Abstract:

In this dissertation, I am concerned with an influential view of human psychology advanced by the character Socrates in Plato's Republic . According to this view, the embodied human soul, conceived as the source of human agency, consists of three parts, conventionally translated as "reason," "spirit," and "appetite." Although every soul has all three parts, the souls of different people can be "ruled" in an enduring way by different parts, a condition that in some way determines the kind of person they are. The idea that different people are ruled in an enduring way by different parts of their souls is enormously important to the psychological theory of the Republic as a whole and to the moral and political views it underpins. However, this idea has not been well understood in the literature. In this dissertation, I offer an account of what the notion of psychic rule--the rule over the whole soul by one of its parts--amounts to, as it is employed in the Republic . I also examine the question of how, according to the picture presented in this dialogue, each person first comes to be ruled by a given soul part. I show how my conclusions accord with, and in many cases help to explain, a wide range of texts in the Republic (and occasionally in other dialogues), especially a large number of frequently neglected passages in Republic Books 8 and 9. Finally, I conclude by highlighting some areas in which my account of the notion of psychic rule in the Republic may have further implications for our understanding of Plato's broader moral and political ideas.