definition of passion as an
“inclination  that  prevents  reason  from  comparing  it  with  the  sum  of  all  
inclinations in respect to a certain choice”  and since “passions can be
paired with the calmest reflection, it is easy to see that they are not
A. Castel-Bouchouchi: Plato and the Causes of Excess 467

thoughtless, like affects, or stormy and transitory; rather they take root
and can even co-exist  with  rationalizing”  (Kant  2006  §80,  p.  165).
Thus, at least two parts to the soul exist. We can observe
motivating desires that apply independently of any reasoning and,
correlatively, motivations to act in accordance with evaluative beliefs.
It is true that no one would claim, after careful thought, that
champagne alone is sufficiently thirst-quenching and that it would be
better to die of thirst rather than slake it with water. However, if we
substitute sexual desire for thirst the argument that in some cases
abstinence may reasonably be better than the replacement of a lost
love with the first available love object becomes convincing.
The difficulties that trouble the irrational part of the soul come from
the fact that it bundles together the plural impulses that are shared
between the two extremes: personal repletion and enjoyment on the
one hand; love of money and of material goods on the other. This
diversity precludes any amalgamation. Elementary natural needs such
as drinking and eating are not of the same order as those that are
concerned with possession and are not necessary to survival. The
“vehement   gang”   of   terrible   desires   (see   573e),   wild   and   unbridled,  
belong to registers that are sometimes mutually different, including the
imaginary. It wakes up when the rest of the soul is asleep, in our
dreams. Let us say that the epithymetical part is, in this topic of the
soul, the seat of desires that are as irrational as they are abundant and
polymorphous. Hence their heterogeneity is a source of constant
confusion. We may also wonder how devoid of all cognition these
desires actually are. Does not any desire suggest some activity of the
mind: memories of pleasures past, anticipation of forthcoming
pleasures as well as imagination of a state of affairs whose realisation
feels desirable? For that matter, in Philebus (35c-d), Plato asserts that
“there  is  no  desire  of  the  body,”  properly  speaking,  since  by  virtue  of  
memory   “any   effort   a   living   being   makes   always   takes   it   to   the  
opposite  of  the  impressions  felt  by  its  body”  (Philebus, 34d-35e).
Let us now return to the case where reason is in itself a source of
motivating conditions. The best example is obviously not that of
champagne. In order to measure what is at stake in the possibility for
reason   to   be   a   place   of   strong   impulses   and   a   mental   element   “owing  
to   which   we   understand”   and   which   “always seeks the knowledge of
truth,   wherever   it   may   be”   (Republic IX, 581b5-6), the most
economical way is to go to the Phaedo and then Crito.
We can then shed light on one of the core paradoxes of the
Republic, that of the philosopher kings who have to be forced into
being fair. Indeed, the figure of Socrates himself remains the best
example of rational desire. As everyone knows, Socrates decided to
468 Homo Oeconomicus 31(4)

accept his death sentence and not to escape from his prison. In this
way, he raises the question of the inconsistencies in the philosophy of
Anaxagoras who claims to explain the causality of action in a
mechanistic   or   material   manner:   “This   is   what   he   [Anaxagoras]   made  
me think of: It was as though one started by saying that all Socrates
does, he does by virtue of his intelligence and then, later, as he
enumerated the causes of every one of my actions, he asserted that I
am  sitting  here,  now,  because  my  body  is  made  up  of  flesh  and  bone”  
(Phaedo 98c). But, according to Socrates, what accounts for his
presence in prison is the logical relationship that exists between the
fact   that   he   “had   judged   it   better   to   be   sitting   in   this   place” and the
fact that he was actually, intentionally, sitting there (Phaedo 99a).
Thus,  can  the  philosopher  maintain:  “I  act  in  accordance with my mind
(nôi pratto)  considering  what  seems  to  be  for  the  best”  (Phaedo 99a).
Whatever the secondary and sometimes contradictory motivations
are, in the last resort it is a question of asserting that, for a
philosopher, it is reason that decides. It alone knows the truth and
commands (arkhein, Republic IV, 441c). This directing function is
justified by its synoptic understanding of the soul as a whole. Crito
says just that a very clear formula is enough to show that the
submission of the convicted man to the laws of Athens and his refusal
to escape from his prison have nothing to do with an ordinary
conformism (Crito 46b). This implies that the mere fact of living
somewhere means unconditional submission to the laws as they stand
whatever they may be:

