September 30
Wednesday, September 30, 2026Breakout
The Tripartite Soul
Goals
Goals
- Share and discuss the drawings you did for your “Draw Your Inner Beast” exercise
- Explore the proposal, found in Plato’s Republic, that the soul/psyche has multiple sources of motivation that compete for control of action
- Compare this approach to analyzing human motivation and what’s good for us with the Socratic approach in the Gorgias
- Consider the applications of this view in light of the modern theory presented in “Our Animal Bodies”
Before Class
- Selection from Book IX of Plato’s Republic, describing the metaphor of the beast
- Article: “Our Animal Bodies” by Steven Horst in Midwest Studies in Philosophy (1998), which begins with Plato’s metaphor and expands on it with some applications in moral psychology
- Complete the “Draw Your Inner Beast” exercise
- N/A
After Class
Further Resources
Further Resources
- Alasdair MacIntyre, “The Republic,” chapter from A Short History of Ethics