How does plato describe the soul

It is accountable for the effortless cravings required to stay alive like hunger, thirst, and for pointless cravings like desire to over feed. The desires for essential things should be limited by other sections of the soul, while illegitimate desires ought to be limited entirely by other elements of soul. The rational soul on the other hand is the thinking element in every human being, which decided what is factual and merely obvious, judges what is factual and what is untrue, and intelligently makes sensible decisions.

Finally, the spirited soul produces the desires that love victory and honor. In the just soul, the spirit acts as an implementer of the rational soul, making sure that the rules of reason are adhered to. Emotions like indignation and anger are the impact of the disappointment of the spirit. Someone might respond to the claim that the soul comprises of three parts.

Plato argued that a community has three parts which are guardians, producers, and soldiers and each part performs a particular function. For a community to be just, every element has to perform the role to the best capacity, which is a good worth. The same characters and elements will materialize in the state ; have to exist in every person. The understanding is that a community is just a collection of people who have formed a sense of laws on living collectively; thereby, every individual would introduce some elements, values and functions into the community.

Since every person contributes to the community, those aspects that are present in the community, ought to have come from the person, thereby, souls have three different elements. Moreover, Plato argued that there has to be at least two parts in the soul; one that stops an individual from undertaking action and another, which brings about the need for the action.

The two elements cannot act in two differing ways, there has to be more than one force in the soul. Someone might respond to the claim saying that an action cannot be moving and resting at the same time except another force has been involved. Additionally, there is an element of logic which says that a thing cannot be itself, and also be its reverse. There is a possibility that Plato has confused the difference between wanting to do something and not wanting to do it, which are reverses, with the difference between wanting to do something and wanting not to do it which is not apparently reverse at all.

It is a natural state of human life that an individual desires both to undertake something, and not undertake it. For example, someone who is very hungry and so wants to consume the only food that is accessible, which is a cabbage; however, she hates cabbage. This means that this person wants to eat cabbage and does not want it at the same time.

The charioteer, by being the one who holds the reins, has the duty, the right, and the function to guide and control the horses. In the same way, the rational part of the soul has the right to rule the spirited and the appetitive parts. The charioteer cannot get anywhere without the two horses, and for this reason these three are linked together and must work together to achieve their goals.

The rational part of the soul has this same sort of relation to its other parts, for the powers of appetite and spirit are indispensable to life itself. Reason works with and upon spirit and appetite, and these two also move and affect the reason. But the relation of reason to spirit and appetite is determined by what reason is: a goal-seeking and measuring faculty. The passions also engage in goal seeking, for they constantly seek the goal of pleasure. Pleasure is a legitimate goal of life, but the passions, being simply drives toward the things that give pleasure, are incapable of distinguishing between objects that provide higher or longer-lasting pleasure and those that only appear to provide these pleasures.

The peculiar function of the rational part of the soul is to seek the true goal of human life, and it does this by evaluating things according to their true nature. Although the passions or appetites might lead us into a world of fantasy and deceive us into believing that certain kinds of pleasures will bring us happiness, it is the unique role of reason to penetrate the world of fantasy, to discover the true world and thereby direct the passions to objects of love that are capable of producing true pleasure and true happiness.

This is why Plato argued, as Socrates had before him, that moral evil is the result of ignorance. Just as there can be order between the charioteer and the horses only if the charioteer is in constant control, so also with the human soul—it can achieve order and peace only if the rational part is in control of the spirit and appetites.

Throughout his account of the moral experience of human beings, Plato alternates between an optimistic view of their capacity for virtue and a rather negative opinion about whether they will fulfill their potentiality for virtue. Plato said that evil or vice is caused by ignorance, by false knowledge.

False knowledge occurs when the passions influence the reason to think that what appears to bring happiness will do so, although in reality it cannot. When the appetites overcome the reason, the unity of the soul is adversely affected. While there is still a unity, this new unity of the soul is inverted, since now the reason is subordinated to the appetites and has thereby lost its rightful place.

What makes it possible for this disordered unity to occur, or what makes false knowledge possible? In short, what is the cause of moral evil? The Cause of Evil: Ignorance or Forgetfulness. The cause of evil is discovered in the very nature of the soul and in the relation of the soul to the body. Before it enters the body, says Plato, the soul has prior existence. As we have seen, the soul has two main parts, the rational and the irrational.

This irrational part in turn is made up of two sections, the spirit and the appetites. Each of the two original parts has a different origin. The rational part of the soul is created by the Demiurge out of the same receptacle as the World Soul, whereas the irrational part is created by the celestial gods, who also form the body. Thus, even before it enters the body, the soul is composed of two different kinds of ingredients. If one asks why it is that the soul descends into a body, Plato says that it is simply the tendency of the irrational part, the part of the soul that is not perfect, to be unruly and to pull the soul toward the earth.

For Plato says that "when perfect and fully winged she the soul soars upward … whereas the imperfect soul, losing her wings and drooping in her flight at last settles on the solid ground - there, finding a home, she receives an earthly frame … and this composition of soul and body is called a living and mortal creation. It is in "heaven" that the soul alternates between seeing the Forms or the truth and "forgetting" this vision, whereupon its decline sets in.

The reason is beyond the time and space, whereas spirit and appetite are within the time and space. The reason is, according to him, immortal and divine whereas spirit and appetite are mortal and mundane. After defining the soul in terms of its constituent elements, delves into their respective virtues and thence derives the virtue of soul by integrating them together. Every particular object has its particular nature and realizing that nature is its virtue.

If a teacher satisfactorily does that he is a virtuous teacher. Virtue of a student is to study and discourse to acquires knowledge and expand in the same way as the virtue of the eyes is clear vision and of mind is clear thinking and reasoning. A soul is virtuous if its elements realize their nature, i. The virtue of reason is wisdom, that of spirit and appetite are courage and temperance respectively.

A soul is just or virtuous that has the virtuous faculties and the inferior elements are regulated and directed by the superior ones. In other words, the spirit and appetite must take directions from, and obey the dictates of, the reason.

There corresponds a particular virtue to each faculty. The virtue corresponding to the faculty of reason is knowledge or wisdom. Plato conceptualizes wisdom or knowledge in specific terms. The knowledge of mundane affairs or the knowledge of particular skill falls outside its ambit. Knowledge of varieties of soil fit for cultivation of particular crops or knowledge of medicine for particular disease is not wisdom. Plato calls them the opinions or technical knowledge.

Even the knowledge of mathematics arithmetic , geometry, astronomy or any other science disciplines, which Plato places in the realm of intelligible world, too is not knowledge, as they too use assumptions based on the objects of the visible world. He explains it through his, oft-quoted, line diagram.