This post concerns 427d-Book IV of Plato’s Republic.
From Book I, the working assumption is that justice in the state is the same as justice in the soul. By 427, the ideal city has been outlined and the question is now raised whether this city has the virtues that make for eudaimonia. If it is true that justice in the state is the same as justice in the soul, then any good city (as any good person) will have these virtues. The virtues are listed in the Republic as Wisdom (read: Prudence), Courage, Temperance, and Justice. The one that we are interested in understanding is justice.
At the point where it is asked whether justice is to be found in the company of the other virtues, Plato distinguishes parts of the soul and parts of the state. Classes in the state correspond to parts of the soul.
Why conclude that there are parts of the soul? What justifies this idea? There’s a short answer, that appeals to ordinary moral experience, and a longer answer that connects the division with a broader theoretical concern. The short answer is that a person may sometimes experience inner conflict between, for example, what she desires and what she judges is for the best. Also a person may sometimes get angry at himself for having done something that he wanted to do. This internal conflict is evidence for the conclusion that there are internal parts of the soul that may contravene or oppose one another. Socrates called these parts: (1) Reason, from whence judgments about what is for the best, (2) Spirit, from whence emotion such as anger and the sense of pride, and (3) Appetite, from whence desire for things necessary and unnecessary (such as food and sleep, trinkets and furs), good and bad.
The long answer turns on the idea, frequently argued by Socrates, that virtue is knowledge. Socrates considers the test of knowledge to be action. That is, to know what is right is to act rightly. What a person believes shows more clearly in his actions rather than in his words. It follows that it is not possible really to know what is right and then act wrongly. Unjust behavior is therefore a sign of ignorance of what justice is.
This conclusion, though, is contrary to the appearances. For it seems that someone can know what is right and then act wrongly. Socrates seems to over-intellectualize human behavior. But can one do evil intentionally, in full knowledge that it is evil? Socrates says no, though it seems clear that people do act that way. In short, knowledge of justice seems, contrary to what Socrates holds, to be necessary for right behavior, but not sufficient for it. It seems, that is, that something else is needed, namely, the will to act rightly.
To answer these appearances, Socrates discusses the relationship between the parts of an ideal state since they are correlates of parts of an ideal person. An individual is internally self-governed, as a state is. So knowledge of the sort we spoke of in the last paragraph is in the “reasoning part” (i.e., the “guardian” part). The second class, the auxiliaries, is supposed to have courage, i.e., right belief (not knowledge) of what one should and should not fear. The auxiliaries act from correctly trained habit. Courage is the ability to keep to this training in the presence of confusion, pain, etc. So though it may be said that courage is not itself knowledge, but rather a certain cultivated temperament that has become part of one’s character, it is, nonetheless, knowledge plus this character trait of tenacity and boldness that equals courage in the total person, since if the reasoning part makes mistakes, then the spirited part will not have right belief but wrong belief and will then misplace its boldness and tenacity. Since such mistakes scarcely conduce to a good life, they cannot be said to proceed from virtue, or, more specifically, from courage. Knowledge is then a necessary presupposition of courage.
Thus, when Socrates says that for a person to know what is just necessarily results in his acting justly, what he means is that wisdom in the reasoning part of that person brings correct belief to his spirited part, and it is this part that provides the will for him to overcome any contrary desire. Courage, then, which is a kind of moral knowledge of which action is the test, is located not in the reasoning or spirited parts independently, but in the unity of reason and spirit. Moral success signals the unity of reason and spirit; moral failure signals their division. This theoretical division thus gives Plato a way to account for moral success and failure and also helps to explain the thesis that virtue is knowledge.
Plato thought that moral mistakes that divide a person against himself (rendering him dysdaimonic) were almost always due to intemperate, “unruled”, desire, i.e., desire that succeeds, contrary to nature, in mastering reason. Desire should not rule, Socrates argued, because desire, untempered by reason, is always tyrannical; mistaking its own pleasure for the good, it will use and exploit the other parts of the person for its own ends, not for the real good of the whole person. The person in whom desire rules is thus a slave of his passions and lacks the freedom to do what he really considers best. Thus, one of the main goals of Socratic moral education is to cultivate an effective alliance, as it were, between reason and spirit that will keep appetite temperate and in harmony with the whole.
The virtues of the rational part are: prudence (wisdom), courage, and temperance. The virtues of the spirited part are: courage and temperance. The virtue of the appetitive part is temperance. Justice in the soul is the harmony of all parts when these virtues are present in due proportion. Thus, the main virtue of the appetitive part is shared in equal proportion with the other two parts, for temperance is the recognition that the rational part should rule.
Thus, reason must have all of virtues. Courage is associated with the spirit, but there is such a thing as intellectual courage, too. The spirited part must be highly trained, for it needs to act from correctly formed habit when necessary, but the intellect also needs training and must form correct intellectual habits on which it may rely when the intellectual challenges are great. And the temperance of the rational part consists of the acknowledgement that it is an organic part of the soul it rules and so that it should rule itself as well as the other parts. Temperance in the rational part makes it recognize that it should not rule arbitrarily, like a tyrant, but with circumspection, as an aristocrat (aristos-archos: “rule by the best.”)
The tripartite distinction among parts of the soul is what may be called a “nested” distinction. That is, it also applies, though only partially, to its parts. We have already noticed that the virtues of reason are threefold (prudence, courage, and temperance), that the virtues of spirit are twofold (courage and temperance), and the virtue of appetite unitary (temperance). This implies that the reasoning part of the soul may also be divided into three parts, and the spirited part into two, corresponding to the distinction among the virtues. Thus, both reason and spirit may be beset with their own form of desire that tries to overcome the proper function of that part of the soul.
For example, the appetite of spirit is for honor, victory, and respect. If this appetite is disciplined by genuine regard for what is good, then the result is courage. But if the desire becomes stronger than this regard, then the result is foolhardiness or a blinding, stubborn pride, which is concerned to satisfy spirit’s appetite without essential concern for what is really good.
Another example. The appetite of reason is for control. After all, its function is prudence and prudence wants to keep the company solvent and prospering, as it were. If this appetite for control becomes stronger than reason’s regard for the good, then the result is either timidity or domination, depending on the resources of the person. In either case, the passion that typically overcomes reason and feeds the desire for control is fear of the future. A person who has few resources will become timid and will tend to neglect the future out of a self-deceiving denial that things are out of control. (Ironically, timidity usually brings about what it most fears.) On the other hand, a person of greater resource who is overcome by an appetite for control will typically become a highly disciplined tyrant, of the timocratic or oligarchic sort, and will industriously work toward certain goals without adequate knowledge of whether they are really good.