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[Expositions 11.1 (2017) 176–190] Expositions (online) ISSN: 1747–5376 

The Imitative Arts Will Tear Us Apart in the Republic 

 

KIRK FITZPATRICK 

Southern Utah University 

 

 

The imitative arts are the greatest threat to justice in the constitutions of state and soul in the 

Republic. The members of such arts include music, poetry, and the visual arts. Books II and III 

delimit the function of the imitative arts in education and by Book X all “imitative” arts are 

banished from the constitutions. The most serious charge against imitative poetry, in the end, is 

that “with few exceptions it is able to corrupt even decent people […]” (605c).1 The imitative arts 

corrupt the constitutions by shrinking the best part and by enlarging the inferior parts (603a). In 

Book IV Socrates distinguishes three parts of the constitutions (443d). Then, two Stephanus pages 

later, he says that there are “five forms of [state] constitution and five of souls” (445d). Since there 

are as many parts as there are types of constitution, Socrates must hold that there are five parts in 

some constitutions. It seems that Socrates equivocates on the number of parts.  

Nearly all interpreters assume what some call the “canonical” interpretation: the text requires 

all constitutions to have the same number of parts.2 I reject the canonical interpretation and argue 

that the number of parts in a constitution is contingent. The best constitution has two parts and the 

imitative arts cause it to devolve. As the constitutions devolve they tend to have more parts. No 

constitution has four parts. To make room for this interpretation, I show that the imitative arts 

cause the degeneration of the bipartite constitution and they contribute to the other degenerations. 

Socrates employs two independent criteria to distinguish a “part”: either it is necessary or it can 

oppose another part. With this distinction, I turn to the claims that there are three parts and that 

there are five parts in the constitutions. I show that there are two necessary parts and there are at 

least five parts that can oppose another part. This saves the text from an apparent contradiction. 

Though some of the five parts are not necessary, they are all “parts.” I conclude with a count of 

the number of parts in each of the constitutions. In this way the text shows that the imitative arts 

tear constitutions apart. 

 

  



177  Fitzpatrick 
 

I. 

There are many terms translated as “part” in the English translation of the text.3 The text translates 

various terms as “parts”: “forms” (εἴδη), “kinds” (γένη), “character” (ἤθη), “modes” (τρόποι), and 

“souls” (ψυχαί). The text rarely uses the term “parts” (μέρος).4 This presents a challenge to 

translators and interpreters of the text. Since Socrates does not employ a technical term, or terms, 

for the concept of a part in a constitution, his account leaves much room for interpretation and 

disagreement. Socrates often employs grammatical or syntactic construction to distinguish the 

parts of a constitution.5 

Socrates suggests that it is easier to see the parts of state than to see the parts of soul, since the 

state is bigger than the soul (368c).6 He expects the homonymous state- and soul-types to have the 

same number of parts (445c–d). He also expects them to have the same qualities: “And do you 

realize that of necessity there are as many forms of human character as there are of constitutions? 

Or do you think that constitutions are born ‘from oak or rock’ and not from the characters of the 

people who live in the cities governed by them” (544d–e). His argument does not assume that the 

homonymous constitutions have the same qualities; throughout Book VIII it demonstrates that 

they do. Socrates demonstrates isomorphism: What is true of the parts in one constitution, either 

state or soul, is true of its correlate constitution insofar as the analogy permits.7 

If Socrates thinks that all constitutions have one certain and the same number of parts, then he 

describes his own account misleadingly. In Book IV he says the constitutions have three parts and 

then he says that they have five parts (444b, 445c–d). The transition begins when Socrates says, “I 

suppose we must look for injustice” (444a). The aristocracy is the best constitution and it alone is 

just. The other constitutions hold “a kind of civil war between the three parts, a meddling and 

doing of another’s work, a rebellion by some part (μέρος) against the whole soul in order to rule it 

inappropriately” (444b). Each degenerate constitution has one part ruling the other parts. Since 

there are three parts, it seems that there are three constitutions. Socrates, however, claims that there 

are “an unlimited number of forms of vice, four of which are worth mentioning” (445c). There are 

as many “types of soul as there are specific types of political constitution” (445c). So there are 

“five forms of constitution and five forms of soul” (445d1). Since there are five constitutions and 

each constitution has a different part of the soul rule the other parts, there must be five parts of at 

least some constitutions. 



