Plato's Threefold City and Soul -- Introduction

Rhizomata, 2021

One puzzling feature of Plato’s Republic is the First City or ‘city of pigs’. Socrates praises the First City as a “true”, “healthy” city, yet Plato abandons it with little explanation. I argue that the problem is not a political failing, as most previous readings have proposed: the First City is a viable political arrangement, where one can live a deeply Socratic lifestyle. But the First City has a psychological corollary, that the soul is simple rather than tripartite. Plato sees this ‘First Soul’ as an inaccurate model of moral psychology, and so rejects it, along with its political analogue.

The Review of Politics, 2019

s new book makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of the Republic by paying close attention to early stages of the argument for the city-soul analogy in books II-IV. Weinstein argues persuasively that these books are fundamentally political (correcting the tendency see the real political theory of the Republic as starting in book V), and that the elements of tripartite psychology are systematically developed from the founding of the city (rather than depending solely on arguments in book IV). His reconstruction of the argument is judicious and careful, and focuses on the text of the Republic.

International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities, 2017

In the Republic, the city-soul analogy made by Plato paves the way for the entire dialogue. The main interlocutors use the analogy to show the nature of justice and aim to prove that just people live better and are happier than unjust people, by establishing a city to which justice, as defined by them, is applied. Scholars have recently been debating the validity of this analogy. Some critics assert that there are several significant structural inconsistencies and logical misconceptions, thus making the analogy fallacious; at the same time, there are proponents who write extensively in favor of this analogy and defend it against the objections raised. In this paper, I will reexamine passages in the Republic where the analogy first occurs, evaluate the critique made by Bernard Williams, and present arguments defending Plato' strategy. Ultimately, I will show that Plato' city-soul analogy is not as far-fetched as Williams argues and this analogy-as a crucial strategy of Plato'sis efficient and powerful enough in showing the similarities between the city and the soul, for the interlocutors to justifiably and reasonably reach the conclusion that the justice of the individual is the same as that of the city. 7 Plato 370a-b, 374a-c, 394e, 423c-d, 433a, 443b, 453b. 8 Plato 414c-417b. 9 Plato 354a. 10 Plato 428b-429a. 11 Plato 429a-430c. 12 Plato 430e-432b. 13 Plato 434d-435a.

Logical Analysis and History of Philosophy, 2017

Plato's tripartite soul plays a central role in his account of justice in the Republic. It thus comes as a surprise to find him apparently abandoning this model at the end of the work, when he suggests that the soul, as immortal, must be simple. I propose a way of reconciling these claims, appealing to neglected features of the city-soul analogy and the argument for the soul's division. The original true soul, I argue , is partitioned, but in a finer manner than how we encounter it in our everyday lives.

1999

In Part I of this paper, I argue that the arguments Plato offers for the tripartition of the soul are founded upon an equivocation, and that each of the valid options by which Plato might remove the equivocation will not produce a tripartite soul. In Part II, I argue that Plato is not wholly committed to an analogy of soul and state that would require either a tripartite state or a tripartite soul for the analogy to hold. It follows that the heart of the analogy is not to be found in the comparison of the Kallipolis and its three parts to the soul conceived as tripartite, but rather must be supposed to reside in some other connection between the ways in which justice characterizes states and souls, and I will suggest what this other connection consists in.

Études Platoniciennes, 2007