Summary Of Plato's 'Phaedrus'

PLATO (427-347 BC)
The Idealist
World of the Tri-Partite Soul
In the "Phaedrus", Plato presents three parts of the soul, which he describe as follows:
• The Appetitive – the black horse – ignoble and rebellious
• The Spirited – the white horse – noble and obedient
• The Rational – the charioteer
1. The appetites, which includes all our myriad desires for various pleasures, comforts, physical satisfactions, and bodily ease. There are so many of these appetites that Plato does not bother to enumerate them, but he does note that they can often be in conflict even with each other. This element of the soul is represented by the ugly black horse on the left.
2. The spirited, or hot-blooded, part, i.e., the part that gets angry when it perceives (for

Three Levels of Soul: Man as a Rational Animal
Vegetative – corresponds to nutrition and growth, as well as reproduction. – plants
Sensitive – corresponds to perception and the ability to have senses. – animals
Rational – corresponds to the intellect and the ability to think. – human beings “That is why it is in a body, and a body of a definite kind. It was a mistake, therefore, to do as former thinkers did, merely to fit it into a body without adding a definite specification of the kind or character of that body. Reflection confirms the observed fact; the actuality of any given thing can only be realized in what is already potentially that thing, i.e. in a matter of its own appropriate to it. From all this it follows that soul is an actuality or formulable essence of something that possesses a potentiality of being besouled.” – De Anima Book II: 2
The Good Life : Man as a Political Animal (from Nicomachean Ethics Book I)
The rational part, on the other hand, is subdivided too into two parts:
1. The superior part which possesses reason with authority and in itself and;
2. The desiring part which it shares with the irrational part as we