Within me, I listen to one voice alone and that is the voice of
reason (logos) which, after giving the matter some thought,
appears to me to be the best. But those reasonings (logoi) that I
put forward up until now, I cannot set aside merely on account of
what fate has just dealt me; on the contrary, they appear to me to
be noticeably identical; I respect and honour them as I always
have (Crito 46b).

Fundamentally, it is to the reason within himself that Socrates

submits, not to the laws that, in the prosopopoeia, demand of him
unthinking obedience. Hence, the thesis – somewhat hastily put
forward but basically decisive – of the historian M. Finley. Crito,
according   to   him,   is   “the   sole   exception,   the   sole   attempt   that   has  
come down to us to offer an argument intended to justify political
obligation”   in   the   ancient   world.   This   “one   might   call,   for   short,   the  
argument   of   the   contract   reduced   to   the   minimum”   (Finley   1983:  
193). Does it not set insurmountable exegetical difficulties if it is not
A. Castel-Bouchouchi: Plato and the Causes of Excess 469

set into the context of moral psychology whose ambition it is to

connect desires to reason alone?
This double excursion into Crito and Phaedo seems to account for a
problem central to book VII of the Republic. The famous and yet in
many ways impossible symbolism of the Cave (Brunschwig 2003: 145-
177) – “a  strange  image”  implicating  “strange  prisoners  …  like  to  us”  
(Republic VII, 515a) – describes the forced exit of a man out of the
banalities of appearances. It is an exit not devoid of violence. The
philosopher-to-be is one of a group of prisoners bound together by a
shared fate that may represent the corrupt society we live in; we who
have access but to the images of things. These images, at all events,
are thrown on the back wall of the Cave. Echo distorts the sounds from
outside and the shadows turn three-dimensional coloured objects into
colourless surfaces. From such a common sojourn (Republic VII,
520c) no one attempts to get away, for the empire of illusion is not
without its comforts. It has its own rules and hierarchies (Republic
VII, 515c-d). Therefore, a prisoner who escapes is extracted from
there grudgingly and in pain. True, he is blinded and loses all his
points of reference. Yet, this inaugural violence demanded by Socrates
and his interlocutor will, in due course, turn him into a friend of the
intelligible.
At the end of an arduous journey, one faces the sun and becomes
able to move in the space of truth, which is to say to access the Good
and the True. Now, because he did not become a philosopher freely, as
a self-taught person he is in debt, and thus, to go back into the
habitation of the others and to bring to it clarity and order, in other
words to govern, there is in his case an obligation. This may be seen as
essentially political or moral but it is in any case inescapable.
Presented in logical or even syllogistic form, the argument actually
seems to be as follows. Philosophers do what is just and it is just to go
back  down  into  the  Cave:  “we shall be imposing just commands on men
who are just”  (Republic VII, 520e). They will, therefore, go back down
and they will be kings. Yet, this is not quite the conclusion one comes
to. The demonstration actually goes rather like this: the philosophers
will have to be made to return to the Cave, we are told (Republic VII,
539e), which means that a spontaneous move on their part must not be
expected. Just as they had been forced out, they will have to be forced
to pay their debt and concern themselves with others (see Republic
VII, 519c-d). That is strange. Think of a man who knows what is just
as he has seen the Justice and who, on top of that, is aware of the fact
that he is in debt since he did not train himself by his own means (see
Republic VII, 520b). How could such a man be reluctant to pay his
debt? Why does he have to be compelled to do so?
470 Homo Oeconomicus 31(4)

