The Social and Political Nature of Spirit

Abstract

Chapter 3 explores two aspects of spirit’s social and political nature—its role in the process of absorbing social influences that shape a person’s values, and its responsibility for a person’s emotional reactions to those they consider either part of, or outside of, their social groups or communities—as well as two related problems that arise in corrupt political circumstances. According to Plato’s critique of contemporary Greek society, popular education and politics fail because they reflect a value system informed primarily by human appetite and pleonexia that prioritizes bodily, external, and material goods. When citizens absorb these values through thumos, their resulting moral corruption leads to civic discord as their aggressive spirited desires become directed against one another in their competition for limited appetitive goods. This establishes two challenges for Plato that involve attention to human spirit: making people virtuous through social education and making cities unified and stable.