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PLATO AND THE DIVIDED SELF

Platos account of the tripartite soul is a memorable feature of dialogues

like theRepublic,Phaedrus, andTimaeus: it is one of his most famous and

influential yet least understood theories. It presents human nature as both

essentially multiple and diverse, and yet somehow also one, divided into a

fully human rational part, a lion-like spirited part and an appetitivepart likened to a many-headed beast. How these parts interact, how exactly

each shapes our agency and how they are affected by phenomena like eros

and education is complicated and controversial. The essays in this book

investigate how the theory evolves over the whole of Platos work, including

theRepublic,Phaedrus, andTimaeus, and how it was developed further by

important Platonists such as Galen, Plutarch, and Plotinus. They will be

of interest to a wide audience in philosophy and classics.

rachel barney holds the Canada Research Chair in Classical Philosophy

at the University of Toronto. She is the author ofNames and Nature inPlatos Cratylus(2001).

tad brennanis Professor of Philosophy and Classics at Cornell Univer-

sitys Sage School of Philosophy. His books include Ethics and Epistemology

in Sextus Empiricus(1999),The Stoic Life(2005) andSimplicius on Epicte-

tus, Volumes 1 and 2 (2002), translated with Charles Brittain.

charles brittain is Professor of Classics and Philosophy at Cornell

University. His books include Philo of Larissa: The Last of the Academic

Sceptics(2001) andCicero: On Academic Scepticism(2006).

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PLATO AND THE

DIVIDED SELF

R A CH EL BA R N EYUniversity of Toronto

TAD BRENNANCornell University

CH A R LES BR I T T A I NCornell University

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cambridge university press

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CCambridge University Press 2012

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,

no reproduction of any part may take place without the written

permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2012

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

Plato and the divided self / [edited by] Rachel Barney, Tad Brennan, Charles Brittain.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-0-521-89966-6 (hardback)

1. Plato. 2. Soul. I. Barney, Rachel, 1966 II. Brennan, Tad, 1962 III. Brittain, Charles.

B398.S7P53 2012

128.1092 dc23 2011043835

ISBN978-0-521-89966-6 Hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or

accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to

in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on suchwebsites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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CONTENTS

List of contributors pageviiAcknowledgements xi

Introduction 1

rachel barney, tad brennan, charles brittain

part i Transitions to tripartition 7

1 From thePhaedoto theRepublic: Platos tripartite souland the possibility of non-philosophical virtue 9

iakovos vasiliou

2 Enkrateiaand the partition of the soul in theGorgias 33

louis-andre dorion

3 The unity of the soul in PlatosRepublic 53

eric brown

part ii Moral psychology in theRepublic 75

4 Speaking with the same voice as reason: Personificationin Platos psychology 77

rachana kamtekar

5 The nature of the spirited part of the soul and its object 102

tad brennan

6 Curbing ones appetites in PlatosRepublic 128

james wilberding

7 How to see an unencrusted soul 150

raphael woolf

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vi contents

8 Psychic contingency in theRepublic 174

jennifer whiting

part iii After theRepublic 209

9 Erosbefore and after tripartition 211

frisbee sheffield

10 The cognition of appetite in PlatosTimaeus 238

hendrik lorenz

11 Pictures and passions in theTimaeusandPhilebus 259

jessica moss

12 Soul and state in PlatosLaws 281luc brisson

part iv Parts of the soul in the Platonic tradition 309

13 Plutarch on the division of the soul 311

jan opsomer

14 Galen and the tripartite soul 331

mark schiefsky

15 Plotinus and Plato on soul and action 350

eyolfur kjalar emilsson

Bibliography 368Index locorum 383General index 393

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CONTRIBUTORS

rachel barney holds the Canada Research Chair in Classical Philosophyat the University of Toronto. She is the author ofNames and Nature inPlatos Cratylus(2001).

tad brennanis Professor of Philosophy and Classics at Cornell Univer-sitys Sage School of Philosophy. He is the author ofThe Stoic Life(2005),and Ethics and Epistemology in Sextus Empiricus (1999), and collabo-rated with Charles Brittain on a two-volume translation of SimpliciusCommentary on Epictetus Encheiridion(2002).

