The Spirited Part of the Soul in Plato’s Timaeus

in the tripartite psychology of the Republic, Plato characterizes the “spirited” part of the soul as the “ally of reason”: like the auxiliaries of the just city, whose distinctive job is to support the policies and judgments passed down by the rulers, spirit’s distinctive “job” in the soul is to support and defend the practical decisions and commands of the reasoning part. This is to include not only defense against external enemies who might interfere with those commands, but also, and most importantly, defense against unruly appetites within the individual’s own soul.¹ Spirit, according to this picture, is by nature reason’s faithful auxiliary in the soul, while appetite is always a potential enemy to be watched over and guarded against. In the Timaeus, the spirited part of the soul—or “the part which shares in courage and spirited anger,” as Timaeus refers to it—is once again depicted as having a supportive relationship with the reasoning part. Timaeus describes it as being “naturally superior” to the appetitive part, and he explains that the gods placed it in the chest, near the head (the bodily location of the reasoning part), so that it would be able to “hear” the reports and commands issued by the reasoning part, and so that it might help reason restrain the appetitive part if the latter should become unruly (69e–70b).

There are two noteworthy features of Timaeus’s characterization. First, it is clear that some sort of intra-psychic “communication” takes place between the reasoning and spirited parts of the soul. In order to respond to the reports and commands of reason, spirit must first in some sense understand them (‘understand’ here carrying no specific theoretical weight yet). Through what psychological mechanism does this communication occur, however? While recent commentators have provided some illuminating discussions of intra-psychic communication in the Timaeus, those discussions have focused overwhelmingly on the question how reason communicates with appetite (a topic that the dialogue itself treats in somewhat more detail).² Little attention has been given to communication between reason and spirit, however, or to how that communication relates to spirit’s distinctive role in the soul. The second noteworthy feature of Timaeus’s account is that, just as in the Republic, spirit’s superior relationship with reason distinguishes it from appetite: in contrast to the obedient spirited part, the appetitive part of the soul continues to be a potentially subversive and disruptive force in the soul. Given that both spirit and appetite belong to the lower, “mortal” part of the soul, how can we account for this crucial difference between them? Why is spirit reliably responsive to the commands of reason in a way that appetite is not?

In this paper I will address both of these features of Timaeus’s account, focusing primarily on the first. I will offer what has recently been called an “imagistic” account of the communication between reason and spirit,³ arguing that we can account for spirit’s responsiveness to the commands and reports of reason, as well as for the distinction between spirit and appetite in this regard, by appealing entirely to the resources of sense-perception and imagination. Christopher Bobonich has recently argued that it is “very implausible” that an imagistic account could be given of spirited cognition and motivation.⁴ I aim to make such an account plausible. I will begin in section 1 by offering a closer examination of Timaeus 69e–70b, the key passage in which Timaeus characterizes the relationship between reason and spirit. In sections 2 and 3 I will consider and reject two approaches to intra-psychic communication in the Timaeus that have recently been suggested. In particular, I will reject the views (a) that spirit has access to more advanced cognitive resources than does appetite and is therefore capable of understanding rational commands in a way that appetite is not, and (b) that reason communicates with both spirit and appetite through persuasion. In section 4 I will offer my own imagistic account, which will draw on material not just from Timaeus, but also from...