Aristotle's Psychology and the Influence of Plato

teacher of Aristotle, Plato (428/427 BC - 348/347 BC), provided some useful insights into the
theoretical structure of the human mind, based largely upon his elegant Theory of Forms. He
used the idea of a psyche, a word used to describe both the mind and the soul, to develop a
rough framework of human behavior, reasoning and impulses.
Plato proposed that the human psyche was the seat of all knowledge and that the human
mind was imprinted with all of the knowledge it needed. As a result, learning was a matter of
unlocking and utilizing this inbuilt knowledge, a process he called anamnesis.
In his famous work, 'The Republic,' Plato further developed this idea and first proposed the
idea that the mind consisted of three interwoven parts, called the Tripartite Mind.
The Logistikon: This was the intellect, the seat of reasoning and logic.
The Thumos: This was the spiritual centre of the mind, and dictated emotions and
feelings.
The Epithumetikon: This part governed desires and appetites.
According to Plato, the healthy mind discovered a balance between the three parts, and an
over reliance upon these parts led to the expression of personality. For example, gluttony
and selfishness could be explained by a dominance of the Epithumetikon, letting desires
govern behavior.
In the Republic, a treatise aimed at theorizing the perfect society, Plato proposed that the
rulers of such a society, those who determined course and policy, should be drawn from men
where the Logistikon held sway. Individuals with a strong Epithumetikon made excellent
merchants and acquirers of wealth whilst the Thumos, which can loosely identified with will
and courage, was the domain of the soldier.
Later, Plato renounced his idea of a tripartite mind and returned to earlier proposals of a
dualistic explanation for the mind, balanced between intellect and desire. However, this three
way split would reemerge in Aristotle's idea of a trinity of souls and, based upon the idea
prevalent in many societies and religions, which gave a reverence to the number three, 20th
Century psychoanalysts maintained the idea of a human mind balanced between three
impulses.

Aristotle's Psychology - Para Psyche

Aristotle (Creative Commons)

Aristotle, building upon the work of the earlier philosophers and their studies into mind,
reasoning and thought, wrote the first known text in the history of psychology, called Para
Psyche, 'About the Mind.' In this landmark work, he laid out the first tenets of the study of
reasoning that would determine the direction of the history of psychology; many of his
proposals continue to influence modern psychologists.

In the book, the definition of psyche, as was common at the time, used 'mind' and 'soul'
interchangeably, with the Ancient Greek philosophers feeling no need to make no distinction
between the two. At this period, apart from dalliances with Atheism from Theodorus, Greek
philosophers took the existence of divine influence as given. Only Socrates really questioned
whether human behavior and the need to be a 'good person' was about seeking personal
happiness rather than placating a divine will.

In Para Psyche, Aristotle's psychology proposed that the mind was the 'first entelechy,' or
primary reason for the existence and functioning of the body. This line of thought was heavily
influenced by Aristotle's zoology, where he proposed that there were three types of souls
defining life; the plant soul, the animal soul and the human soul, which gave humanity the
unique ability to reason and create. Interestingly, this human soul was the ultimate link with
the divine and Aristotle believed that mind and reason could exist independently of the body.
He was one of the first minds to examine the urges and impulse that drove and defined life,
believing that the libido and urge to reproduce was the overriding impulse of all living things,
influenced by the 'plant soul.' Whilst he partially linked this to the process of achieving
immortality and fulfilling the purposes of a divine mind, he proposed this reproductive urge
many centuries before Darwin. This idea is a fine example of one of the great intuitive mental
leaps that define Aristotle's legacy.

Aristotle's Psychology of Impulses and Urges

Continuing this line of thought, Aristotle attempted to address the relationships between
impulses and urges within the human mind, many years before Freud resurrected many of
the basic tenets of Aristotle's psychology with his psychoanalysis theory. Aristotle believed
that, alongside the 'Libido,' were 'Id' and 'Ego,' the idea of desire and reason, two forces that
determined actions.