The Imitative Arts Will Tear Us Apart in the Republic 178 

The additional parts come as additional parts of the market class in the state and as additions to 

the appetitive part of the soul. These two new parts raise questions about their relation to the initial 

three parts. He often refers to appetite as many and not one. It seems that we have two options: 

appetite is one part of a constitution or appetite is three parts of a constitution. I suggest that there 

is a third option: in some constitutions appetite is one part; in other constitutions it may have three 

parts or more. When Socrates describes the just man he explicitly mentions the possibility of there 

being more than three parts in the constitutions. The aristocratic man “harmonizes the three parts” 

and “binds together those parts and any others there may be in between” (443d7).8 The text reads 

as a conditional and it opens the possibility of there being more than three parts.9 Since he does 

not insist on there being more than three parts, but he allows for there being more than three parts, 

I argue that Socrates adopts contingency: (a) it is contingent how many parts actually belong to 

any given constitution, and (b) it is contingent what sort of internal structure each part has.10  

 

II. 

We cannot leave out the ideal city. The ideal city is “enlarged” to produce the Kallipolis (373b). 

The ideal city is the “need based” or “healthy” city. It includes a market-place which is populated 

by the labor class and tradesmen (371b). This class is retained in the other constitutions. The 

servants are among this class and they are wage-earners “whose minds alone wouldn’t qualify 

them for membership in our society” (371d). Slaves do some of the work, but they do not decide 

what work must be done. So, there must be members whose minds do qualify them for 

membership. This class would determine what the city needs: where to build houses, which crops 

to grow, and what to trade. This class would need to compose the “hymns to the gods” and they 

would see that the city “bequeath a similar life to their children” (372b, 372d). 

He names many occupations, but he does not explicitly tell us how many “parts” the ideal city 

has. It might be that Socrates thinks the ideal city has no parts. The account of the ideal city does 

provide us with two necessary classes that recur in the luxurious constitutions. The luxurious cities 

have rulers and merchants. The ideal city must at least have masters to direct the activity of the 

slaves. It also needs, however minimal, a deliberative class. This class excludes labor and includes 

only ideal members. They decide what work needs to be done. They direct when and where to act 

in the city. Socrates does not distinguish the parts of the corresponding person’s soul, but 

isomorphism between the accounts of the constitutions allows us to apply the distinctions in the 



179  Fitzpatrick 
 

ideal city to the analogous account of the soul. The deliberative class is analogous to the rational 

part of the soul and the market-class is analogous to the necessary appetites in the soul. These two 

parts of the ideal constitutions are necessary. 

Before Socrates can find justice in the ideal constitution Glaucon interrupts him and insists that 

he discuss a different city. Glaucon wants furniture and “the sorts of delicacies” they have in 

Athens at the time. Socrates’ response adds some beneficial delicacies, but this is not enough for 

Glaucon. He claims that Socrates has founded a city for pigs (372d). Glaucon insists that the city 

include chairs, “proper couches,” tables, and the “delicacies and desserts that people have 

nowadays” (372d). Socrates’ response to Glaucon is vehement and lengthy. He claims that 

Glaucon wants a “luxurious” city and that he is not satisfied with needs. He offers a lengthy list of 

things that Glaucon’s city—the unhealthy and sick city with a fever—will require. It will need 

things that the ideal city did not need. Socrates’ list includes prostitutes, painting, embroidery, 

perfumers, incense-makers, and other imitative arts. The expansion of the city places the imitative 

arts at the center: 

 

We must increase it [the ideal city] in size and fill it with a multitude of things that 

go beyond what is necessary for a city—hunters, for example, and artists or 

imitators, many of whom work with shapes and colors, many with music. And there 

will be poets and all their assistants[.] (373b)  

 

Socrates reminds Glaucon that “we didn’t need any of these in our earlier city” (373c). The 

imitative arts are not necessary. Glaucon’s request entailed the introduction of the unnecessary 

appetites, which prominently include the imitative arts. 