From a moral point of view, this is somewhat difficult to

understand. The (internal) feeling of obligation should replace
(external) constraint. The Socrates of Crito and Phaedo who, knowing
what is just does it without hesitation, confirms this: political
obligation is as binding as moral obligation on rational examination. In
the end, it is the tripartite theory that is here required to solve, in part
at least, this problem in book VII of Republic. We have seen that for
Socrates knowledge is power because the will, if it is enlightened,
cannot err. Therefore, the will implicitly opposes desire when it comes
to deciding. For Plato, things are more complicated. As a consequence
of the tripartite theory he elaborates in the Republic, knowledge is a
source of motivation that may conflict with another source of
motivation because the heterogeneity of desires is irreducible. What
the allegory of the Cave reveals is that the desires of reason are
impulses that may be very strong and all the more powerful, as the
desire for truth is at last satisfied. He who sees the Ideas is convinced
that   he   has   been   “transported to the Islands of the Blest”  in  his  lifetime  
(Republic VII, 519c). This accomplishment of the self is so complete
that nothing, absolutely nothing, will make him give up his desire. He
finds in the exercise of his reason a fullness that even his thymos, the
seat of self-assertion, cannot counter. In a word, he will never allow
his own volition to exercise power, because his rational desires
outweigh, by far, the base desire to be acknowledged by others and by
himself. In an internal conflict, rational desire, once realised, is an
impregnable fortress.
Finally, it is necessary to define the role of the thymos, that third
part   of   the   soul,   which   “is wholly set on predominance and victory and
good repute”   (Republic IX, 581a-b). It has the role of the youngest
brother in a family of three boys. Should a conflict of desires arise, the
child in the middle, the intermediary, often plays a deciding role:
depending on the side this middle influence favours, sometimes the
eldest (the logos) or sometimes the youngest (the epithymiai), that will
drive the action. On the one hand, there exists in the spirited part, in
spite of a Homeric origin, which links it to anger, a form of self-
esteem that distinguishes it from appetite. On the other hand, there
exists a tendency to rely on the judgements of reason about what is
desirable and estimable. This brings thymos close to the intellect so
that in a well-ordered soul it tends to serve reason, whereas among the
debauched, it will side with the lower instincts if this is the best way to
reach a goal. An example of internal conflict, which is evident in the
character of Leontios, makes it possible to thematize thymos in
Republic book IV. One day, as he was walking from Piraeus to Athens,
Leontios saw executed bodies lying on the ground behind a wall,
A. Castel-Bouchouchi: Plato and the Causes of Excess 471

which, at the same time, he both wanted to look at and turn away from
in indignation. He struggled with himself for a while and then allowed
himself   to   surrender   to   a   desire   we   would   readily   call   unclean.   “This  
story shows that passion sometimes does battle with our desires, as
one   thing   against   another”   (Republic IV, 440a), but in many other
instances it is the ally of reason. The heart, therefore, is neither an
appetite nor a rational element but a third part of the soul situated
between the other two, metaxy, and which plays a supporting role in
the internal conflicts between irreconcilable desires.
This is why the contradiction that presents such a problem to us in
the return into the Cave seems to originate in the fact that a
philosopher's rational desires are so strong that they need no support
and place no demands on any other sources of motivation, as happened
in the case of Leontios. A philosopher, once he is in the place of truth,
discards his epithymiai. Aristotle  speaks  of  the  “autarchy”  particular  to  
theoretical life:

The self-sufficiency that is spoken of must belong most to the

contemplative activity. For while a philosopher, as well as a just man
or one possessing any other virtue, needs the necessaries of life,
when they are sufficiently equipped with things of that sort the just
man needs people towards whom and with whom he shall act justly,
and the temperate man, the brave man, and each of the others is in
the same case, but the philosopher, even when by himself, can
contemplate truth, and the better the wiser he is (Nicomachean
Ethics X, 7, 1177a27-1177b).