Aristotle's psychology proposed that allowing desire to dominate reason would lead to an
unhealthy imbalance and the tendency to perform bad actions. Here, Aristotle's thought
created a paradigm that remained unchallenged for centuries and one that still underpins the
work of modern psychology and philosophy, where desire is renamed as emotion and
reason as rationality.

Uniquely, Aristotle also understood the importance of time on the actions driving a person,
with desire concerned with the present and reason more concerned with the future and long-
term consequences. As an aside and a slight divergence into sociology, this short-termism
and quest for immediate results is one of the driving forces behind economic collapses,
environmental degradation and political popularism.

Perhaps more people should study Aristotle and his ideas of what drives human behavior.
Aristotle can, quite legitimately, be called the first behaviorist and the basis of work by B.F.
Skinner and Pavlov, two of the most famous names in the history of psychology.

Aristotle's psychology included a study into the formation of the human mind, as one of the
first salvos in the debate between nature and nurture that influences many academic
disciplines, including psychology, sociology, education, politics and human geography.
Aristotle, unlike Plato, was a believer in nurture, stating that the human mind was blank at
birth and that educating the individual and exposing them to experiences would define the
formation of the mind and build a store of knowledge.

The History of Psychology and Ancient Greek Medicine

Plato and Aristotle adopted a philosophical and abstract approach to defining human
behavior and the structure of the mind, but that was not the only contribution of the
Hellenistic philosophers. The development of Ancient Greek medicine introduced the study
of physiology into the history of psychology, proposing that there were physical reasons
underlying many mental ailments. Chief amongst these was the Father of Medicine,
Hippocrates, who proposed that epilepsy had a physical cause and was not some curse sent
by the fickle Greek Gods.

Unlike Aristotle, who saw the heart as the seat of thought and reason, Hippocrates
understood the importance of the brain. This debate continued, with physicians such as
Praxagoras still maintaining that the heart and arteries linked thought, through a mysterious
fluid called pneuma. In a gruesome experiment, Herophilus and Erasistratus were given
permission, by the ruler of Alexandria, Egypt, to perform vivisection on criminals and they
determined that the nervous system and brain controlled the body and were therefore the
seat of reason.
However, they still believed that the heart sent pneuma throughout the body, but that it
controlled unconscious processes, such as metabolism. By contrast, the nerves sent
'psychic' pneuma throughout the body. These experiments revealed a lot of information but
introduced medical ethics into the history of psychology, a debate that rages today. Whilst
their studies were abhorrent when looked at through the lens of history, the Twentieth
Century history of psychology includes some infamous and unwanted landmarks.

The History of Psychology - Galen and the Four Humours

Claude Galien. Lithograph by Pierre Roche Vigneron.

Claude Galien. Lithograph by Pierre Roche Vigneron. (Paris: Lith de Gregoire et Deneux, ca.
1865) (Public Domain)
Following on from Hippocrates was the physician, Galen, who provided the link between the
Greeks and Islamic psychology. Of Greek extraction, this brilliant physician and researcher
earned the respect of successive Roman emperors for his skill and ability, and he went on to
produce volumes of work covering many aspects of the human condition, from psychology to
eye surgery.

He proposed the idea of four 'humours' within the human body, each responsible for a
different aspect of the human condition, and believed that an imbalance between the four
would affect physical and mental wellbeing. This holistic approach to medicine inextricably
linked mind and body, a factor only recently readopted by modern medicine, which tends to
treat physical conditions and symptoms without paying much regard to mental health, and
vice-versa.

Galen's Four Humors Were:

Sanguine: The blood, related to the element of air and the liver, dictated courage, hope and
love.
Choleric: Yellow bile, related to the element of fire and the Gall Bladder, could lead to bad
temper and anger, in excess.
Melancholic: Black bile, associated with the element of earth and the spleen, would lead to
sleeplessness and irritation, if it dominated the body.
Phlegmatic: Phlegm, associated with the element of water and the brain, was responsible for
rationality, but would dull the emotions if allowed to become dominant.
Galen Manuscript
De pulsibus by Galen. (Manuscript; Venice, ca. 1550). This Greek manuscript of Galen's
treatise on the pulse is interleaved with a Latin translation. (Public Domain)
Galen believed that the balance of these four humours would be influenced by location, diet,
occupation, geography and a range of other factors. Whilst this idea of humours was
incorrect, it influenced medical and psychological thought for centuries, and it was developed
further by the great Islamic scholar, Ibn-Sina (Avicenna).

