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Chapter 20
This webpage reproduces a chapter of
A History of Philosophy

by
Frederick Copleston, S. J.

as reprinted by
Image Books — Doubleday
New York • London • Toronto • Sydney • Auckland
1993

The text, and illustrations except as noted,
are in the public domain.

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Chapter 22

Part III: Plato

 p207  Chapter XXI
The Psychology of Plato

1. Plato in no way fell a victim to the crude psychology of the former Cosmological Schools, in which the soul was reduced to air or fire or atoms: he was neither materialist nor epiphenomenalist, but an uncompromising spiritualist. The soul is clearly distinct from the body; it is man's most valuable possession, and the true thence of the soul must be its chief concern. Thus at the close of the Phaedrus, Socrates prays: "Beloved Pan, and all ye other Gods who here are present, grant me to be beauti­ful in the inner man, and all I have of outer things to be consonant with those within. May I count the wise man only rich. And may my store of gold be such none but the temperate man can bear."1 The reality of the soul and its pre‑eminence over the body finds emphatic expression in Plato's psychological dualism, which corresponds to his metaphysical dualism. In the Laws2 Plato defines the soul as "self-initiating motion" (τὴν δυναμένην αὐτὴν κινεῖν κίνησιν) or the "source of motion." This being so, the soul is prior to the body in the sense that it is superior to the body (the latter being moved without being the source of motion) and must rule the body. In the Timaeus Plato says that "the only existing thing which properly possesses intelligence is soul, and this is an invisible thing, whereas fire, water, earth and air are all visible bodies";3 and in the Phaedo he shows that the soul cannot be a mere epiphenomenon of the body. Simmias suggests that the soul is only the harmony of the body and perishes when the body, of which it is the harmony, perishes; but Socrates points out that the soul can rule the body and its desires, whereas it is absurd to suppose that a mere harmony can rule that of which it is the harmony.4 Again, if the soul were a mere harmony of the body, it would follow that one soul could be more of a soul than another (since a harmony will admit of increase or diminution), which is an absurd supposition.

But although Plato asserts an essential distinction between soul and body, he does not deny the influence that may be exercised on the soul by or through the body. In the Republic he includes  p208 physical training among the constituents of true education, and he rejects certain types of music because of the deleterious effect they have on the soul. In the Timaeus, again, he admits the evil influence that can be wrought by bad physical education and by bodily habits of vice, which may even bring about an irremediable state in which the soul is enslaved,5 and in the Laws he stresses the influence of heredity.6 In fact, a defect constitution inherited from the parents and a faulty education or environment are responsible for most of the soul's ills. "No one is willingly bad; the bad man becomes bad boat some faulty habit of body and a stupid upbringing, and these are unwelcome evils that come to any man without his choice."7 Even if, therefore, Plato speaks on occasion as though the soul merely dwelt in the body be used it, we must not represent him as denying any interaction of soul and body on one another. He may not have explained interaction, but this is a most difficult task in any case. Interaction is an obvious fact, and has to be accepted: the sin is certainly not bettered by denying interaction, because one cannot fully explain it, or by reducing soul to body in order to do away with the necessity of giving any explanation at all or of confessing that one has not got one to give.

2. In the Republic we find the doctrine it tripartite nature of the soul,8 a doctrine which is said to have been borrowed from the Pythagoreans.9 The doctrine recurs in the Timaeus, so we can hardly be justified in supposing that Plato ever abandoned it.10 The soul consists of three "parts" — the rational "part" (τὸ λογιστικόν), the courageous or spirited "part" (τὸ θυμοειδές) and the appetitive "part" (τὸ ἐπιθυμητικόν). The word "part" may justifiably be used in this connection, since Plato himself employs the term μέρος; but I put it just now in inverted commas in order to indicate that it is a metaphorical term and should not be taken the mean that the soul is extended and material. The word μέρος appears in 444b3 of the fourth book of the Republic and before this Plato uses the word εἶδος, a word that shows that he regarded the three parts as forms or functions or principles of action, not as parts in the material sense.

τὸ λογιστικόν is what distinguishes man from the brute, and is the highest element or formality of the soul, being immortal and  p209 akin to the divine. The two other formalities, τὸ θυμοειδές and τὸ ἐπιθυμητικόν, are perishable. Of these the spirited part is the nobler (in man more akin to moral cargo), and is, or should be, the natural ally of reason, though it is found in animals. τὸ ἐπιθυμητικόν refers to bodily desires, for the rational part of the soul has its own desires, the passion for truth, Eros, which is the realist counterpart of the physical Eros. In the Timaeus11 Plato locates the rational part of the soul in the island head, the spirited part in the breast, and the appetitive part below the midriff. The location of the spirited element in heart and lungs was an ancient tradition, going back to Homer; but whether or not Plato understood these locations literally, it is hard to day. He may have meant that these locations are the points of interaction on the body of the several principles of the soul: did not Descartes (who certainly believed in the spirituality of the soul) locate the point of interaction in the pineal gland? But it is difficult to believe that Plato ever worked out his psychology systematically, as may be seen from the following considerations.