By including the unnecessary appetites the luxurious city requires a new part of the city. The 

luxurious cities require a military class. Socrates carries over the regulators of the ideal city and 

the market-class, but he now needs to distinguish a military occupation. Socrates discusses the 

guardians or the military class through Books II and III. At the end of the discussion in Book III 

he retroactively distinguishes two classes within his previous discussion and within the state. He 

distinguishes the “complete guardians” or “rulers” from the “auxiliary” or “military” class, where 

the eldest and wisest of the guardians receive a complete education in dialectic (414b). The 

luxurious cities require more territory. This causes war and it causes the city to need a military 



The Imitative Arts Will Tear Us Apart in the Republic 180 

class. Socrates blames the unnecessary appetites for creating the military class, since he is explicit 

that the ideal city did not require this part (373c–e). It must be that the ideal city did not require a 

military class. So, the ideal constitutions have two parts: reason and the necessary appetites. 

 

III. 

In the ideal city, the parts were included insofar as they were necessary. With the expansion of the 

merchant class and the creation of the military class comes a new criterion to distinguish the parts 

of the constitutions. He states what interpreters call “the principle of opposition” or PO: 

 

Clearly, the same thing will refuse to do or suffer opposites in the same, 

a. Respect to itself (κατὰ ταὐτόν), 

b. Relation to itself (πρὸς ταὐτὸν), 

c. Time (ἅμα), 

so that if we ever discover these same things happening in them, then we will know 

that it is not the same thing but many things. (436b8–c1)11 

 

If this principle is ever shown to be false, he warns, all implications from it are to be abandoned 

(437a4–9). Applying this to a person’s soul, if we find these same things happening, we will know 

that his soul is not one thing but two (436a8b1). The principle of opposition is not the law of non-

contradiction. PO concerns contraries not contradictories.  

There are two main interpretations of PO: the realist and the deflationist.12 The realists interpret 

PO to require the division of the soul into different subjects of predication because they think that 

the attempted predication in terms of time, relation, and respect failed to account for the 

opposition.13 The deflationists, in contrast, hold that the parts of the soul are predicates of one 

subject because they think that PO requires us to distinguish times, respects, or relations in a soul.14 

Recently Jennifer Whiting offered a “hybrid reading” of the parts, “[…] according to which 

deflationists are more or less right about the appetitive part of the well-ordered souls discussed in 

Republic II–IV, while realists are more or less right about the appetitive parts of the various corrupt 

souls discussed in Republic VIII–IX.”15 According to her interpretation, appetite in Book IV is an 

aspect of the constitutions and the three parts of appetite in Book VIII are genuine subjects of 



181  Fitzpatrick 
 

predication. An alternative, hybrid reading could hold that realists are right about the three parts 

in Book IV and deflationists are right about the three parts of appetite in Book VIII. 

I offer a realist interpretation of the parts. Socrates grounds PO in the opposites of a thing 

moving and standing still by asking, “is it possible for one thing to stand still and move at the same 

time, in the same respect?” (436c). Socrates offers three illustrations to help make PO clear: a man 

moving and standing still, a top spinning and staying in place, and the archer pushing and pulling 

the bow with his hands. Socrates asks, suppose someone says that “a person who is standing still 

but moving his hands and head is moving and standing still at the same time […]” (436c). Socrates 

rejects that the man is moving and still. He argues that one part of the man is moving and one part 

is not. These parts oppose each other in the same relation, respect, and time. In the example, a 

man’s head and hands are moving, but which parts are standing still are not specified. We can 

reasonably suspect that his legs or feet are still. Socrates moves the subject from the man to the 

head, hands, and legs. Let’s note that this application of PO refers to three parts, not two. Why 

does Socrates use three things to exemplify PO? The head and hands are moving as one part and 

they oppose the feet. I suggest that Socrates refers to reason with the head, spirit with the hands, 

and appetite with the feet. Reason and spirit oppose appetite. 

The second example about the top continues the test. Suppose someone says that “tops at least 

stand still and move as a whole at the same time, when the peg is fixed in the same place and they 

revolve” (436d5–7). Socrates responds that it is not in the same respect (οὐ κατὰ ταὐτὰ) that the 

top moves and does not. It is in one respect that it moves and in another that it does not. He uses a 

grammatical construction importantly different from the construction about the man. Concerning 

the top, he uses a “κατὰ μὲν … κατὰ δὲ” construction. This means that one thing, a top, is 

undergoing opposites in two different respects. Since there is a difference in respect, we do not 

divide the subject into two things. 

