November 2nd, 2026 (Continued): ”...This is where I shift specifically to Plato and to possibly the greatest book that was ever written in the history of the West. The Republic. You should definitely read The Republic if you haven't already. I call The Apology the foundational text of Western philosophy. The Republic is the foundational text of Western civilization. Obviously, I'm leaving out the Bible, right? But one unified text, The Republic. In that text, Plato says a bunch of stuff. I'm focusing on book four of the ten. And in that book, he presents his theory of the tripartite soul. Tripartite? A three-parted soul? Does anybody happen to know what the three parts of the soul are according to Plato? Has anybody studied The Republic in college? Because I'm guessing more of you know what the three levels of soul are according to Aristotle. But the platonic understanding of the tripartite soul is less often discussed, and so I'm going to mention it for you very briefly. And it helps to point to parts of your torso when you think about this. The appetitive part is the part of your soul that governs all desires having to do with basic bodily functions. It's the part that desires pleasure, sustenance. The spirited part—now I'm moving to the chest—is the part of you that desires victory, honor, reputation, strength. The rational part is the part of you which is capable of knowing the truth. Whenever there are three parts in a whole, we are liable to ask, what is the order that these parts should have so that the whole can function at its best? And Plato says straightforwardly, using a pretty cool analogy, shepherd, sheepdog, sheep. Reason is the shepherd, spirit is the sheepdog, appetite is the sheep. All working together, you have an ordered soul. Reason rules the appetites by means of the spirit. How can reason acquire the truth it needs in order to rule properly? The highest intellectual pursuit available to man, philosophy. Did you catch what just happened, though? If everything that I just said holds, if the highest good for humankind is health of the soul, and if health of the soul can be obtained only through philosophy, that means that if you don't philosophize, you cannot get the highest good for mankind. All non-philosophers can only be imperfectly happy as animals. But if you want genuine happiness as far as human beings are concerned, you need to philosophize. All of that understanding of human happiness, of function, of parts, is from what they think the soul is. Last little tidbit I'll tell you about Plato. It is not clear what he actually thinks the soul does after death, or where it goes. There are some texts where he suggests you get eternal blessedness. There are other texts where it sounds like he believes in reincarnation. It's not clear which one is actually his authoritative doctrine. I'll have more to say about reincarnation later. But now we get to Aristotle. Oh boy. There are two definitions of soul that I want to focus on from Aristotle. The first is, quote, the first actuality of a natural body that is potentially living. I've already told you what actuality and potentiality are, but I'll give you a brief refresher. Actuality is what a thing is or does currently. Potentiality is what a thing could be or could do, but is not doing currently. So take you, for example. You are all actually sitting. And notice how I word this. You are all potentially standing. Not you could be potentially standing. You are potentially standing. That's how it works. Potentialities and actualities are in here within you. You actualize them according to your powers. He said the soul is the first actuality. So he's telling you that there are levels of actuality. This is true. There are two levels of actuality. First actuality and second actuality. First actuality, think of it as the possession of a power. Second actuality as the exertion of that power. I happen to be blessed enough to know French. I can speak it. Am I speaking it now? No, but I still have the power to speak it. So I am in first actuality with respect to speaking French. You all, unless you know French, are in first potentiality with respect to speaking French. Once you learn French, you're in first actuality. But you're only in second actuality when you speak French. So now think about the soul. The soul is the first actuality of a living body. What that means is the soul in itself provides the body which it informs with all of the powers of life. But it doesn't follow that the body constantly uses those powers. You're only digesting when you've got food to digest, but you've always got the power of digestion inherent in your soul. Second definition, the soul is the form of the body. This one should be familiar to us. What does that mean? It means that according to Aristotle, according to what he inaugurates as hylomorphism, poule, Greek for matter, morphe, Greek for form, hylomorphism, matter-formism, according to the hylomorphic view of any substantial form but of the person, the whole human thing must include soul plus body. If you've only got a body, you don't actually have a body. Raise your hand if you've ever seen a dead body.” - French Paul
“Does roadkill count?” - Zhao
“Yes. No hands should be up, according to Aristotle, because there is no such thing as a dead body. There are only corpses. Bodies necessarily are informed. In order for something to be a body, it must have a soul. If the soul departs from the body, it's only accidentally called a body. It's more properly called a corpse. That's how seriously he takes the soul being form of body and body necessarily being informed by soul. Now, let's get to the three levels, which some of you might know. This, I think, is an inheritance of Plato's tripartite soul, but it's not quite the same. Does anyone happen to know what the three levels of soul are, according to Aristotle? Some of you are probably racking your minds. You knew it in another life. You were close. Notice I didn't call them parts of soul, I called them levels of soul, kinds of soul.” - French Paul
“I don't know if I'm right, but body, mind, and soul just come to mind.” - Table #7
“It's difficult to answer what are the levels of blank, and then giving me blank as one of those levels. So careful when you make that kind of an answer. But I like where your head's at, because we're actually pretty close. Is it spirit? No, no, Aristotle has nothing to say about spirit. The three levels of soul. First, the nutritive soul. The nutritive soul is the soul, the level of soul, which governs and provides the powers of nutrition, growth, and reproduction. Next level, the sensitive soul. The sensitive soul, I'll agree, is the level of soul that governs and provides all of the powers of perception, locomotion, and desire, and also contains every single power of the nutritive soul. And straightforwardly enough, the rational soul is the level of soul which governs all intellectual powers, and also contains the sensitive soul. So notice what Aristotle's doing here. He's setting up a sort of layer cake theory of soul, where if you've got one, you've necessarily also got all the lower levels subsumed under the pursuits and goals of the highest. What does this mean? And [The Omahan], this is where your jab a few minutes ago will now land. Yes, animals have souls. Yes, plants have souls. According to Aristotle, if something is alive, it is because it has a soul. Soul is principle of life. Soul is form of an organic living body. So anything that lives has a soul. Plants have nutritive, animals have sensitive, which subsumes and includes nutritive, and humans have rational, which includes and subsumes sensitive. Now, let's get to happiness in Aristotle. Book 10 of the Nicomachean Ethics has something pretty fun to say about the intellectual soul. Aristotle says something to the effect of, It seems that reason, the rational soul in man, is like divinity. It is the most divine portion of the human being. Why does he say that? Because according to Aristotle, divinity is eternality, immateriality, and intelligibility all brought together. So the gods, however many there are, what are they doing? Well, they're blessed. They're perfectly blessed. There's nothing they could need. Why is there nothing they could need? Because the gods are intellects thinking the highest truths. Now, the highest truths are the gods themselves, so Aristotle's gods are self-thinking intellects. He thinks, Aristotle thinks, that we can imitate the gods, not fully, but closely, by learning to tap into the realm of divinity, to contemplate eternal truths, and to familiarize ourselves with these truths so that our contemplation is easier and can last longer. He thinks that that's the highest blessedness we can experience in this life. Why? Because the fulfillment of a thing must be the fulfillment of its highest part. Our highest part is reason. Therefore, our fulfillment, according to Aristotle, is reason. And now Plato and Socrates' elitism comes raging right back in. Because if our highest part is reason, and if the fulfillment of the human person is the fulfillment of its highest part, it follows that philosophy, the rational activity par excellence, is the fulfillment of the human person. So if you don't philosophize, you can only be imperfectly happy as an animal. So, you know, Aristotle and Plato and Socrates are like, this is happiness. I am this. Smart people are morally superior. Exactly. That's literally true...”
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