Rational desires override all the other dimensions of human nature

including the moral and political dimension. This, for its part, involves
the thymos – at least if one accepts, with Cooper, that what a desire
that originates in the thymos desires is success in competition and the
esteem of others and of oneself. All this accompanies success, whereas
in the case of reason the thoughts that determine what is good are
paramount (Cooper 2013: 170).
With one who likes nothing but looking for the truth and correct
thinking, everything else takes second place including social
obligations. In the end, the meaning of the thesis of the philosopher
king is in the definitive heterogeneity of desires. This is to say that
power must be entrusted to men who do not want it. Contrary to what
many of our contemporaries believe, it is not the possession nor the
advantages of power that corrupt, it is the desire to dominate, which is
an indicator of an original disorder within the soul. The mere fact of
wanting to govern partakes of a shady motivation that has its origins in
472 Homo Oeconomicus 31(4)

a  dominance  of  the  lower  instincts  of  the  spirit.  As  a  result,  “the truth is
that the city in which those who are to rule are least eager to hold office
must needs be best administered and most free from dissension”  (Republic
520d). In ordinary life and in real cities, it is the thymos, with or
without the epithymiai, that  reigns  supreme.  Hence,  all  of  Plato’s  merit  
would lie in the fact of having established that the desire for
competition and recognition actually constitutes a form of human
motivation distinct from appetites and from reason itself. Morevover,
it is as fundamental to the human nature as the latter two whose
conduct it partly explains (Cooper 2013: 172). Conversely, an ideal
city offers a model, which could be of use as a regulative Ideal, of a
noocracy (Kant 1965 I, III, 1). In short, as stated by Brunschwig, the
lesson of the Republic “is  that  politics  are  too  important  a  thing  to  be  
left to people who do not know that there are things that are much
more  important”  and far more desirable (Brunschwig 1986: 888).

3. Pleonexia, the Cause of Excess and Disorder

Here, the political order writes in broad type what justice is, a
structure of order, an order that is also psychological and that we have
just read written in small letters at the level of the individual soul.
Why do the participants in the Republic take the city as their starting
point rather than the soul? This happens not for axiological but strictly
methodological reasons. A text in large type would be more legible
than a text in small type – that  is  all.  The  nature  of  justice  “on  a  larger  
canvas  might  look  bigger  and  easier  to  recognize”  (Republic II, 369b).
However, the consequences of this mode of exposition are important.
“Rethought   along   these   lines,   individual justice ceases to be a
disposition to behave in a certain way with others and becomes a
certain internal structure. Plato and his commentators will have to ask
themselves   whether   a   ‘Platonically   just’   person   is   thus   an   ‘ordinarily  
just’   person   and vice-versa”   (Brunschwig   1986:   882).   In   other  words,  
justice in this case is in no way concerned with the rights individuals
might have within a community or how a man acts in a group and
behaves in relation to others. Defined as an order intrinsic to the
whole,  as  a  relation,  it  is  “justice  of” before  it  is  “justice  in.”
Indeed, it refers to a balance such that each constituent part of the
whole does all that is necessary and nothing else. Suppose as a
hypothesis that reason exercises, in a noocratic problematic, the
commanding role. The middle part, in well-developed souls, will feel
bound to support a higher authority in order to curb unbridled
appetites. Analogically, philosopher kings in an ideal city, similar to
the rational part of the soul, will have to be backed up by the guardian
A. Castel-Bouchouchi: Plato and the Causes of Excess 473