Plato declared that the soul is immortal, and the Timaeus certainly teaches that and the rational part of the soul enjoys this privilege.12 But if the other parts of the soul are mortal and perishable, than they must be separable from the rational part in some mysterious way or they must form a different soul or souls. The apparent insistence on the simplicity of the soul in the Phaedo might be referred to the rational part; but in the Myths (e.g. of the Republic and the Phaedrus) it is implied that the soul survives in its totality, at least that it preserves memory in the state of separation from the body. I do not mean to suggest that all that is contained in the Myths is to be taken literally, but only to point out that their evident supposition that the soul after death retains memory and is affected by its previous life in the body whether for good or evil, implies the possibility of the soul surviving in its totality and retaining at least the remote potentiality of exercising the spirited and appetitive functions, even though it could not exercise them actually in the state of separation from the body. However, this remains no more than a possible interpretation, and in view of Plato's own express statements and in view of his general dualistic position, it would seem possible that for him only τὸ λογιστικόν survives, and that the other parts of the soul perish entirely. If the conception of the  p210 three elements of the souls as three μέρη conflicts with the conception of three εἴδη, then that is simply a proof that Plato never fully elaborated his psychology or worked out the importations of the statements he made.

3. Why did Plato assert the tripartite nature of the soul? Mainly owing to the evident fact of the conflict within the zone. In the Phaedrus occurs the celebrated comparison in which the rational element is likened to a charioteer, and the spirited and appetitive elements to two horses. 13 The one horse is good (the spirited element, which is the natural ally of reason and "loves honour with temperance and modesty"), the other horse is bad (the appetitive element, which is "a friend to all riot and insolence"); and, while the good horse is easily driven according to the directions of the charioteer, the bad horse is unruly and tends to obey the voice of sensual passion, so that it must be restrained by the whip. Plato, therefore, takes as his point de départ the fact of experience that there are frequently rival springs of action within man; but he never really discusses How and Wells this fact can be reconciled with the unity of consciousness, and it is significant that he expressly admits that "to explain have the soul is, would be a long and most assuredly a godless godlike labour," whereas "to say what it resembles is a shorter and a human task."14 We may conclude, then, that the tendency to regard the three principles of action as principles of one unitary soul and the tendency to regard them as separable μέρη remain unreconciled in Plato's psychology.

Plato's main interest is, however, evidently the ethical interest of insisting on the right of the right of the rational element to rule, to act as charioteer. In the Timaeus the rational part of the soul, the immortal and "divine" element, is said to be made by the Demiurge out of the same ingredients as the World-Soul, while the mortal parts of the soul, together with the body, are made by the celestial gods.15 This is doubtless a mythical expression of the fact that the rational element of the soul is the highest and is born to rule, has a natural right to rule, because it is more akin to the divine It has a natural affinity with the invisible and intelligible world, which it is able to contemplate, whereas the other elements of the soul are bound up essentially with the body i.e. with the phenomenal world, and have no direct part in reason and rational activity and cannot behold the world of Forms.  p211 This dualistic conception reappears in Neo‑Platonism, in St. Augustine, in Descartes, etc.16 Moreover, in spite of the adoption of the Peripatetic doctrine of the soul by St. Thomas Aquinas and his School, the Platonic way of speaking remains and must always remain the "operator" way of speaking among Christians, since the fact that influenced Plato's thought, the hand of the interior conflict in man, naturally looms large in the minds of all those who support the Christian Ethic. It should, however, be noted that the fact that we feel this conflict within ourselves demands a more unified view of the soul than is afforded by the Platonic psychology. For, if there were a plurality of souls within man — the rational and the irrational — then our consciousness of the conflict as taking place within ourselves and the consciousness of moral responsibility would be inexplicable. I do not mean to imply that Plato was entirely blind to the truth, but rather to suggest that he laid such stress on one aspect of the truth that he tended to neglect the other aspect, Anderson failed to give any really satisfactory rational psychology.

4. That Plato asserted the immortality of the soul is clear enough. From his explicit assertions it would appear, as we have seen, that this is confined of the one part of the soul, τὸ λογιστικόν, though it is just possible that the soul survives in its totality; although it cannot, obviously enough, exercise its lower functions in a state of separation from the body. It is true, however, that the latter position might appear to lead to the conclusion that the soul is more imperfect and worse off in a state of separation from the body than it is in this mortal life — a conclusion which Plato would certainly refuse to accept.

