The Spirited Part of the Soul in Plato’s Timaeus

Abstract

in the tripartite psychology of the Republic, Plato characterizes the “spirited” part of the soul as the “ally of reason”: like the auxiliaries of the just city, whose distinctive job is to support the policies and judgments passed down by the rulers, spirit’s distinctive “job” in the soul is to support and defend the practical decisions and commands of the reasoning part. This is to include not only defense against external enemies who might interfere with those commands, but also, and most importantly, defense against unruly appetites within the individual’s own soul. 1 Spirit, according to this picture, is by nature reason’s faithful auxiliary in the soul, while appetite is always a potential enemy to be watched over and guarded against. i n the Timaeus, the spirited part of the soul—or “the part which shares in courage and spirited anger,” as Timaeus refers to it—is once again depicted as having a supportive relationship with the reasoning part. Timaeus describes it as being “naturally superior” to the appetitive part, and he explains that the gods placed it in the chest, near the head (the bodily location of the reasoning part), so that it would be able to “hear” the reports and commands issued by the reasoning part, and so that it might help reason restrain the appetitive part if the latter should become unruly (69e–70b). There are two noteworthy features of Timaeus’s characterization. First, it is clear that some sort of intra-psychic “communication” takes place between the reasoning and spirited parts of the soul. i n order to respond to the reports and commands of reason, spirit must first in some sense understand them (‘understand’ here carrying no specific theoretical weight yet). Through what psychological mechanism does this communication occur, however? While recent commentators have provided some illuminating discussions of intra-psychic communication in the Timaeus, those discussions have focused overwhelmingly on the question how reason communicates with appetite (a topic that the dialogue itself treats in somewhat