The third example concerns the hands of an archer. Consider the hands: it is not right to say that 

the hands push and pull at the same time. Instead, Socrates responds, the one hand pushes and the 

other hand pulls. He employs the grammatical construction “ἄλλη μὲν … ἑτέρα δὲ” meaning “the 

one … the other.” Socrates volunteers this case as part of drawing his first division in the soul. The 

change in subject in this example is clear. We begin with the hands (αἱ χεῖρες) and move to one 

hand (ἡ χείρ).16 One thing did not undergo opposites with a distinction of respect, relation, or time. 

He concluded that two different things undergo the opposites. 



The Imitative Arts Will Tear Us Apart in the Republic 182 

When he turns from the examples meant to make PO clear to the application of PO, he applies 

PO to a person having opposite desires. He argues that thirst in the Book IV application of PO is 

simply the desire to drink. The qualifications added by much drink or little drink, or by hot or cold 

drink, are not part of the desire to drink. He focuses on “drink itself,” which is the form of thirst 

or the desire to drink. It may be true that people desire good drink, but this does not show that the 

desire simply to drink is a desire for good drink. Qualified appetites depend on additions, such as 

hot, cold, necessary, unnecessary, and lawless. PO in Book IV restricts the appetites to their 

necessary part. This allows Socrates to treat appetite as one part of the soul in the application of 

PO in Book IV. PO does not require the restriction to thirst itself that Socrates places on its 

applications in Book IV. Though Socrates restricts the application of PO in Book IV, nothing 

prevents PO from setting a qualified desire against some other qualified desire.17 So, nothing in 

PO prevents it from applying to the appetites. We need to separate the restriction that Socrates 

places on PO in Book IV from all possible applications of PO. 

Socrates applies PO to three cases where a person desires to do and not to do an act without a 

distinction in respect, relation, or time. The first case is brief and grounded in no particular context. 

Socrates and Glaucon note that sometimes a thirsty person also refuses to drink. Since the person 

is thirsty he desires to drink and since he refuses to drink he desires not to drink. Socrates reiterates 

PO: “it cannot be that the same thing, in the same respect of itself, concerning the same thing 

would do opposites at the same time” (439b5–6). This case distinguishes reason from appetite. 

Case two concerns a desire to look and a refusal to look. Leontius desires to look at some pale, 

beheaded corpses. He also refuses to look. So, Leontius desires to look and he refuses to look. The 

third case concerns Odysseus. He refers to the case elliptically, citing one line from Homer: “He 

[Odysseus] struck his chest and spoke to his heart” (441b6). Socrates concludes that Homer 

“clearly represents” two parts of the soul, the rational and the spirited.  

One limitation of PO is that it distinguishes only two things. To help show that spirit differs 

from reason and appetite, Socrates offers two illustrations. In the first case a person believes he 

has done something unjust and in the second he believes he has been treated unjustly. In the first 

case he claims that spirit will endure hardships of punishment without becoming angry. In the 

second he claims that spirit will get angry, endure hardships, and fight for justice. In both cases 

spirit has a feature or quality that reason or appetite does not have. Furthermore, the illustrations 

initially pit two parts—reason and appetite—in opposition without involving spirit. These 



183  Fitzpatrick 
 

examples also show, he claims, that the spirited part is “by nature the helper of the rational part, 

provided that it hasn’t been corrupted by a bad upbringing” (441a). He insists that spirit is naturally 

aligned with reason in the luxurious constitutions. With the help of the three applications of PO 

and the additional arguments about spirit, Socrates distinguishes three parts of the soul. 

 

IV. 

Before Book IV concludes Socrates claims there are five constitutions and five parts. The line of 

argument at the end of Book IV is put aside at the beginning of Book V and it does not return until 

the beginning of Book VIII (543c). There Socrates charts the degeneration of the constitutions of 

each state and soul. His method is to examine a certain state first and then to examine its 

corresponding constitution of soul. Before discussing how the timocracy emerges from the 

aristocracy, Socrates establishes a general claim about devolution: “a simple principle that the 

cause of change in any constitution is civil war breaking out within the ruling group itself” (545c). 

