Plato believed that a person’s soul comprised three parts. The rational, the spirited and the appetitive. This is what is known as the Tripartite Soul
The rational is your intellect. The spirited is your emotions. The appetitive is what your body wants- food, sleep, sex, etc.
For a soul to be well ordered, each of these parts must be function well relative to all the others.
This plays out most obviously with the intellect. The way you understand the world has dramatic implications for how you act. If your brain is working with false facts, everything else is going to be disordered. You will be happy and upset at the wrong things, and you may even desire unnatural types and amounts of bodily pleasures. Perhaps too much or the wrong types of food or drink, perhaps sexual perversions.
But this is fairly obvious. If your brain is filled with falsehood, your whole person will suffer.
What we must focus on is the other two parts of the tripartite soul and how they can make you miserable if unchecked.
The Appetite is not your friend
The appetitive part of the soul can cause lots of trouble. This is easy to imagine. It deals with a person’s carnal desires. These desires are often harmful if not reigned in. Think about the growing list of problems the appetite can produce.
Overeating, or eating unhealthily, which can cause a litany of health disorders Sex addiction, use of pornography, Laziness, unproductivity
If we let our bodies call the shots, we will surely suffer. The belly is a cruel master; it does not care about your happiness. It cannot be trusted. How to fight the Appetite But how can you combat the desires of your appetite, which are often so strong? How can you say no to that dessert? Or porn? Or even that day wasted watching Netflix on your couch? It’s much easier to say yes to these things than to say no. According to Plato, it starts with our intellect. We must know that these things will not produce any good in our lives. If you have not gotten that far, then this is where you must start. You must be sure that fulfilling carnal desires are not a means of any true or lasting happiness. But most of us know this, but we still give in time and time again. This is where the Spirited element of the tripartite soul comes in. Plato calls it our auxiliary guardian. It assists the intellect in waging war against the appetite. Think about it this way. You might know that something is bad for you. But this has little present impact on your next decision. Especially when it is so appetizing. You can rationalize those intellectual arguments away, and we do it every day. “What’s the hurt in one more cigarette?” “I’ll start dieting tomorrow.” “Let me sleep for one more hour.” Without help, your mind will bend to the desires of your belly every time. But we have help. Our emotions Perhaps that donut seems less appealing when you fear sharing the fate of a relative who recently died of heart disease. Perhaps porn loses its luster when you feel disgusted with yourself or feel sympathy for the women being trafficked. These emotions: fear, disgust, sympathy, joy, anger, shame- all bolster your mind by giving gravity to what you already know. We know that smoking causes cancer. But seeing someone suffering with lung cancer is different. We know lots of things, but only when we can also feel them can we win the battle against our appetite. And this is a battle that we must win. So how do we equip the emotional part of our tripartite soul? Plato has an interesting regimen: Music and Gymnastics Sounds odd at first, but once he explains, it becomes obvious. By gymnastics, Plato simply means exercise. This is the first weapon. Exercise is critical in the fight against unchecked bodily desires because it becomes a practice ground where one can say “no” to the body’s demands. Take running, for example. Go on a run. If you are not used to it, quickly your body is going to tell you to stop. Running is uncomfortable. Your body does not like it. But if you keep running, you have just won a victory against the appetitive part of your soul. As you do this more and more, you will learn that just because your body tells you to do something does not mean you have to do it. This is a minor victory, but it takes both your intellect (knowing exercise is good) and your emotions (feeling strongly enough to press past discomfort) to succeed. This is why Plato prescribes exercise in his education plan. It creates people who can say no to their carnal desires. If you find yourself enslaved to one or more of your body’s desires, whether it be food, sex or even just laziness, exercise is the first step to victory. Here, you can prove that you can say no to your body’s desires. But you have another weapon in your arsenal. This is what Plato calls “music” But it is a rather broad term as he uses it. For our purposes, we will call it media. Essentially, it encompasses what would now include music, books, movies, tv, YouTube videos, pretty much everything that we ingest for pleasure or entertainment. Be warned, this one is not easy. Essentially, Plato recommends we limit the sort of media we ingest drastically. The first criteria he uses is what it teaches. Does a movie approve of unethical action? Does your protagonist lie, cheat, kill? Don’t watch it. Does your music promote promiscuity, violence, or self-pity? Don’t listen to it. Why should you praise someone on a screen for something you would condone if done in real life? If you want to be decent, get role models that are decent. This is simple. The other criteria Plato uses are a little more complicated. This has to do with the actual construction of the music. The keys they are in and the rhythm they use. This comes down to your temperament. If you are typically hot headed or excitable, do not listen to music that exasperates this. If your temperament is slothful and uncaring, perhaps listen to music that will remedy that. In this sense, music is like medicine. Examine yourself and your weaknesses and consume music that supplements your weaknesses and bolsters your strengths. Music and visual media are typically very emotive. They play on your emotions in lots of different ways. This is why Plato uses these to strengthen the emotive side of your soul in its battle against the appetitive side. Defeat your body Today, more than ever, we battle our carnal desires. It is far too easy to gratify them. If you want to eat a hamburger, you can have one delivered to your door. Suppose you want to watch people having sex, you can instantly. If you want to sit around and do nothing for days on end- you will not die like you might have in the past. The body reigns supreme in today’s culture. But if you want to be happy, you must not let it. If you want to be human, you must not let it. Strengthen the spirited part of your soul and let it come to the aid of your mind. You know the right thing to do, but often that is not enough. Make your body your servant, not your master. Deny its cravings through exercise and hone your desires through music. Whether you believe in the tripartite soul or not, these three parts certainly war against each other. Use them to your advantage!
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