class. They used to be members of it. This class corresponds to the

spirited part of the soul in order to maintain a quasi-organic unity by
containment of the third class made up of artisans and farmers. Their
number is the largest as equivalents of the low instincts, and they are,
therefore, a permanent threat to the coherence of the whole.
In such a situation, justice and temperance express the
interrelationship of the three classes with the cardinal virtues shared
out as follows. Reason is the virtue of the leaders, and courage of
spirit belongs to both the leaders and the guardians; whereas no
particular virtue is attached specifically to the third class. Politically, it
follows that no one may possess material goods and political goods at
the same time, or in other words, no class will hold political power and
material riches at the same time. This follows the principle of no
tripartition   without   separation.   To   everyone’s   astonishment,   Socrates  
asserts that the people, who by nature covet material goods, will have
the exclusive use of them on condition of being deprived of all
political initiative and even of all moral responsibility. Farmer artisans
are   the   only   ones   allowed   to   have   a   wife   and   children   (Plato’s  
“communism”   concerns   only   the   elite),   but   for  the  rest,  they  abide  by  
the wise decisions of their leaders and have nothing to say about the
conduct of public affairs. Correlatively, the philosopher kings and the
guardians will never, for their part, own the slightest material goods
(not even their wives and children). This fact will stop them from
making decisions with their own interest in mind and incite them to
aim at nothing but the common good. This is where we come to the
snag in the analogy. Does not this system reveal that, obviously, the
fact of not desiring power whenever one is invested with it is no cast -
iron guarantee of incorruptibility? There remains a risk that the
leaders, as rational as they may be – philosophers have become more
than   human,   even   “like God, as far as this is possible; and to become
like  God  is  to  become  righteous  and  holy  and  wise”  (Theaetetus 176b)
– will in time be perverted and turned into tyrants. How is such a
turnaround possible?
All the damage comes mainly from pleonexia – mainly but not only.
In a fine essay on Platonic politics from the Republic to the Laws,
Rogue points out the aporia on which the ideal city, Kallipolis,
stumbles.  It  is  “the  double  paradox  of  an  impossible  foundation  and  an  
inevitable   decline   …   Too   good   for its realisation not to be seen as a
kind   of   miracle,   Plato’s   republic   will   also   be   too   fragile   for   its  
perpetuation not to appear miraculous also, and its decadence
necessary”  (Rogue  2005:  58).
First, one may wonder how and why the third class, ignorant as a
matter of course, should eternally accept the superiority of learning
474 Homo Oeconomicus 31(4)

that gives power its legitimacy. Second, one must admit that erronous
birth control would allow for eugenics that permit the perpetuation of
the   elite   to   crumble   and,   therefore,   “for a state thus constituted to be
shaken and disturbed; but since for everything that has come into being
destruction is appointed, not even such a fabric as this will abide for all
time, but it shall surely be”   (Republic VIII, 546a). The inevitable
degenerescence of all that is part of becoming is an opportunity to
sketch a political science in books VIII and IX. They describe the four
forms of imperfect states that correspond to a progression
in corruption when the worst win at the level of the sources of
motivation. Timocracy means government founded on honours where
thymos reigns supreme. Oligarchy is the government by a small
number, usually the rich. Democracy and finally tyranny show the
signs of pathological processes of the epithymiai – limited at first to a
desire for riches, which then become unlimited. Finally, we reach that
total excess that is tyranny where a single individual, himself a victim
of the tyranny of his own impulses, is invested with power to do
absolutely anything.
Timocracy retains an appearance of order because it respects a
number of values that used to be those of the ideal aristocratic
government. Hence, the desire to get rich remains discreet and hidden.
However, oligarchy tips over to the side of the inequality of exchanges
and the disproportion of property and institutes a city where the very
rich and the very poor live at the expense of others without
contributing anything to the common good. Its collapse is inevitable
because the poor, who after a time have nothing to lose, have the
advantage of numbers (Republic VII, 557a).
Democratic man gives way to the polymorphy of desire, hence a
general chaos (Republic VII, 565d-e) where everyone seeks to enjoy
without a thought of saving or producing, leading, in due course, to an
economic and political dead end. Then the future tyrant turns up with
the prospect of the cancellation of debts and the sharing out of land
(Republic VII, 566a). To this self-proclaimed saviour who will, once
in place, govern   in  no  one’s  interest  but  his  own, people surrender all
powers in order to escape anarchy and penury.
Such is, broadly described, the spiral of decadence according to the
last books of the Republic. In the end, Plato, more pessimistic than
ever, returns to the very origin of this fall, which leads to the
disappearance of the political as such. He then excludes the possibility
for any man, even a philosopher king or enlightened tyrant, to escape
corruption if he becomes all-powerful. There is no need to invoke
chance or the history of regimes to account for decadence. All that is
needed is to refer to human  nature:  “Cronos was aware of the fact that no
A. Castel-Bouchouchi: Plato and the Causes of Excess 475