The timocracy emerges from the aristocracy because it improperly conceives children. The 

children are born “through ignorance of these births” (546c). The cause of the ignorance is that the 

guardians, who had been the natural helpers of the rulers, “neglect the Muses” (546d). They come 

to “have less consideration for music and poetry than they ought, then they will neglect physical 

training” (546d). Socrates identifies changes in music and poetry as the causes of the ignorance, 

which in turn causes the improper births. Civil war breaks out with the aristocratic class opposing 

the ruling class. The timocratic class hoards money and expands its influence (548a). It becomes 

more like the oligarchic class than the ruling class. Since the timocratic class is between the 

aristocratic and oligarchic classes, the civil war ends with the timocratic class governing the rulers 

and the oligarchic class (547c). The timocratic man comes into being in an analogous way. The 

father nurtures the son’s rational part of the soul, but the mother and slaves nurture the spirited and 

appetitive parts of the soul (550b). “So he is pulled by both […] when he’s pulled in these two 

ways, he settles in the middle […]” (550b). He sets the spirited part as ruler of the constitution. 

The oligarchy is caused by a “lack of education, bad rearing, and a bad constitutional 

arrangement” (552e5–7). The oligarchic constitution has oligarchs and beggars. The beggars 

include “pick-pockets, temple-robbers and all such evil-doers” (552d). The rulers keep the evil-

doers in “check by force” (βία) (552e3). They use either the direct “force of arms” or the force of 

law against the other classes (551b). The oligarchic man comes to be from a timocratic father. At 



The Imitative Arts Will Tear Us Apart in the Republic 184 

first he “emulates his father,” but over time his father loses his honors and his money (533a–b). 

The son suffers an opposition between the spirited part and the appetitive part. Socrates tells us 

that because the son fears for his life and is “humbled by poverty, he turns greedily to making 

money” (553b). This places the necessary appetites as governors of reason and spirit. Socrates 

describes how the oligarch renders the worse parts of appetite impotent. It does so by “holding his 

other evil appetites in check by means of some decent part of himself” (554c). The decent part 

here is not reason, since he does not control himself with arguments. He controls through “fear 

[and] trembling for his other possessions” (554d). The necessary appetites control the worse 

appetites. The emergence of the timocratic and oligarchic constitutions involves just three parts. 

The emergence of democracy requires the creation of a new part (556e). The democratic “civil 

war” breaks out because the idle, disenfranchised, poor, and uneducated class grows large. It comes 

to power by “killing some of its opponents and expelling others, and [by] giving the rest an equal 

share in ruling” (557a). The democracy is a “supermarket of constitutions,” since it includes every 

type of constitution (557d). The democratic man is the son of an oligarch. The son indulges the 

unnecessary appetites and these include the lawless appetites. The son keeps company with people 

who indulge in “every kind of insolence” (572c). The son suffers a “civil war and 

counterrevolution within him, and he battles against himself” (559e). He is “pulled in both 

directions and settles down in the middle between his father’s way of life and theirs” (572c). The 

democratic man settles on the unnecessary desires, which are between necessary and lawless 

desires. 

By taking all classes as equal, the democracy allowed for the emergence of a lawless class. 

Socrates divides the democratic city into three parts: the wealthy, the idlers, and the laborers 

(564c–565a). Labor is the largest class in a democracy and it does not participate in politics. Still, 

civil war breaks out when the oligarchs accuse the laborers of plotting against the constitution. 

This leads to trials and to a single champion for the people. Toward his fellow citizens, he 

“banishes some, kills others, and drops hints to the people about the cancellation of debts” (555e). 

He stirs up “civil wars” in the state (566a). The tyrannical man is the son of a democratic man. His 

father nurtures the middle appetitive desires, which are the unnecessary and lawful desires, but 

other people help his lawless desires (572e). The son gives into the lawless appetites or Eros, which 

entails drunkenness, shamelessness, and madness (573c). 