This idea of looking at the entire body and mind, rather than blaming witchcraft and spirits,
certainly influenced medicine and the history of psychology for the better although some of
the cures used to alleviate the build-up of a humour, such as blood-letting, were harmful.

Of course, to modern commentators, the idea of the humors seems a little primitive and is
based upon a limited knowledge of psychology. However, the importance of Galen is not the
exact nature of the theory but the fact that his ideas saw the first paradigm shift away from
the idea of mental conditions having a supernatural source and towards finding answers in
physiology.
It is no surprises that his work upon psychology and the mind, as well as other disciplines,
became the backbone of the Islamic rediscovery of the Greeks; his ideas were copied and
added to by Islamic scholars. Certainly, his empirical and pragmatic approach earns him a
place in the history of psychology.

The Coming of the Islamic Golden Age and the Growth of Psychology

There is little doubt that the Ancient Greeks laid out the course of modern psychology,
although due respect has to be given to the Chinese, Indian and Persian scholars who made
contributions outside the scope of this history of psychology, but which influenced modern
thought in many disparate ways.

The Islamic expansion saw a culmination of this process and an integration of Greek thought
allied to the wisdom of the Middle-Eastern and Eastern scholars as they drew knowledge
from around the known world. The Islamic Golden Age would preserve Aristotle's
psychology, add to it, and pass it on to the Europeans as the Dark Ages ended. The roots of
the history of psychology certainly began here and the beliefs of the Greeks would also
influence sociology, geography and economic theory.

PLATO
The dialogues of Plato allegedly do no more than report the teaching of Socrates, but much
of what is found in these works is surely Platos own invention. Their composition spans a
period of years such that one must distinguish between the early, the middle, and the late
works, with sometimes dramatic departures found across these periods. In the broadest
terms, the dialogues address four core problems: the problem of the knowable (ontology and
metaphysics); the problem of knowledge (epistemology and psychology); the problem of
conduct (ethics); and the problem of governance (political and social science).

How can one ever be sure that one knows anything? Is complete skepticism the most
philosophically defensible position?

In Meno the young challenger taunts Socrates, who claims to be searching for the truth.
Such an inquiry is impossible since if one does not know what the truth is, there is no
starting point and if one does know, there is no need for the search in the first place. Soc -
rates reply takes advantage of the fact that Menos servant is a young, uneducated
barbarian. He questions the boy about geometric figures drawn in the sand. As the boy
answers each yes or no, Socrates leads him to a version of the Pythagorean Theorem. The
exercise illustrates the central precept of Socrates theory of knowledge: knowledge is a
reminiscence. The knower possesses rather than learns the truth. Thus understood,
knowledge of what is abidingly true cannot arise from sensory commerce with the world of
changing things; it can arise only from an essentially intuitive and rational awareness that is
possessed by the soul itself.

