Inner harmony and the human ideal in republic IV and IX

Journal of Ethics

Volumn 5, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 39-56

  Moravcsik, Julius ^a  

^a STANFORD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Agency; Agent; Desire; Good; Goodness; Harmonious; Harmony; Plato; Reason; Republic; Unified; Unity

Indexed keywords

EID: 77950051828     PISSN: 13824554     EISSN: 15728609     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1011412807466     Document Type: Article

References (35)

1. I am indebted to an unpublished paper by C. Korsgaard on this topic: "Unity of Agency."
2. See J. Cooper, "Plato's Theory of Human Motivation," History of Philosophy Quarterly I (1984), pp. 3-21, for arguments that not just physically originated desires are at issue.
3. For a defense of this view see N.R. Murphy, The Interpretation of Plato's Republic (Oxford, Clarendon, 1951), p. 29.
4. Murphy, The Interpretation of Plato's Republic, p. 29.
5. R. Kraut, "Justice in Plato: Republic," in A. Mourelatos, E. Lee and R. Rorty (eds.), Exegesis and Argument (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1973), p. 208.
6. J. Annas, An Introduction to Plato's Republic (Oxford: Clarendon, 1981), pp. 133-134.
7. R.C. Cross and A.D. Woozley, Plato: Republic (London: Mc Millan, 1964), pp. 118-119.
8. Cooper, "Plato's Theory of Human Motivation," p. 5.
9. For evidential backing, see J. Moravcsik, "Health, Healing, and Plato's Ethics," Journal of Value Inquiry 34 (2000), pp. 7-26.
10. Christopher Bobonich, "Akrasia and Agency in Plato's Laws and Republic," Archive für die Geschichte der Philosophie 76 (1994), p. 4.
11. T. Irwin, Plato's Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 217.
12. Annas, An Introduction to Plato's Republic, pp. 144-145.
13. Thought and Language (London: Koutledge, 1990), pp. vii, 283;
14. Meaning, Creativity and the Partial Inscrutability of the Human Mind, CSLI Lecture Notes, no. 79, Stanford, California, 1998 (distributed by Cambridge University Press).
15. Cross and Woozley, Plato: Republic, p. 128.
16. Irwin, Plato's Ethics, passim.
17. Bobonich, "Akrasia and Agency in Plato's Laws and Republic," pp. 4-6.
18. Republic, 437d7-c10.
19. Republic, 437c8-10.
20. Republic, 439a9-b6.
21. Republic, 439c2-d2.
22. Republic, 439d2.
23. Republic, 439c.
24. T. Irwin, Plato's Moral Theory (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977), p. 319.
25. I am indebted to comments by Bobonich here.
26. Republic, 441e4-5.
27. Republic, 443d4-5.
28. Republic, 443a2-b2.
29. Republic, 343a-b.
30. Republic, 442c10-d1.
31. Republic, 444c5-e7.
32. Republic, 580d7-8.
33. Republic, 581c6
34. (for "part" see to meros in Republic 581a6).
35. It would be interesting to explore the relationship between the thesis of strong unity in the good agent as advocated in this essay and the thesis of wisdom having a privileged status in Plato's account of the unity of virtues, as interpreted by Thomas Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith, "Socrates and the Unity of the Virtues," The Journal of Ethics 1 (1997), pp. 311-324.