The Spirited Part of the Soul in the Timaeus

Abstract

Chapter 8 examines Plato’s account of intrapsychic “communication” in the Timaeus and defends an imagistic account according to which the various activities of the spirited part of the soul—the motivations it generates, its training through musical and gymnastic education, its responsiveness to rational judgment, and its resistance to offensive appetites—can all be explained at the cognitive level by appealing only to the resources of sense-perception, memory, and imagination. On this view, it is not necessary to attribute to spirit the capacity either to understand the “logistic” (i.e. linguistic or propositional) content of rational judgments themselves, or to issue judgments with such content of its own. This chapter also examines how Plato adapts the Homeric and poetic association of thumos with the heart and circulatory system (as well as with the lungs and respiratory system) to provide a biological foundation for the dialogue’s theory of spirited cognition.