human   being   …   is   capable   of   having   irresponsible   control   of   all   human  

affairs without becoming filled with pride and injustice”  (Laws IV, 713c).
The individual and political origins of the process, indeed, reside
in the unbridled greed that characterizes human desire, or rather a type
of human desire. It may be possible to eradicate if it is possible to
keep it in check with an adequate internal order. This keeps rationality
in its proper place of command and turns the spirit into a reliable
auxiliary. This type of desire remains under a permanent threat. Let the
balance between the three parts be upset and pleonexia will go on the
rampage, carrying everything before it. Human psyche remains a
structure that is by definition precarious. Man is a wolf to man, as the
saying now attributed to Hobbes goes. Better to say there is a beast in
him, that pleonectic excess crouching at the very bottom of his soul,
that urges man to desire ever more extensively instead of being content
with what he has. Pleonexia is a Greek equivalent of that hateful
relation   to   the   world   embodied   in   the   proverb   “The   grass   is   always  
greener   on   the   other   side   of   the   hill.”   What makes it so dangerous is
not really its violence as its universality. It is present in every one of
us, as seen in two examples in the Republic, one well known, the other
less so. One remembers the story of Gyges told by Glaucon in support
of the so-called “consequentialist”   thesis   according   to   which   no   one  
desires to be just but only wants to take advantage of the justice others
recognize in him (Republic II, 359c-360d). It is said that one day as a
Lydian shepherd was grazing his flock; he noticed a hole in the ground
through which he gained access to the bowels of the earth. There he
found an eviscerated bronze horse with a naked corpse inside bearing
a gold ring. Having taken the treasure back to the surface, he noticed
that the ring had the magical power to make him invisible. From then
on, this ordinary man started to get more and more powerful, finally
turning into a lawless tyrant. The invisible man gains access to all
places, steals from all, murders the king, marries his wife, and grabs
the power. The moral of this is that we are only just in the eyes of
others, but if we happened to be in a position to do evil unknown to
others without ever being discovered, we would guarantee our own
interest at any cost to others. The point of the story is to show that
every  man  harbours  a  “bastard”  eager  to  do  his  worst.  He  is  only  kept  
in check by social order.
Now, the tripartition of the soul supported by Socrates in the rest of
the text aims at checking the consequentialist thesis by showing that
while there is certainly a shadowy part in each of us, in those of a
philosophical nature and in those who have self-respect it is an internal
order that repulses the beast. The quest for the good or of self-esteem
are such powerful desires – at least among the well-born and those
476 Homo Oeconomicus 31(4)