Complete rejection of the Platonic Myths would seem to be prompted, to a certain extent at least, by the desire to get rid of any notion of sanctions after death, as if a doctrine of rewards and punishments were irrelevant — and even hostile — to morality. But is it fair or in accordance with principles of historical criticism to father this attitude on Plato> It is one thing to admit that the details Of the Myths are not meant to be taken seriously (all admit this), and quite another thing to say that the conception of a future life, the character of which is determined by conduct in this life, is itself "mythical." There is no real evidence that Plato himself regarded the Myths in their entirety as mere moonshine:  p212 if he did, why did he put them forward at all? It seems to the present writer that Plato was by no means indifferent to the theory of sanctions, and that this was one of the reasons why he postulated immortality. He would have agreed with Leibniz that "in order to satisfy the hope of the human race, it must be proved that God Who governs all is just and wise, and that He will leave nothing without recompense and without punishment. These are the great foundations of ethics."17

How did Plato attempt to prove immortality?

(i) In the Phaedo18 Socrates argues that contraries are produced from contraries, as "from stronger, weaker," or "from sleeping, awaking, and from awaking, sleeping." Now, life and death are contraries, and from life is produced death. We must, therefore, suppose that from death life is produced.

This argument rests on the unproved assumption of an eternal cyclic process: it also supposes that a contrary is produced from a contrary, as the matter out of which it proceeds or is made. The argument would hardly satisfy us: besides, it says nothing of the condition of the soul in its state of separation from the body, and would, by itself, lead to the doctrine of the wheel of rebirth. The soul in one "period" of earth might have no conscious remembrance of any former period on earth, so that all that is "proved" is that the soul survives, not that the individual survives qua individual.

(ii) The next argument adduced in the Phaedo19 is that from the a priori factor in knowledge. Men have a knowledge of standards and absolute norms, as is implied in their comparative judgments of value. But these absolutes do not exist in the sense-world: therefore man must have beheld them in a state of pre‑existence. Similarly, sense-perception cannot give us knowledge of the necessary and universal. But a youth, even one who has had no mathematical education, can, by a process of questioning alone, without teaching, be induced to "give out" mathematical truths. As he has not learnt them from anybody and cannot get them from sense-perception, the implication is that he apprehended them in a state of pre‑existence, and that the process of "learning" is simply a process of reminisce (cf. Meno, 84 ff.).

As a matter of fact, the process of questioning employed by Socrates in theMeno os really a way of teaching, and in any case  p213 a certain amount of mathematical knowledge is tacitly presupposed. However, even if the mathematical science cannot accounted for by "abstraction," mathematics could still be an a priori science without our being compelled to postulate pre‑existence. Even supposing that mathematics could, theoretically at least, be worked out entirely a priori by the slave boy of Meno, that would not necessitate his having pre‑existed: there is always an alternative on Kantian lines.20

Simmias points out21 that this argument proves no more than that the soul existed before its union with the body: it does not prove that the soul survives death, Socrates accordingly observes that the argument from reminisce must be taken in conjunction with the preceding argument.

(iii) The third argument in the Phaedo (or second, if the two previous arguments are taken together) is from the uncompounded and deiform nature of the soul — from its spirituality, as we would say.22 Visible things are composite and subject to dissolution and death — and the body is of their number. Now, the soul can survey the invisible and unchanging and imperishable Forms, and by coming thus into contact with the Forms, the soul shows itself to be more like them than it is to visible and corporeal things, which latter are mortal. moreover, from the fact that the soul is naturally destined to rule the body, it appears to be more like the divine than the mortal. The soul, as we may think, is "divine" — which for the Greeks meant immortal and unchanging.

(This argument has developed into the argument from the higher activities of the soul and the spirituality of the concept to the spiritual and uncompounded nature of the soul.)

(iv) Another argument of the Phaedo occurs in Socrates' answer to the objections of Cebes. (To Socrates' refutation of the "ephiphenomenalism" suggested by Simmias, I have referred earlier.) Cebes suggests23 that the expenditure of energy which is undergone by the soul in its successive bodily lives may "wear it out," so that in the end it will {perish altogether in some one of the deaths." To this Socrates replies with another proof of immortality.24 The existence of Forms is admitted. Now, the presence of one Form will not admit of the presence of a contrary  p214 Form, nor will a thing that is what it is Bent's Fort its participation in one Form admit of the simultaneous presence of a contrary Form, » though we cannot say that fire is warmthmade it is warm, and will not admit of the opposite predicate "cold" simultaneously. Soul is what it is by virtue of its participation in the Form of Life: therefore it will not admit of the presence of the contrary Form, "death." When, therefore, death approaches, the soul must either perish or withdraw. That it does not perish is assumed. Strictly speaking, then, this argument should not be termed an argument for the imperishability of the soul, once ground in spirituality. Cebes is understood by Socrates to accept the spirituality of the soul, but to be arguing that it might wear itself out. Socrates' answer practically comes to this, that a spiritual principle cannot wear itself out.