185  Fitzpatrick 
 

Socrates never explicitly invokes PO in Book VIII, but every devolution that he details involves 

explicit reference to “opposition” or a “civil war” among the parts. Interpreters struggle to render 

the accounts in Books IV and VIII consistent. The application of PO in Book IV considered 

appetite as required in a luxurious city, but I have tried to show that Book VIII tacitly applies PO 

to the different parts of appetite. The unnecessary appetites in Book VIII show that Socrates does 

not follow the restricted application of PO in Book IV. There he delimited appetite and the other 

parts to function in the application of PO without qualifications. PO does not require the limitations 

that Socrates imposes on its applications in Book IV, but it does require that the parts oppose each 

other. Socrates can implicitly apply PO in Book VIII by explicitly stating illustrations that do not 

conform to the restriction on PO in Book IV but that do conform to the opposition required by PO. 

The parts of the constitutions in Book VIII are able to oppose the other parts and they are able to 

rule over all the other parts. The parts of appetite in Book VIII are parts in the same sense of the 

term as the parts in Book IV. In Book VIII appetite tears itself apart by introducing the unnecessary 

appetites. These appetites were originally responsible for the degeneration of the ideal constitution. 

The unnecessary desires smuggle in the lawless desires. The Kallipolis, timocracy, and oligarchy 

each had three required parts. The move to democracy introduced two new parts, the unnecessary 

and the lawless appetites.  

 

V. 

To explain imitation in Book X Socrates returns to furniture (596b). He distinguishes the form of 

the bed from the physical bed from the imitative artistic representation of a bed. The imitative arts 

are at third remove from the truth. In Book X Socrates invokes PO explicitly when he discusses 

the banishment of the imitative arts. The imitative arts employ appearance, which confuses a 

spectator. For example, a painting that appears concave from one angle shifts to appearing convex 

from a different perspective. Expanding the argument to cover the other senses, he turns to the 

mind: “[…] we mustn’t rely solely on a mere probability based on the analogy with painting; 

instead, we must go directly to the part of our thought with which poetic imitations consort” (603b). 

To distinguish the higher part from the lower parts of the soul, Socrates puts the eyes in opposition 

against the mind. The eyes give the lower parts the belief that the stick is bent and reason holds 

that the stick is straight. These opposites happen at the same time, in relation to the same thing and 

in the same respect. The soul believing opposites cannot be one thing, according to PO. He says, 



The Imitative Arts Will Tear Us Apart in the Republic 186 

“Didn’t we say that it is impossible for the same thing to believe opposites about the same thing at 

the same time?” (602e). Socrates uses “ἅμα περὶ τῶν αὐτῶν” (603d2). He explicitly mentions time. 

Then he uses the term “concerning,” or “περὶ,” in reference to the other things, “τῶν αὐτῶν” 

(603d2). We saw with respect “κατὰ,” and with relation “πρὸς,” but concerning, or “περὶ,” is new. 

This term must refer to at least two additional things, since “τῶν αὐτῶν” is plural. PO in Book IV 

supplies the plurals, respect and relation. Socrates has insisted that there is no distinction 

concerning the three categories of opposition in PO. So, he concludes, the part that “forms a belief” 

opposite reason must be a different part(s) of the soul.18 

In Book III we agreed that if the topic arises in stories that “a decent man doesn’t think that 

death is a terrible thing for someone decent to suffer—even for someone who happens to be his 

friend” (387d). In Book X Socrates considers again the case where a father loses a child. Stories 

about such sad affairs depict the person as wailing and lamenting even in public. The lamenting 

corresponds to the appetitive part of the soul. Doing so in public corresponds to the spirited part. 

Socrates reminds us that we censored these stories so that he will not “grieve at all, or, if that’s 

impossible,” he will be measured in his response (603e). If that is not possible, then “he will fight 

the pain and put up more resistance to it when his equals can see him” than “when he’s alone by 

himself in solitude” (603–4). Socrates is explicit about the parts in the division. Reason is on one 

side with “spirit and all the appetites” on the other side (606d1–2). The appetites are included in 

the lower parts as “the whole of the appetites” (πάντων τῶν ἐπιθυμητικῶν) and this is plural 

(606d1–2). This reference to appetite covers every appetite distinguished in the text. In Book X 

we see that spirit has moved from being with reason to being with appetite, since this division 

places both appetite and spirit in the lower part of the soul. 

