Plato's Soul (Advice for living well) 

This video is excellent thank you so much! Helped me to get an A- on my Search for Meaning philosophy module final exam!

Quality work here. This video is very helpful for my class and i do really appreciate the work. It’s just that the speaker’s voice is so draining. I had to take a break and come back to it cause my mind kept wondering off.

Excellently explained. Thank you!

Hi Andrew, I'll have to think about the Thomist account a bit. I need to look at my old stump book on Aquinas tomorrow. :) Thanks for sharing the story of creation as it relates to the three. I've never heard that before.

I love you. You are a good man.

Thanks. :) The question of will brings up deep issues. Since Hume's "reason is a slave to the passions", we believe in the belief/desire model of human motivation (Reason has no motivational power, only appetite/spirit). But in book IX of Republic, Plato disagrees "there are three parts and three types of pleasure." So, he thinks reason motivates and can directly oppose appetite (not just the object of appetite). So, will is the will of reason, reason is the charioteer/ruling will

If Reason is absent, then my will is the battle of appetite and spirit, whichever is more powerful from moment to moment.

Amazing!

Awesome video..... with well needed annotations. Plato's #TheoryOfJustice

Great video, thank you! I'm wondering if you can answer a question for me: Are there any philosophers who discuss the question of WHY life and the universe is the way it is? For example, why reason, emotion, and desire exist and why WE exist? Or are these questions totally in the realm of spirituality and religion?

awesome

Great videol

What would be a counter example in reality that would suggest that there's a possibility that the soul does not work in this way? Just curious to see if anyone has experienced or can imagine an example that argues against this concept... Thanks in advance.

Its about alleviating suffering, which is always about living in harmony with nature, in accor/dance vs discor/dance. Its a dance.your true self and nature meeting and complementing each other. No use fighting it, why do we feel a desire to shut out portion of us that is there for our best interest, love thyself and find your true potential. Internal turmoil is reflected outwards. For our inner selves is intimately tied with our relationship with the outside world. They need each other to even b

Desire-Want for self. Honor/Spirit-Want to do for (the sake of) others. Reason doesn't really have anything to do with it, Reason is not concerned with our base desires. To not overindulge isn't reason, the same voice that says "eat more to assure you live tomorrow" is the same that says "better save some for tomorrow." Will power is not reason the same as overeating is not reason, they are both a tool to live, not to think. Justice is a tool, or measurement, like time. Only instead of basing it off of atomic clocks we base it off of consensus. What we call good, or God is the accumulation of energy, the upswing if you will. What we call bad is is energy in it's lower state. Birth/Death Accumulation/Loss Doing for someone/Taking from someone Light/Dark Manic/Depressed Spring/Winter Day/Night Creation/Destruction Reason is purely being able to infer something you have never seen or heard from two things you have, it's magic.

I'd have to disagree with the first point you made about Non contradiction, I don't think reason and appetite contradict each other, I think reason simply is stronger than appetite as in reason can overrule appetite but they can both work together. If it was a case of contradiction then it would be reason and irrational. To call it a contradiction is not correct as you can have both functioning at the same time. I desire food because I am hungry, I rationally decide to eat because otherwise I would be weak and tired. Both Reason and Appetite (desire) work in this sense without a contradiction.

Do you think if Plato would live today, he'd get a degree in Mathematics? Do you think modern Philosophers should get one? I know that Logic is taught for Philosophy students but not Math, so does this imply that modern Philosophy education doesn't value Math as highly as Logic? Thanks.

Mark passio touches on this alot. How not to live in conflict with onself. Cerebellum is after all our greatest gift and possibility most sophisticated evolutionary in the universe'. To ignore it is to ignore that most pristine gift mother nature has furnished us with. Its like ur arm, why would you not use your arm to assist you when it can help you, for your well being. Cerrebellum only there looking out for u. Emotions are too they are useful as a backup autopilot whilst you accrue knowledge

One of your examples is incorrect. While it may be impossible to be in 2 different places at the same time it is not because of the law of noncontradiction. The law of noncontradiction only makes it impossible to be in a place and not be in a place at the same time and in the same manner.

Wonderful presentation. Thank you. But there's one point I do not understand. Why do you identify Spirit with emotion? You say Spirit is about honor, but honor connotes restraint, whereas emotion in nature is unrestrained. I admit, I myself haven't completed reading The Republic, so I'm not in a position to judge. But based on this video I'd conclude Spirit doesn't encompass emotion. You compare Plato's conception to the Freudian trinity, astutely correlating the id with desire, the ego with reason, and the superego with spirit. But what is the Freudian conception of the superego? Here is one synopsis I took from the Web: "All the super-ego cares about is what everyone else around you thinks and is hyper aware of values and morals of society. You can think of your super-ego as a critical parent pointing a finger at you and saying “no no no”." This does not seem to describe emotion. The word emotion, used loosely, could apply to all qualia. But then all parts of the soul are emotion. If we take the more definite definition, to wit, 'a conscious mental reaction (as anger or fear) subjectively experienced as strong feeling usually directed toward a specific object and typically accompanied by physiological and behavioral changes in the body', then it is not to easy to see any connection between emotion and Spirit. In my mind, emotion in the definite sense more aptly fits the id, or in Plato, desire. Hobbes provides a terrific and convincing theory of emotion being agitated states of desire. Even if we deny the details of his account, intuitively, emotions seem to have more in common with desire than with honor or restraint. Moreover, Spirit must be understood as a wholly negative force, thus essentially and significantly conflicting in nature with desire, as its antithesis. Reason is thus necessary to settle the conflict. But emotion is a positive force, like desire, and it does not conflict with desire in any significant way (every desire comes into conflict with other desires, so the mere fact that on occasion emotion is in conflict with desire is not enough to distinguish emotions from other desires). If we understand spirit in this way (identifying it as the negative force, or the superego), the analogy between Plato's large scale depiction of justice and the small scale depiction unite. Desire=merchants (positive force) Spirit=soldiers/police (negative force) Reason=guardians/legislators (moderation) I assume you intended to illustrate this through your graphs. But your identification of emotion with spirit perverts this simplicity, after all soldiers/police aren't exactly known for their emotions.

Maybe don't record in a wind tunnel.