who know how to discipline themselves – that they annihilate the

desire to get rich, to gorge, to fornicate without restraint, and to bully
every one in sight. This possibility exists because the individual,
essentially, harbours low desires but she is not obsessed by them. In
such a case, it is the desire for justice that produces an undeniable
balance even though it remains fundamentally fragile. The second
example, almost introductory, is that of the interview with Cephalus
(which in Greek means a head) in Book I of Republic. An old man
confesses to being a bit afraid of death now that it is so close, explains
that age is not a catastrophe but rather a liberation for whoever intends
to philosophize, because the pleasures of the flesh, so demanding
when  one  is  young,  dwindle  away  with  time.  By  delivering  us  from  “a  
great  many  raging  masters”  (Republic I, 329d) that decency invites us
not to mention, maturity would render the joys of conversation and of
thought even more precious to us.
This characterization of the desiring part of the soul that is
pleonexia may also be violent. It implies excesses in whoever allows
this   “desiring   entity   which   is   the   most   massive   part  and  by  nature  the  
most   eager   for   riches”   to   prevail   upon   him.   A   person   who, from
overindulging   in   “so-called physical pleasures, and becoming large
and   strong”,   ceases   to   concern   himself   with   his   own   business   will  
“altogether   turn   everyone’s   whole   life   upside   down”   (Republic IV,
442a-b). The danger lies in the unlimited aspect of desire. The force of
desire is no longer contained but becomes blurred, because it lacks a
particular object. Erratic and insatiable, it forever roams further afield.
This makes it the anti-political passion par excellence, as had been
suggested by the myth of Gyges. It describes the genesis of tyranny in
a man who, driven by his desire to have more than the others, wants
not only a woman but the wife of another and then the queen, not only
a house, but that of his neighbours and then a royal palace. The basic
needs are never enough because everyone ends up desiring someone
else’s  desires.  A  few  pages  after  having  told  the  story  of  Gyges  and  the  
anthropology that follows from it, Plato sketches his first model of a
city. This is not the city of the just but the city of the needy, born out
of   the   following   economical   and   anthropological   fact:   “a   state   comes  
into being since each of us is not independent, but actually needs the
support  of  many  people”  (Republic II, 369b).
Material needs such as food, clothing, and housing force men to get
together in order to organize their survival. Getting together, they
specialize according to their natural abilities. The division of labour
makes it possible, at first, for a minimal polis to satisfy all of its
members. Unfortunately, it is when it comes to the exchange of goods
and services that pleonexia disturbs   this   spontaneous   balance.   “They  
A. Castel-Bouchouchi: Plato and the Causes of Excess 477

each share things with each other, if there is something to share, or

exchange them, thinking that it is better for each of them in this way,
don’t   they?”   (Republic II, 369c). Thus, everybody hopes to strike a
bargain. Equal and united in their needs, the citizens diverge in their
search for the superfluous and their own advantage. They never have
enough and the grass is always greener on the other side of the hill.
That is how the primitive city, because of the malfunctioning of
exchanges,  becomes  a  “city  of  pigs.”  So  it  is  that,  at  once  omnipresent  
and excessive, the worst side of man poses a perpetual threat,
sometimes virtual, sometimes real, to the moral, political, and even
metaphysical order. The latter aspect is suggested, it is true, only in
book X of Laws but in scathing terms. Pleonexia is, indeed, mentioned
as a pathogenic cosmic force, a negative principle that, by opposing
the principle of order which is the Soul of the world, appears as the
source of all disorder, without exceptions: “The  sin  now  mentioned,  of  
profiteering  or  ‘over-gaining’,  is  what  is  called  in  the  case  of  fleshly  bodies  
‘disease’,  in  that  of  seasons  and  years  ‘pestilence’,  and  in  that  of  States  and  
polities,   by   a   verbal   change,   this   same  sin  is  called  ‘injustice’”   (Laws X,
906c).
Bringing in its wake epidemics, civil wars, and atmospheric
catastrophes, one wonders whether the desire to always have more
might be responsible for global warming today. Without any
exaggeration, one may say it is more than a negative force – it is the
principle of evil in this world.
Finally, in spite of the remarkable architectonics of the Republic,
there remains a key tension in the Platonic corpus between two ways
of resolution of desires in order to achieve harmony. Freud says that
sublimation is a positive solution and repression a negative solution
when faced with impulsive demands. In the same way Plato states
that there remains a hesitation as to the best way of ensuring, within
the limits of the possible, a harmonious balance between necessarily
plural and potentially conflicting human desires. Will morality result
from an exercise in detachment from the body and the senses (Phaedo,
for instance, chooses asceticism), or would it be better to count on the
education of the pleasures, pains, and desires – this is the original
solution in Laws? (Laks 1990: 209-229 and Bobonich 2002: 354 ff.).

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