luc brissonis Director of Research at the National Center for ScientificResearch (CNRS, Paris), and his publications include Plato the Myth

Maker(1999).

charles brittain is Professor of Classics and Philosophy at CornellUniversity. His books include Philo of Larissa: the Last of the AcademicSceptics(2001) andCicero: On Academic Scepticism(2006).

eric brownis Associate Professor of Philosophy at Washington Univer-sity in St. Louis, and has authored articles on a range of topics in ancientGreek and Roman philosophy.

louis-andre dorion is Professor of Philosophy at the Universityof Montreal. He is the author of numerous books including Socrate(2004) and of several translations of Plato, Aristotle, and Xenophon intoFrench.

eyolfur kjalar emilsson is Professor of Philosophy at the University ofOslo. He is the author ofPlotinus on Sense Perception(1988) andPlotinus

on Intellect(1997).

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viii list of contributors

rachana kamtekaris Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Univer-sity of Arizona, and author of a number of papers on Plato and ancientmoral psychology.

hendrik lorenzis Associate Professor of Philosophy at Princeton Uni-versity, and author ofThe Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato andAristotle(2006).

jessica moss is a tutorial fellow and lecturer in philosophy at BalliolCollege, Oxford. She has written various papers on moral psychology inPlato and Aristotle.

jan opsomer is Professor of Ancient Philosophy at the University of

Leuven, Belgium. He is the author of In Search of the Truth: AcademicTendencies in Middle Platonism (1998); he has also translated (togetherwith Carlos Steel)Proclus: On the Existence of Evils(2002).

mark schiefsky is Professor of the Classics at Harvard University.His publications include a commentary on the Hippocratic treatise OnAncient Medicine(2005).

frisbee sheffieldis Director of Studies in Philosophy at Christs Col-lege, Cambridge. She is the author of Platos Symposium: The Ethicsof Desire (2006) and the co-editor of a collection of articles, PlatosSymposium: New Issues in Interpretation and Reception(2006), and therecent edition ofPlato: Symposiumfor Cambridge Texts in the History ofPhilosophy (2008).

iakovos vasiliou is Professor of Philosophy at The Graduate Centerand Brooklyn College, City University of New York. He is the author of

Aiming at Virtue in Plato(2008).

jennifer whiting is Chancellor Jackman Professor of Philosophy atthe University of Toronto. She is the editor (with Stephen Engstrom) ofAristotle, Kant and the Stoics: Rethinking Happiness and Duty(1998).

james wilberding is Professor of Ancient and Medieval Philosophyat the Ruhr Universitat in Bochum, Germany. His publications include

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list of contributors ix

Plotinus Cosmology(2006), and two volumes in theAncient Commenta-tors on Aristotleseries.

raphael woolfis Reader in Philosophy at Kings College London. He

translated Ciceros De Finibus(2001) for the series Cambridge Texts inthe History of Philosophy.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We are indebted to a number of people and institutions for their help withthis volume. They include Hilary Gaskin, Anna Lowe, and the others atCambridge University Press; Sarah McCallum at the University of Torontoand Dianne Ferriss at Cornell University for copy-editing labours;Oxford

Studies in Ancient Philosophyfor permission to reprint the abridged ver-sion of Rachana Kamtekars chapter (first published inOSAP31 (2006):167202); T.P.S. Angier for the translation of Louis-Andre Dorions chap-ter and Michael Chase for the translation of Luc Brissons. The Depart-ment of Classics and the Society for Humanities provided institutionalsupport at Cornell, as did the Departments of Philosophy and Classics, theCollaborative Programme in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy (AMP),and the Canada Research Chair cluster in Ancient Philosophy at Toronto.

Above all, we would like to thank our authors for their patience andsupport during the prolonged gestation of this project.

This volume is dedicated to the memory of Michael Frede, David J.Furley, and Ian Mueller, whose work, example, and teaching have had anenormous influence on our practice of ancient philosophy.

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