In Book X Socrates also “fashions the image of the soul in words,” when he suggests creatures 

“such as the Chimera, Scylla, Cerberus, or any of the multitude of others in which many different 

kinds of things are said to have grown together naturally into one” (588c). Socrates suggests an 

image of a person that, when looked at from the right angle, actually shows itself to be a multi-

headed beast. This creature has a “ring of many heads that it can grow and change at will—some 

from gentle, some from savage animals” (588c). The image has reason as a human head and this 

never changes (588d). The spirited part, in contrast, does suffer opposites in different relations. In 

Book II the spirited part is both gentle with familiars and fierce with enemies. The spirited part of 

the soul does not require a division into different subjects, since the opposite qualities are in 



187  Fitzpatrick 
 

relation to different objects (πρὸς). The spirited part of the constitutions is imaged as a dog in Book 

II, and a lion, snake, and ape in Book IX (376a and 590a–b). The spirited part is not imaged as 

having multiple heads, but the one head it has at any time can alter in its qualities. The spirit is 

capable of changing, such that the appropriate animal image changes. Finishing the image of the 

multi-headed beast, Socrates describes only the appetites as growing many heads at one time 

(589a–b). It alone fractures into multiple new parts. 

 

VI. 

Isomorphism applies a description of the city or soul to the other in the pair. Contingency allows 

that different constitutions may have different numbers of parts. Although Socrates does not 

mention rulers or the military class in the ideal constitution, he does mention activities that require 

two classes. The ideal city functions to regulate deliberation and education, without distinguishing 

a military class. In the ideal constitution the two tasks of ruling and defending are combined into 

one. The ideal soul must contain a rational part and the necessary appetites. We saw that the 

oligarchic constitution renders the worse appetites impotent. So, the Kallipolis, the timocracy, and 

the oligarchy have three parts. The democratic constitution takes all desires as equally worthy of 

indulgence. So the lawless part of the unnecessary desires is equally worthy of indulgence as any 

other part. The democratic and tyrannical constitutions require five parts. Socrates distinguished 

these five, but he thinks that among the vicious constitutions there are an “unlimited number of 

forms” (445c). The additional forms, Socrates says, are not worth mentioning. We can now chart 

all six constitutions: 

 

Constitutions Rule of Parts Parts 

Ideal Reason ruling appetite 2 

Aristocratic Reason ruling spirit and necessary appetite 3 

Timocratic Spirit ruling reason and necessary appetite 3 

Oligarchic Necessary appetite ruling reason and spirit 3 

Democratic Unnecessary appetite ruling reason, spirit, necessary 
appetite, and lawless appetite 

5 

Tyrannical Lawless appetite ruling reason, spirit, necessary 
appetite, and unnecessary appetite 

5 

 



The Imitative Arts Will Tear Us Apart in the Republic 188 

No constitution has four parts. The parts of the ideal constitutions are necessary, the parts of the 

first three luxurious constitutions are required, and the novel parts of the worst two constitutions 

are unnecessary. The ideal city degenerated because of the unnecessary appetites, which entail the 

imitative arts. This required the creation of a military class. After the devolution of the ideal city, 

these arts were constrained in the better versions of the luxurious cities. The oligarchic constitution 

rules the lower appetites by force. Eventually, the imitative arts helped cause the oligarchic 

constitution to devolve into the democratic constitution and the democratic constitution to devolve 

into the tyrannical. The imitative arts tear the constitutions apart in the Republic. 

 

 

Notes 

1. This paper benefited from comments by participants at the Intermountain Philosophy 
Conference of 2015. All translations of Plato’s Republic are from Grube. References to the 
Greek text are from Burnet’s Oxford Classical Texts edition. 

2. One of the few exceptions to this position is Whiting 174–208. 

3. For a useful discussion of Plato’s terminology see Stocks. 

4. He uses the term first at 444b. 

5. Harte points out that in the Republic Socrates offers what he takes to be a sufficient account 
of parts but he does not offer or even attempt an account of the necessary features. In this 
way the Republic does not contain a theory of mereology (1–2).  

