Unidad y multiplicidad del alma en la República de Platón

Abstract

Based on what we may call the “Structural Parallelism Principle”, which consists in the comparative analysis of the parts of human soul and the parts of the fiÏȘ, Socrates describes in the Republic the different parts of the city and how those parts must relate with each other in order to be virtuous. This special attention to the multiplication of aspects both in the city and the soul, might lead us to believe tha Plato is talking about multiple realities defined mainly by their diversity and divergence of conducts. It could seem, as well, that the „˘¯‹ and the fiÏȘ are things compound by segments whose interests, fatally irreconcilable, create a state of permanent bellicosity that makes unity almost unthinkable. Only the soul of the philosopher, arranged around its racionality, would be able to organize itself in a harmoniously. In this paper I will try to show that, although Plato makes a great effort when he distinguishes the different aspects or tendencies inside the soul, the text of Republic also shows that every course of action is a result of the confluence of those three tendencies altogether. In this sense, although human soul is inhabited by opposite and even contradictory desires, in the resulting action always converge the three parts, each one with its particular slant. My conclusion at the end of the paper will be that this situation leads to two different – although complementary – kinds of unity in the soul, that I will call “quantitative unity” and “qualitative unity”.