Rachana Kamtekar offers a new understanding of Plato's account of the soul and its impact on our living well or badly, virtuously or viciously. She argues that throughout the dialogues Plato maintains that human beings have a natural desire for our own good, and that actions and conditions contrary to this desire are involuntary.

The book provides a commentary on Plato's Republic which encourages the reader to be stimulated to philosophical thinking by Plato's wide-ranging discussions.

In book 9 of Plato's Republic, Socrates describes the nature and origins of the ‘tyrannical man’, whose soul is said to be ‘like’ a tyrannical city. In this paper, I examine the nature of the ‘government’ that exists within the tyrannical man's soul. I begin by demonstrating the inadequacy of three potentially attractive views sometimes found in the literature on Plato: the view that the tyrannical man's soul is ruled by his ‘lawless’ unnecessary appetites, the view that it is ruled (...) by sexual desire, and the view that it is ruled by a lust for power. I then present my own account. On the view I defend, the tyrannical man's soul is to be understood as ruled by a single, persistent, powerful desire for bodily pleasure: as much as he can get, and however he can get it. Finally, I show how understanding the tyrannical man's soul in the way I recommend helps resolve some commonly expressed concerns about this part of the Republic. I suggest, on this basis, that Plato's procedure in constructing his catalogue o.. (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)

In this paper, I consider how each of the four main kinds of corrupt person described in Plato's Republic, Books 8-9, first comes to be. Certain passages in these books can give the impression that each person is able to determine, by a kind of rational choice, the overall government of his/her soul. However, I argue, this impression is mistaken. Upon careful examination, the text of books 8 and 9 overwhelmingly supports an alternative interpretation. According to this view, the eventual (...) government of each person’s soul is decided by a struggle for power occurring within the person, among the soul’s parts, the outcome of which is determined by the relative strength and alignment of the competing parties. If this interpretation is correct, Plato adheres more closely to the city-soul analogy in these passages than has sometimes been thought. The ultimate origins of vice in the soul are also seen to lie squarely in upbringing and education, not in a mistaken choice of life. (shrink)

My aim here is to make sense of Plato's account of desire in the middle dialogues. To do that I need to unify or reconcile what are at first sight two quite different accounts: the doctrine of eros in the Symposium and the tripartite theory of motivation in the Republic. It may be that the two theories are after all irreconcilable, that Plato simply changed his mind on the nature of human desire after writing the Symposium and before composing the (...) Republic. But that conclusion can be justified only if attempts to reconcile the two theories end in failure. The attempt must be made first. (shrink)

Reeve's classic work provides an interpretation of Republic that makes a case for the coherence of Plato's argument.

Hendrik Lorenz presents a comprehensive study of Plato's and Aristotle's conceptions of non-rational desire. They see this as something that humans share with animals, and which aims primarily at the pleasures of food, drink, and sex. Lorenz explores the cognitive resources that both philosophers make available for the explanation of such desires, and what they take rationality to add to the motivational structure of human beings. In doing so, he finds conceptions of the mind that are coherent and deeply integrated (...) with both philosophers' views about such topics as the relation between body and soul, or the nature of the virtues. (shrink)

This exceptional book examines and explains Plato's answer to the normative question, "How ought we to live?" It discusses Plato's conception of the virtues; his views about the connection between the virtues and happiness; and the account of reason, desire, and motivation that underlies his arguments about the virtues. Plato's answer to the epistemological question, "How can we know how we ought to live?" is also discussed. His views on knowledge, belief, and inquiry, and his theory of Forms, are examined, (...) insofar as they are relevant to his ethical view. Terence Irwin traces the development of Plato's moral philosophy, from the Socratic dialogues to its fullest exposition in the Republic. Plato's Ethics discusses Plato's reasons for abandoning or modifying some aspects of Socratic ethics, and for believing that he preserves Socrates' essential insights. A brief and selective discussion of the Statesmen, Philebus, and Laws is included. Replacing Irwin's earlier Plato's Moral Theory (Oxford, 1977), this book gives a clearer and fuller account of the main questions and discusses some recent controversies in the interpretation of Plato's ethics. It does not presuppose any knowledge of Greek or any extensive knowledge of Plato. (shrink)

Dominic Scott compares the Republic and Nicomachean Ethics from a methodological perspective. He argues that Plato and Aristotle distinguish similar levels of argument in the defence of justice, and that they both follow the same approach: Plato because he thinks it will suffice, Aristotle because he thinks there is no need to go beyond it.

This paper tackles some issues arising from Plato's account of the democratic man in Rep. VIII. One problem is that Plato tends to analyse him in terms of the desires that he fulfils, yet sends out conflicting signals about exactly what kind of desires are at issue. Scholars are divided over whether all of the democrat's desires are appetites. There is, however, strong evidence against seeing him as exclusively appetitive: rather he is someone who satisfies desires from all three parts (...) of his soul, although his rational and spirited desires differ significantly from those of the philosopher or the timocrat. A second problem concerns the question why the democrat ranks so low in Plato's estimation, especially why he is placed beneath the oligarch. My explanation is that Plato presents him as a jumble of desires, someone in whom order and unity have all but disintegrated. In this way he represents a step beyond the merely bipolarised oligarch. The final section of the paper focuses on the democrat's rational part, and asks whether it plays any role in shaping his life as a whole. For the disunity criticism to hold, Plato ought to allow very little global reasoning: if there were a single deliberating reason imposing a life plan upon his life, the fragmentation of life and character discussed earlier would only be superficial. I argue that Plato attributes very little global reasoning to the democrat. Aside from the fact that the text fails to mention such reasoning taking place, Plato's views on the development of character and his use of the state-soul analogy show that the democrat's lifestyle is determined just by the strength of the desires that he happens to feel at any one time. (shrink)

Plato's Utopia Recast is an illuminating reappraisal of Plato's later works, which reveals radical changes in his ethical and political theory. Christopher Bobonich examines later dialogues, with a special emphasis upon the Laws, and argues that in these late works Plato both rethinks and revises the basic ethical and political positions that he held in his better known earlier works, such as the Republic. This book will change our understanding of Plato. His controversial moral and political theory, so influential in (...) Western thought, will henceforth be seen in a new light. (shrink)

As earthquakes expose geological faults, so mental conflict reveals tendencies to rupture within the mind. Dissension is rife not only between people but also within them, for each of us is subject to a contrariety of desires, beliefs, motivations, aspirations. What image are we to form of ourselves that might best enable us to accept the reality of discord, or achieve the ideal of harmony? Greek philosophers offer us a variety of pictures and structures intended to capture the actual and (...) the possible either within a reason that fails to be resolute, or within a split soul that houses a play of forces. Reflection upon them alerts us to the elusiveness at once of mental reality, and of the understanding by which we hope to capture and transform it. Studying in turn the treatments of _Mental Conflict_ in Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics, A.W. Price demonstrates how the arguments of the Greeks are still relevant to philosophical discussion today. (shrink)