In Republic VIII, oligarchy is represented as a transitional or hybrid regime combining features of aristocracy and timocracy with the rule of appetitive desire characteristic of democracy and tyranny. The apparently anomalous intermediary position of oligarchy, in which an object of appetitive soul provides the foundation for interpersonal and political norms, demonstrates the complexity of the interaction between ruling soul parts and underlying rational structures that give unity to each constitution and character type. This interaction cannot be adequately accounted for (...) in terms of the activity of autonomous soul parts whose interactions are wholly reduced to quantitative relations of force. (shrink)

In Republic 8–9, Socrates describes four main kinds of vicious people, all of whose souls are “ruled” by an element other than reason, and in some of whom reason is said to be “enslaved.” What role does reason play in such souls? In this paper, I argue, based on Republic 8–9 and related passages, and in contrast to some common alternative views, that for Plato the “enslavement” of reason consists in this: instead of determining for itself what is good, reason (...) is forced to desire and pursue as good a goal determined by the soul’s ruler. (shrink)

In books 8 and 9 of Plato’s Republic, Socrates provides a detailed account of the nature and origins of four main kinds of vice found in political constitutions and in the kinds of people that correspond to them. The third of the four corrupt kinds of person he describes is the ‘democratic man’. In this paper, I ask what ‘rules’ in the democratic man’s soul. It is commonly thought that his soul is ruled in some way by its appetitive part, (...) or by a particular class of appetitive desires. I reject this view, and argue instead that his soul is ruled by a succession of desires of a full range of different kinds. I show how this view helps us better understand Plato’s depiction of corrupt souls in the Republic more generally, and with it his views on the rule of the soul, appetitive desire, and the nature of vice. (shrink)

OSAP vol 39 TOC includes papers on Plato and Aristotle with one paper on Plotinus.