Notice Board

The Department of Philosophy Colloquium Series will present the following:

Fear and Anger: Tracking the Non-Rational Soul in Plato's Dialogues
Guest Speaker:  Karl Laderoute (Dept. of Philosophy)
Day/Date:  Friday, April 15, 2016
Time:  12:00 p.m.
Location:  C-610 (University Hall)

A central theme of Plato’s dialogues is the nature of the human soul and its relationship to our moral psychology. Christopher Bobonich’s Plato’s Utopia Recast (2002) argues that Plato’s view on the nature of the soul changes in his later writings. In “Moral Education and the Spirited Part of the Soul in Plato’s Laws” (2013) Joshua Wilburn argues against Bobonich’s thesis. Wilburn argues Plato’s last dialogue, Laws, exhibits a position on the nature of the soul and moral psychology compatible with the tripartite model put forth in Republic. In this paper I examine Plato’s changing accounts of fear and anger in the early ‘Socratic’ dialogue Protagoras, the middle-period dialogue Republic, and his final work Laws. I argue that by paying attention to Plato’s changing treatment of these emotions we find evidence in support of Bobonich’s thesis. I also provide an examination and rebuttal to Wilburn’s argument concerning the potential continuity in the treatment of the emotions between Republic and Laws based on Plato’s account of moral education. While I agree with Wilburn that the two dialogues have a similar account of moral education, I do not think that this similarity acts as evidence that Plato continues to endorse a tripartite model of the soul in Laws as Wilburn does.