6. I refer to the analogy between the constitutions as one between the state and the soul, but 
this could be misleading. In Book II when Socrates introduces the analogy he actually 
draws it between “a single man” and “a whole city” (368e–369a). In Book IV, he asks “if 
an individual has these same three parts in his soul” and “does the soul have these three 
parts in it or not?” (435b–c). Here he draws the analogy between the city and the soul of a 
person. 

7. Moline argues for a similar view, claiming that “Nothing less than a structural and 
functional isomorphism between the polis and the psyche will do” (2). 

8. Grube does much work with this passage by breaking it up into sentences. In the text the 
sentence starts at 443c9 and ends at 444a2.  

9. “καὶ εἰ ἄλλα ἄττα μεταξὺ τυγχάνει ὄντα,” or “[…] and if there happen to be others in 
between […]” (443d7). 

10. The contingency thesis that I offer is a modified version of Whiting’s “radical psychic 
contingency” thesis. See Whiting 175–176. 



189  Fitzpatrick 
 

11. The passage reads, “δῆλον ὅτι ταὐτὸν τἀναντία ποιεῖν ἢ πάσχειν κατὰ ταὐτόν γε καὶ πρὸς 
ταὐτὸν οὐκ ἐθελήσει ἅμα, ὥστε ἄν που εὑρίσκωμεν ἐν αὐτοῖς ταῦτα γιγνόμενα, εἰσόμεθα 
ὅτι οὐ ταὐτὸν ἦν ἀλλὰ πλείω” (436b7–c1). 

12. Two recent and notable deflationist accounts come from Shields and Price. Two recent and 
noteworthy realist accounts come from Lorenz and Bobonich. 

13. If the realists are right and the canonical interpretation holds then there cannot be three 
parts and five parts. 

14. If the deflationists are right to take the three parts of the constitutions as aspects, then it 
seems that the three parts of appetite are aspects of an aspect in the constitutions. In one 
recent deflationist interpretation Christopher Shields argues that the principle entails that 
“If S stands in two opposing relations with respect to some object o, then S must do so in 
virtue of different internal elements a and b, (Call this the Principle of Opposing relations 
(POR)) (Rep 438b8)” (152). Shields thinks PO means that anything doing or suffering 
opposites must do or suffer the opposites with a distinction in respect, relation, or time.  

15. Whiting 202. 

16. Socrates uses the dual, ἀλλήλοιν, in referring to the rational and spirited parts (412a1). He 
urges us to think of them as natural duals, such as pairs of eyes, arms, hands, and legs. 

17. PO applies to appetite, because of the sort of part it is. It does not apply to reason or spirit, 
because of the sorts of parts they are. 

18. Socrates mentions assent (ἐπινεύειν) and dissent (ἀνανεύειν) at 437b1 in Book IV. Though 
he references the nodding motion of the head, this physical act is an expression of adopting 
a belief. 

 

 

Works Cited 

Bobonich, Christopher. Plato’s Utopia Recast: His Later Ethics and Politics. New York: 
Clarendon Press, 2002. 

Harte, Verity. Plato on Parts and Wholes: The Metaphysics of Structure. New York: Oxford 
University Press, 2002. 

Lorenz, Hendrik. The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle. New York: 
Clarendon Press, 2006. 

Moline, Jon. “Plato on the Complexity of the Psyche.” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 
60 (1978): 1–26. 

Plato. Platonis Opera, Volume 4: Clitopho, Respublica, Timaeus, Critias, ed. John Burnet. 
New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. 



The Imitative Arts Will Tear Us Apart in the Republic 190 

___. Republic, trans. G. M. A. Grube, rev. C. D. C. Reeve. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1992.  

Price, A. W. “Are Plato’s Soul-Parts Psychological Subjects?” Ancient Philosophy 29.1 
(2009): 1–15. 

Shields, Christopher. “Plato’s Divided Soul.” In Plato’s Republic: a Critical Guide, ed. Mark 
L. McPherran. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. 147–170. 

Stocks, J. L. “Plato and the Tripartite Soul.” Mind 24.94 (1915): 207–221. 

Whiting, Jennifer. “Psychic Contingency in the Republic.” In Plato and the Divided Self, eds. 
Rachel Barney, Tad Brennan, and Charles Brittain. New York: Cambridge University 
Press, 2014. 174–208.  


