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So today's lecture is
a lecture about the
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parts of the soul.
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And I want to begin with some
passages, two from the ancient
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Greek literary tradition, and
two from contemporary mass
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culture, which bring out the
extent to which it is part of
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the common understanding of
human nature that we are often
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conflicted within ourselves.
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So in The Republic, the book
from which we have been
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reading excerpts, Plato's
Socrates tells a story about a
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man who is tempted to act
against his better judgment.
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And this is the story
of Leontius,
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and it goes as follows.
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"Leontius, the son of Aglaion,
was coming up from the Piraeus
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along the outside of the north
wall of the city when he saw
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some corpses lying at the
executioner's feet.
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Socrates using Plato's
terminology of appetite--
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"He had an appetite
to look at them.
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But at the same time, he was
disgusted and turned away.
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For a time," the story goes on,
"he struggled with himself
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and covered his face.
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But finally, overpowered by
appetite, he pushed his eyes
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wide open and rushed towards the
corpses, saying, 'Look for
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yourselves, you evil wretches!
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Take your fill of the
beautiful sight.'"
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Now, we'll talk more in today's
lecture about the
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particular picture that Plato
has in mind when he speaks of
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the tripartite soul as involving
this force that he
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But the basic description that
we have here doesn't rest in
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any way on a particular
Platonic framework.
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The idea that one can, on the
one hand, feel compelled to do
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eat a piece of chocolate cake,
check one's Facebook page--
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those are temptations that one
can try to control, and
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struggle with oneself about.
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And the narrative that will take
place in the next four or
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five lectures is about what
sorts of strategies are
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available for us, given that
these kinds of conflicts
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inevitably arise?
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So that's our first example from
the ancient tradition of
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a kind of conflict.
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A conflict between a drive of
appetite, on the one hand, and
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a drive of a certain kind of
self-regulation on the other.
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Second example comes from
Ovid's Metamorphosis.
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A long story in which, in the
passage that we're reading, a
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character Medea has, against
her better judgment, found
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herself in love with a young
man named Jason.
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And here I'm using a
seventeenth century
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