In Platos Republic the state (polis) is taken to be the enlargement of the individual. To learn
what it is that makes the person good it becomes useful to ask what constitutes the good
state. By constructing the perfect state, the philosopher must comprehend the attributes that
define the perfected human being. In Book 3 of The Republic citizens are categorized as
being made of gold, silver, brass, or iron, the point being that they are framed so differently
by the gods that of necessity some rule and others serve. This illustrates the strong
hereditarian element in Platonic psychology but tends to mask the comparably great
emphasis placed on early education and lifelong discipline; education is to be very carefully
orchestrated. Those epic poems that present the gods as lacking virtue are among those to
be forbidden, as are works of fiction and panharmonic music.
Platos psychology is nativistic but leaves ample room for developmental influences. He
explicitly endorses a multistage theory of cognitive development. In Laws, for example, the
Athenian stranger asserts that virtue and vice are known to the young only as pleasure and
pain and that, since children instinctively love what is pleasurable and hate what is painful,
the principal task of the educator is to make sure that true virtue becomes the object of love.
Moreover, there are critical periods of development when the lessons of virtue are most
effectively conveyed by music, since virtue fundamentally is a harmonious relationship
between body and mind. This aim is furthered by close contact between parent and infant.
by the rhythmic rocking of the young. The same theme is sounded in The Republic, in which
the young are depicted as being out of harmony: Reason and passion have yet to establish
the unique accord that constitutes virtue. Music and dance and other gymnastics must be
employed because the very young mind is not yet able to assimilate rational principles
directly. Thus, early education uses metaphor, not literal lesson. Nonetheless, the success of
such education finally depends on the quality of the wax. and only under rare
circumstances will the children of a lower class qualify for the life of a Guardian, that is, one
chosen to be trained to protect the city-state and devote himself to its security. If harmony is
the goal, the sources of dissonance must be removed. As some of these are genetic
accidents of nature, they must be exposed (Le.. to the elements). In any case, eugenic
breeding can reduce such mistakes to a minimum.

Platos theory of pleasure, it should be noted, is not to be confused with asceticism. Rather,
it distinguishes three different types of pleasurable and painful experience. Some feelings
are entirely bodily: the itch that can be soothed by scratching. Both body and soul participate
in other feelings, such as a painful hunger relieved by anticipation of food. Some feelings,
such as longing and love, only arise within the soul. Where body and soul are jointly
engaged, the emotions are rich in cognitive content, but there can be feelings of the body
without such content.

In The Republic Socrates likens the soul to the state. As the state contains three classes
(merchants, auxiliaries, and counselors), the soul is occupied by three principles: the
rational, the appetitive, and the passionate. The virtuous person is one who has harmonized
these three principles such that reason controls appetite, and passion, as an auxiliary to
reason, strengthens resolve. The view of reason and appetite as opposing forces is as old
as the Homeric epics and as current as psychoanalytic theory. Where the balance is
incomplete, where the three composites are in discord, the soul is sick and dying. While men
and states are born with the capacity for such harmony, the capacity is actualized only under
the leadership and guidance of the philosophically enlightened. Without this guidance the
pleasures and pains of the flesh, which are the only sources of control for the child, continue
to dominate the life of the adult. Addiction to the world of appearances only furthers the
bodys hold on the soul; the body being the souls prison (desmoterion). On this account,
both madness and ignorance are diseases calling for a form of therapy. The mad and the
unjust both have ruling appetites to which reason becomes subservient.

Plato (427-334 BC) recorded perhaps the oldest surviving model of moral psychology in the
western tradition. His ideas appear in his Dialogues, and we will concentrate mostly on The
Republic. While his ideas on mans moral motivations have been surpassed by more recent
philosophers and psychologists (and therefore seem almost quaint today), its interesting to
see prescient echoes of his ideas in modern life.

Plato started his argument by assuming that humans contain an eternal soul responsible for
our desires. He then argued that this soul has three parts. The first is the logical part, which
allows us to separate what is real from what merely seems real through reason. This part of
the soul desires truth and loves goodness. Next is the spirited part of the soul, which is
competitive and seeks honor and victory. Finally is the appetitive part of the soul, which
gives us our more base desires. This appetitive part can be concerned with three kinds of
appetites: those which are necessary (e.g. simple foods for nutrition), those which are
superfluous but permissible (e.g. luxuries), and those which are lawless (e.g. theft).

The Republic is ostensibly a search for the definition of justice. Plato, however, finds an
interesting way of seeking this definition. He starts by assuming that there is a direct analogy
between a just man and a just society, one simply being a macro view of the other. He then
sketches a utopian society so that he can more easily see what is justice in this larger view.
Finally, he extrapolates the definition of justice for an individual by its analogy to justice
within larger society.

