[437c]
just described?
Will you not say, for example, that the soul of one who desires either
strives for that which he desires or draws towards its embrace what it
wishes to accrue to it; or again, in so far as it wills that anything be
presented to it, nods assent to itself thereon as if someone put the
question,1 striving towards its attainment?”
“I would say so,” he said. “But what of
not-willing2 and not consenting
nor yet desiring, shall we not put these under the soul's rejection3 and repulsion from itself and
1 Cf. Aristotle De anima 434 a 9. The Platonic doctrine that opinion,δόξα, is discussion of the soul with herself, or the judgement in which such discussion terminates (Cf. Unity of Plato's Thought, p. 47) is here applied to the specific case of the practical reason issuing in an affirmation of the will.
2 ἀβουλεῖν recalls the French coinage “nolonté,” and the southern mule's “won't-power.” Cf. Epistle vii. 347 A, Demosthenes Epistle ii. 17.
3 Cf. Aristotle's ἀνθέλκειν, De anima 433 b 8. “All willing is either pushing or pulling,” Jastrow, Fact and Fable in Psychology, p. 336. Cf. the argument in Spencer's First Principles 80, that the phrase “impelled by desires” is not a metaphor but a physical fact. Plato's generalization of the concepts “attraction” and “repulsion” brings about a curious coincidence with the language of a materialistic, physiological psychology (cf. Lange, History of Materialism, passim), just as his rejection in the Timaeus of attraction and actio in distans allies his physics with that of the most consistent materialists.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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