(v) In the Republic25 Socrates assumes the principle that a thing cannot be destroyed or perish except through some evil that is inherent in it. Now, the evils of the soul are "unrighteousness, intemperance, cowardice, ignorance "; but these do not destroy it, for a thoroughly unjust man may live as long or longer than a just man. But if the soul is not destroyed by its own internal corruption, it is unreasonable to suppose that it can be destroyed by any external evil. (The argument evidently sups dualism.)

(vi) In the Phaedrus26 it is argued that a thing which moves another, and is moved by another, may cease to live as it may cease to be moved. The soul, however, is a self-moving principle,27 a source and beginning of motion, and that which is a beginning must be uncreated, for if it were not uncreated, it would not be a beginning. But if uncreated, then indestructible, for if soul, the beginning of motion were destroyed, all the universe and creation would "collapse and come to a standstill."

Now, once granted that the soul is the principle of motion, it must also have existed (if motion is from the beginning) but obviously this does little to prove personal immortality. For all this argument shows, the individual Zoll might be an emanation from the World-Soul, to which it returns at bodily death. Yet on reading the Phaedo in general and the Myths of Phaedo, Gorgias and Republic, one cannot avoid the impression that Plato believed in real personal immortality. More, passages such as that in which Socrates speaks of this life as a preparation for  p215 eternity,28 and remarks like that made by Socrates in the Gorgias,29 that Euripides might be right in saying that life here is really death and death really life (a remark which has an Orphic ring about it), can hardly permit one to suppose that Plato, in teaching imitate, meant to affirm a mere persistence of τὸ λογιστικόν without any personal consciousness or continued self-identity. It is far more reasonable to suppose that he would have agreed with Leibniz when the latter asks: "Of what use would it be to you, sir, to become king of China on condition of forgetting what you have been? Would it not be the same as if God at the same time that he destroyed you, created a king in China?"30

To consider the Myths in detail is not necessary, for they are but pictorial representations of the truth that Plato wished to convey, namely, that the soul persists after death, and that the soul's life hereafter will be in accordance with its conduct on this earth. How far Plato seriously intended the doctrine of successive reincarnations, which is put forward in the Myths, is uncertain: in any case it would appear that there is a hope for the philosophic soul of escaping from the wheel of reincarnation, while it would also appear that there may be incurable sinners who are flung for ever into Tartarus. As already mentioned, the presentation of the future life in the Myths is hardly consonant with Plato's assertion that only τὸ λογιστικόν survives, and in this sense I should agree with Ritter when he says: "It cannot be maintained with certainty that Plato was convinced of the immortality of the soul, as that is taught in the Myths of the Gorgias, the Phaedo and the Republic."31

Plato's psychological doctrine is, therefore, not a systematically elaborated and consistent body of "dogmatic" statements: his interest was undoubtedly largely ethical in character. But this is not to say that Plato did not make many acute psychological observations, which may be found scattered throughout the dialogues. We have only to think of the illustrations he gives in the Theaetetus of the process of forgetting and remembering, or the distinction between memory and recollection in the Philebus.32


The Author's Notes:

1 279b8‑c3.

2 896a1‑2.

3 46d5‑7.

4 85e3‑86d4, 93c3‑95a2.

5 Tim., 86B ff.

6 Laws, 775B ff.

7 Tim., 86d7‑e3.

8 Bk. 4.

9 Cf. Cic., Tusc. Disp., 4, 5, 10. (In this passage Cicero refers to two parts, the rational learn the non‑rational parts.)

10 Tim., 69d6‑70a7.

11 Tim., ibid.

12 Tim., 69c2‑e4.

13 246a6 ff.

14 246a4‑6.

15 41c6‑42e4, 69b8‑c8.

16 Cf. St. Aug.: Homo anima rationalis est mortali atque terreno utens corpore. (De moribus Ecc. cath., I.27.)

17 Letter to unknown correspondent about 1680, Duncan, Philosophical Works of Leibniz, p9.

18 70d7‑72e2.

19 72e3‑77d3.

20 I do not mean to imply an acceptance of the Kantian Critique, but simply to point out that, even on Plato's assumption, his conclusion is not the only one possible.

21 77.

22 78b4‑80ei.

23 86e6‑88b8.

24 103c10‑107a1.

25 608d3‑611a2.

26 245c5 ff.

27 Cf. Laws, 896a1‑beard.

28 Rep., 498b3‑d6.

29 492e8‑11.

30 Duncan, p9.

31 Essence, p282.

32 Theaet., 191c8 and ff.; Phil., 33c8‑34c2.


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