Plato links five regime archetypes to the concerns of the tripartite soul, and demonstrates a
relationship between a state of a certain temperament and a man of that same
temperament. For example, he argues there is a relationship between a tyrannical state and
a man ruled by lawless appetites.

1713 Edition
1713 Edition (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
These are the five regimes:

Aristocracy, which relates to the logical soul (rule by the best philosopher kings)
Timocrasy, which relates to the spirited soul (rule by the honored great soldiers)
Oligarchy, which relates to the necessary appetites (rule by the few the wealthiest
merchants)
Democracy, which relates to the superfluous appetites (rule by the many)
Tyranny, which relates to the unlawful appetites (rule by the tyrant)
Its interesting to see democracy so far down on the list, considering how we worship it in
modern times. Plato had a narrow conception of who was fit to rule. Able rulers belonged to
a certain class of society by birth, temperament and education. Soldiers belonged to a
separate, second class. Workers and common men belonged to inferior classes, and
because of their fickle, uneducated nature, they could bring about ruin if they were allowed
to rule. Socratess death, Plato would note, was put to a vote.

Plato next demonstrates how each level of regime, should it falter, could degenerate into the
next:

Aristocracy devolves into timocracy when the next generation of leaders comes from an
inferior class, preferring spirited if simple-minded rule suited mostly for war.
Timocracy devolves into oligarchy when Timocrat leaders begin to see accumulation of
wealth as a virtue, thrilling themselves with hoarding and waste.
Oligarchy devolves into democracy when the populace begins to worship individual
freedoms, and become consumed with superfluous desires .
Democracy devolves into tyranny when it becomes so individualist as to plunge into chaos,
and from this chaos a charismatic man seduces the people with promises and then rules
with complete caprice.
Within these descriptions, we can already see chilling parallels to contemporary cultures.

A just man, Plato concludes, is one who cultivates harmony between the natures of their soul
and allows them to be ruled by reason, just as a just republic is one that cultivates harmony
between the different classes of citizens and promotes the rule of philosopher kings. Only
philosophers are in a position to know what is good, and to know good is to do good, so a
rule by philosophers would by definition be good. Just as the reasoning part of the soul, if it
understands a universal conception of good, will seek to do good. Or so he believed.

We can smile these days when we read about parts of the soul or other notions that have
not been entertained for centuries, but some of Platos descriptions of societal degeneration
are eerily insightful. It does seem, historically, that when societies have stumbled or fallen it
was because they became ruled by something less than the better angels of their nature.
Weve seen many tyrannies evolve out of lawlessness, poverty and revolution. We can think
of the times just after the French, Russian and Iranian revolutions, for example, when the
underclasses looted all the wealth and destroyed all the art in sight. Plato would argue that
Napoleon, Stalin and Khomeini were the inevitable consequences of an impressionable
people looking for a way out of anarchy and poverty. In more modern times, we note that
where we have attempted to spread democracy through nation-building, the resulting
chaos has made the ground more fertile for charismatic warlords than for republican virtues.

John Locke
Weve never seen a philosopher king in our lifetimes, but the Founding Fathers (the closest
thing weve experienced to actual public philosophers, and steeped in Platonic influence by
way of John Locke) tried to set up a democratic way of selecting those for office who were
most likely in the mold of the philosopher king (rule of the best and brightest). We contrast
this with the direct democracy of Athens that Plato found so threatening. Plato believed that
democracies emerge as a degeneration of superior regimes when the people become
obsessed with superfluous, parochial interests and have no more use for universals like
truth, justice or even honor.

In current political debate, the concept that seems most associated with America is freedom.
We increasingly interpret this as a freedom to do what we want when we want, without
interference, trade-offs, or much regard for social contract. I put this observation forward in a
preceding post and David Brookss book The Social Animal. We can trace, starting with the
sixties, a trend in moral and economic independence resulting in what Brooks calls the
atomization of our society. So as we become more atomized, are we actually degenerating?
Are we, in a very real sense, falling to the next lower level of what it means to be a society,
and slipping further away from a sense of justice?