Tripartite Psychology, I

Plato’s Phaedrus provides an intricate myth where the human soul resembles a team of winged horses and their charioteer. The intrinsic nature and dynamics of those elements explain why human life is sometimes unjust, difficult, and war-torn; and one that necessarily involves struggle and effort both for the individual and the collective. This elaborate passage, which we’ll see in a moment, is one of the foundations of Platonic tripartite psychology. It depicts the human soul as a self-moving principle constituted of a charioteer or the calculating part of the mind; a good, noble horse or spirit; and a horse of an opposite nature and disposition, namely one that is mostly dark, villainous and disobedient—the bodily appetites. The procession of human psychology, where reason purportedly rules over the other two parts, is then explained by the relative education and interactive communion of these three forces.

In the myth, the Olympian gods are said to be all good, and can move effortlessly about the heavenly sphere with their chariots since they possess horses that are purely “of good stock”. As the gods contemplate the forms and the order of the universe in a state of continuous harmony and enjoyment, the gods’ horses remain of good stock since the gods know the forms (Phaedrus, 249c). Through the forms, which govern the movement of things in the universe and thus replicate into the sensible world, the gods and their horses are accordingly able to sustain their divine natures (‘Hence it is with justice that only the thought of the philosopher becomes winged; for so far as it can it is close, through memory, to those things his closeness to which gives a god his divinity’, 247c).

For humans, the mixture of a noble and unruly horse presents the opportunity for conflict, which often renders our physically embodied lives, since it’s the unruly part of the soul that is joined to and provides the original impetus for the appetites of the body, as one filled with a divided, raging and warring internal conflict. Of the speech which Socrates makes in the dialogue (246a), where the myth is suggestively developed by means of a “divine gift”, Plato writes:

Let it then resemble the combined power of a winged team of horses and their charioteer. Now in the case of gods, horses and charioteers are all both good and of good stock; whereas in the case of the rest there is a mixture. In the first place our driver has charge of a pair; secondly one of them he finds noble and good, and of similar stock, while the other is of the opposite stock, and opposite in its nature; so that the driving in our case is necessarily difficult and troublesome.

The identification of the human soul as a “mixture” serves as a fundamental component for Plato’s psychological theory. Thus Plato asks us to think of the resemblance as a “combined power”, since the dynamics of how these original powers or forces combine are the sources of conflict. Whether it’s deliberate, or not, the image omits specific comment if human charioteers, like the gods, are all good. The charioteer and each of the horses can nevertheless be conceived as self-movers, with their own capacities to act with self-determination or agency. This power for self-movement in each of the parts, combined with each of the intrinsic natures, permits the possibility of internal conflict in the lives of human beings, along with the capacity for conflict with others. The gods on the other hand, being all good and with horses that are all good, are said to exist in a state of harmony:

He spoke, and under the chariot harnessed his bronze-shod horses, flying-footed, with long manes streaming of gold; and he put on clothing of gold about his own body, and took up the golden lash, carefully compacted, and climbed up into his chariot, and whipped them into a run, and they winged their way unreluctant through the space between the earth and the starry heaven.”

This extract from Homer’s “Iliad” depicts Zeus harnessing his horses to his chariot, and by means of them, moving through the heavens. The word “unreluctant” illuminates the idea that the gods’ horses are all obedient. He therefore, unlike mortals whose life journeys are not as straightforward, is able to advance through the immortal realm with his horses in perfect agreement to his will. Plausibly, the purpose of the gods in Plato’s chariot philosophical device, borrowed from Homer, is to serve as a paradigm for human beings. The contrast between the gods’ horses and those of humans juxtaposes the two scenarios, one in which there is perfect consensus, and one rife with difficulty. By means of the contrast, the psychological life of human beings thus has its conflicting tripartite structure revealed. There is, moreover, an allusion that the chariot device, beyond revealing the tripartite structure of the soul, is supposed to show the progression of the soul’s journey to comprehending the forms, or the true nature of things, by means of the charioteer: “This region is occupied by being which really is, which is without colour or shape, intangible, observable by the steersman of the soul alone, by intellect, and to which the class of true knowledge relates”.

There is little doubt, also, that the Platonic and Homeric imagery of the chariot are not one of a kind, as restricted to ancient Greek culture, but have earlier complements. In the Vedic Upanishads, which were written around 800 BCE, there’s a similar image where the mind-body relation is depicted by means of a charioteer and a team of horses. However, the Vedic myth does not specify the precise referents of ‘senses’ (specifically whether the bodily appetites are covered by the term), but is left open. By distinction, Plato precisely identifies the analogue referent of the unruly part as belonging to the nature of the human body (for instance, in Timaeus 70d). While it’s unknown to what extent the early eastern cultures influenced Greek literature and philosophy, what the Platonic and Vedic images do have in common is that they show a clear development of thought; there is a transition from mythology to the philosophy of psychology:

Know that the Atman is the rider in the chariot,
 and the body is the chariot,
 Know that the Buddhi (intelligence, ability to reason) is the charioteer,
 and Manas (mind) is the reins.
The senses are called the horses,
 the objects of the senses are their paths,
 Formed out of the union of the Atman, the senses and the mind,
 him they call the “enjoyer”.

Framed mythologically through the rational charioteer steering the horses by the “reins” of the mind, the image communicates that the nature of the soul itself is unknown, hence the requirement for the myth in the first place. But in the case of the Platonic image, it functions to make clear that, as the “driving in our case is necessarily difficult and troublesome”, human psychology must be of a multitudinous nature. To some extent, this too is captured by the passage in the Upanishads. While the nature of the soul remains opaque in both myths, the transition from a mythological understanding to philosophy makes the three parts of the soul at least relationally intelligible, in accord with psychologically experienced facts, and as being grounded on the philosophical doctrine of original forces. Namely the internal forces which we have named reason, spirit, and appetite.

A neglected aspect of Plato’s psychology, which I have yet to see investigated in the way that I propose, relates to Plato’s insight in the Republic that “spiritedness naturally allies itself with reason”. So in the second and subsequent essays that will follow, I will aim to expand Plato’s idea. Once we get clear on the manifestations of the appetitive soul, in precisely what ways spiritedness manifests in human psychology, the sort of alliance it forms with our rational capacity and the various aspects of the rational capacity, new ideas will hopefully emerge that build on the nuances of each part, particularly that of the spirited soul. To my knowledge, very little has been said in the philosophical literature about the spirited soul, its nature and its precise manifestations, and why it allies itself with reason.