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978-0-521-89966-6 - Plato and the Divided Self

Rachel Barney, Tad Brennan and Charles Brittain
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PLATO AND THE DIVIDED SELF

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

like the Republic, Phaedrus, and Timaeus: 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 appetitive
part 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
the Republic, Phaedrus, and Timaeus, 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 of Names and Nature in
Platos Cratylus (2001).
tad brennan is Professor of Philosophy and Classics at Cornell Universitys Sage School of Philosophy. His books include Ethics and Epistemology
in Sextus Empiricus (1999), The Stoic Life (2005) and Simplicius on Epictetus, 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) and Cicero: On Academic Scepticism (2006).

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978-0-521-89966-6 - Plato and the Divided Self
Rachel Barney, Tad Brennan and Charles Brittain
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Cambridge University Press

978-0-521-89966-6 - Plato and the Divided Self
Rachel Barney, Tad Brennan and Charles Brittain
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PLATO AND THE

DIVIDED SELF
RACHEL BARNEY
University of Toronto

TAD BRENNAN
Cornell University

CHARLES BR ITTAIN
Cornell University

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978-0-521-89966-6 - Plato and the Divided Self
Rachel Barney, Tad Brennan and Charles Brittain
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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
ISBN 978-0-521-89966-6 Hardback

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978-0-521-89966-6 - Plato and the Divided Self
Rachel Barney, Tad Brennan and Charles Brittain
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CONTENTS

List of contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction

page vii
xi

rachel barney, tad brennan, charles brittain

part i Transitions to tripartition

1

From the Phaedo to the Republic: Platos tripartite soul

and the possibility of non-philosophical virtue
9
iakovos vasiliou

Enkrateia and the partition of the soul in the Gorgias

33

louis-andre dorion

The unity of the soul in Platos Republic

53

eric brown

part ii Moral psychology in the Republic

4

75

Speaking with the same voice as reason: Personification

in Platos psychology
77
rachana kamtekar

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

102

tad brennan

Curbing ones appetites in Platos Republic

128

james wilberding

How to see an unencrusted soul

150

raphael woolf

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978-0-521-89966-6 - Plato and the Divided Self
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vi

contents

Psychic contingency in the Republic

174

jennifer whiting

part iii After the Republic

9

209

Eros before and after tripartition

211

frisbee sheffield

10

The cognition of appetite in Platos Timaeus

238

hendrik lorenz

11

Pictures and passions in the Timaeus and Philebus

259

jessica moss

12

Soul and state in Platos Laws

281

luc brisson

part iv Parts of the soul in the Platonic tradition

13

Plutarch on the division of the soul

309

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
Index locorum
General index

368
383
393

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978-0-521-89966-6 - Plato and the Divided Self
Rachel Barney, Tad Brennan and Charles Brittain
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CONTRIBUTORS

rachel barney holds the Canada Research Chair in Classical Philosophy

at the University of Toronto. She is the author of Names and Nature in
Platos Cratylus (2001).
tad brennan is Professor of Philosophy and Classics at Cornell Universitys Sage School of Philosophy. He is the author of The Stoic Life (2005),
and Ethics and Epistemology in Sextus Empiricus (1999), and collaborated with Charles Brittain on a two-volume translation of Simplicius
Commentary on Epictetus Encheiridion (2002).
luc brisson is Director of Research at the National Center for Scientific
Research (CNRS, Paris), and his publications include Plato the Myth
Maker (1999).
charles brittain is Professor of Classics and Philosophy at Cornell
University. His books include Philo of Larissa: the Last of the Academic
Sceptics (2001) and Cicero: On Academic Scepticism (2006).
eric brown is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis, and has authored articles on a range of topics in ancient
Greek and Roman philosophy.
louis-andre dorion is Professor of Philosophy at the University
of Montreal. He is the author of numerous books including Socrate
(2004) and of several translations of Plato, Aristotle, and Xenophon into
French.

eyolfur
kjalar emilsson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Oslo. He is the author of Plotinus on Sense Perception (1988) and Plotinus
on Intellect (1997).
vii

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viii

list of contributors

rachana kamtekar is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona, and author of a number of papers on Plato and ancient
moral psychology.
hendrik lorenz is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University, and author of The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and
Aristotle (2006).
jessica moss is a tutorial fellow and lecturer in philosophy at Balliol
College, Oxford. She has written various papers on moral psychology in
Plato 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: Academic
Tendencies in Middle Platonism (1998); he has also translated (together
with 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 On
Ancient Medicine (2005).
frisbee sheffield is Director of Studies in Philosophy at Christs College, Cambridge. She is the author of Platos Symposium: The Ethics
of Desire (2006) and the co-editor of a collection of articles, Platos
Symposium: New Issues in Interpretation and Reception (2006), and the
recent edition of Plato: Symposium for Cambridge Texts in the History of
Philosophy (2008).
iakovos vasiliou is Professor of Philosophy at The Graduate Center
and 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 at
the University of Toronto. She is the editor (with Stephen Engstrom) of
Aristotle, Kant and the Stoics: Rethinking Happiness and Duty (1998).
james wilberding is Professor of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy
at the Ruhr Universitat in Bochum, Germany. His publications include

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978-0-521-89966-6 - Plato and the Divided Self
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list of contributors

ix

Plotinus Cosmology (2006), and two volumes in the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series.
raphael woolf is Reader in Philosophy at Kings College London. He
translated Ciceros De Finibus (2001) for the series Cambridge Texts in
the History of Philosophy.

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Rachel Barney, Tad Brennan and Charles Brittain
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We are indebted to a number of people and institutions for their help with
this volume. They include Hilary Gaskin, Anna Lowe, and the others at
Cambridge University Press; Sarah McCallum at the University of Toronto
and Dianne Ferriss at Cornell University for copy-editing labours; Oxford
Studies in Ancient Philosophy for permission to reprint the abridged version of Rachana Kamtekars chapter (first published in OSAP 31 (2006):
167202); T.P.S. Angier for the translation of Louis-Andre Dorions chapter and Michael Chase for the translation of Luc Brissons. The Department of Classics and the Society for Humanities provided institutional
support at Cornell, as did the Departments of Philosophy and Classics, the
Collaborative 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 and
support 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 an
enormous influence on our practice of ancient philosophy.

xi

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978-0-521-89966-6 - Plato and the Divided Self
Rachel Barney, Tad Brennan and Charles Brittain
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