ABSTRACT
First I shall consider the spirited part of the soul and examine the part played by it in the Republic. This will entail a fairly detailed treatment. It is not at all obvious what Plato is trying to isolate with the term ‘thymos’, and the problem has not been helped by a tendency to concentrate on a few prominent passages interesting largely for other reasons. The result is to suggest that he is trying to distinguish emotions from, say, intellect and desire, or to distinguish the will from intellect and affective parts of the personality. In neither case can he be considered very successful for reasons that will become apparent. Only one thing seems clear, and that is that either Plato is very confused or else he is using the word ‘thymos’ technically to isolate a phenomenon for which there is no term readily available, but a salient characteristic of which this word catches. This last is, I think, the correct alternative, and the concept is both of some interest in itself and important in the development of Plato’s argument. Among other things its use gives us Plato’s view on the value and argumentative status of ordinary moral ideals at their best.
