Aristotle, Almost Entirely

Abstract

It is a feature of both Platos and Aristotle s psychological theories that the soul has three different types of desire, namely rational, spirited, and appetitive ones. In Platos case, as is well known, this is accompanied by the view that the soul has different parts which are the subject of these different desires. In the first two parts of his book, The Brute Within,1 Hendrik Lorenz confronts the question of what kind of cognition Plato attributes to the lower parts of the soul, in particular the appetitive part ('the brute within ). If it can have or generate desires, can it also reason? Does it recognise the chocolate cake as pleasant, or is that what reason does? Can it remember that chocolate cake tastes good, and is that why I want the cake when I see it? Lorenz argues forcefully that the soul, according to Plato, really does have parts he calls this 'the simple picture' (41-52) of Platos account and that Plato doesn't just distinguish different types of desire (I'm grateful to Whitney Schwab for reminding me of the importance of this). He also refutes (and I mean to use the success-verb) the claim that in the Republic Plato endows the appetitive part of the soul with the ability for means-end reasoning. That claim has been made by several distinguished philosophers (Annas, Burnyeat, Bobonich, Cooper, Price). The key point in the debate is how to account for the following two facts: Plato says that the canonical objects of the appetitive part are food, drink, and sex, but also says that the