 What are you going to do with your life? What should you do with your life? How should you treat other people? Should you obey the laws? How should you spend your money? What should you do for a career? Should you spend any money? These are all questions in ethical theory. The study of ethics is the study of how you are to live your life. What sort of actions should you take? What sort of person should you be? I know it's very popular today to say that ethics is merely an opinion or what you have. You can go that route, but I don't think you really think that. If you think that ethical theory is merely a matter of opinion, then you think that how you decided to live your life is merely an opinion. But you don't think that. You think there are very good reasons for why you do the things that you do. You will sit there and justify your reasons with somebody who disagrees with you. That's fine. What we're engaging in is ethical theory. We're looking at Plato's ethical theory. We just left the forums. We just looked at what Plato had to say about reality and what this ultimate reality is. But we're not done with that yet. For Plato, his metaphysics, his theory of the forums ties in very strongly with his ethical theory. In a nutshell, how you are to live your life is going to have a lot to do with what you are. To answer this question, I should say, of what you are, Plato is going to do something perhaps a little bit more broad or a little bit more specific than what Socrates did. In class, we looked at what your definition or your meaning or essence is. This is important for Plato, but maybe just to back up a little bit and take a look at the pieces, then we'll get an idea of what the whole is. For Plato, there's going to be three things. The first is probably really obvious. At the very least, what you are is a body. You have a body which means you have physical needs. You have physical urges. This includes anything from food to exercise to warmth to shelter to comfort. And it can even go to, how do we say, the more purely bodily appetites. I'm trying to keep the video PG rating here. But you know, your basic, say, weekend in Vegas, right? There are these appetites as far as that's concerned. So this is the first part of what you are is your appetites. And this has to deal with the bodily. Not even just physical pleasures, but physical upkeep of the body. So imagine, for some of you, this happens. Especially those of you in my 8 a.m. class where that alarm goes off in the morning and you absolutely just do not want to get out of bed and go to philosophy. I know you're excited about going to philosophy, but you're just not that excited about getting up for an 8 a.m. class. Well, that's a real lack of motivation. A lack of motivation, feeling kind of down. And kind of on the other end of the scale, sometimes there are things to get very excited about. You're very eager to take them on. Maybe it's going on a vacation, having fun with your friends, or maybe it's diving into a project or whatever your career is. So maybe you're really excited about making paintings. This excitement, this drive, this willpower, that's the second part of what you are. The first part are the appetites. These bodily appetites, the need for some of the physical concerns of the body and maybe some of the pleasures. The second part is what's called the spirit. The willingness to go out and move and to live and to take on what you want to do for that day. The spirit just kind of goes, right? It kind of just goes after things that you want. And sometimes that's the body, and then sometimes that's something else. So we have the appetites, which is what the body wants, the physical desires we have, the spirit, that's the motivation, that's the go, that's the drive, that's the willingness to move and to go forward. Then you have reason. And reason is not just merely knowledge. Reason is this awareness of the goals. It's what discovers what the goals are. And more importantly, it discovers which goals are better than others. Not all goals are created equal. Some goals are for the sake of others. Some goals you seek just for itself. So for instance, pleasure seems to be one of those things that you seek just for its own sake. For thinking about health, health seems to be something that we think about just for its own sake. It's something that we want just for its own sake. Now whether that's by doing a particular set of exercises, say lifting weights versus aerobics, say like riding a bicycle, those would be goals kind of on the way. The reason is the thing that understands what the goals are and which ones are more important than others. Now you might have the goal to collect the largest ball of yarn. Maybe you have that goal. But that goal seems like it could be less important than satisfying, say, the needs for health, say eating right and for exercise. So reason is what discovers those goals. Now to kind of illustrate what happens with a person, Plato gives us this image of a charioteer. A charioteer. Now let's take a look at that. Now it's been a long time since chariots were used as a means of public transportation. But to give you an idea of what Plato is talking about, imagine let's say a little two-wheeled cart behind which you stand. And this cart is attached to two horses. Now the horses are pretty powerful animals. I don't know if you've seen a horse up close, but nothing compares to seeing a horse up close as to say like a picture. With a picture you don't get it. When you see a horse up close, there's a very real difference. Now horses are really big, powerful animals. They're very, very strong, a lot stronger than any one of us. So to, you know, get yourself around with a chariot, you have a chariot, a little two-wheeled cart, not a whole lot to it, and you have a pair of horses. Now if these horses are wild, they're doing whatever you want, you're not going to get anywhere very fast. You're not going to get anywhere fast at all. A horse might go somewhere, but you won't be going anywhere. So in order to be able to move forward to get to where you want to go, you have to be able to control the horses, which is very hard, which is very hard. Now for Plato, this is the way he describes the person as a chariot. Spirit and appetite are the two horses. Appetite wants things. It wants bodily things, food, pleasures, exercise, excitement maybe. We might even throw that in. It wants excitement. Spirit is what drives them, what pulls the horses, and spirit can go anywhere. It doesn't care where it goes, just as long as it's going somewhere. Now spirit could just follow the appetites, but it's up to reason to figure out which goals are going to get you where you want to go. Reason is the thing that directs the chariot. So reason has to reign in the appetites and the spirit in order to get to the destination. Now it might be a little bit fuzzy as to what this destination is supposed to be. We'll talk about that more a little bit in the next video. But reason is going to help find that goal. Reason is going to discover the goal to head both the body and spirit. So we have this idea of the chariot here. Reason is what reigns in spirit and appetite. It's what controls the chariot and heads it off in the right direction. Reason is what's aware of those goals. Now how does it do that? Why do we need to have awareness of goals and why do we need to think about that anyway? Why can't we just follow the body? Well, think about this. You already have some idea in your head that these simple pleasures are not the only thing worth going after. You wouldn't just talk about food. If you simply just go after the pleasurable foods, just the good tasting ones, you're going to be unhealthy real fast. It's not to say that the healthy foods are not tasty. But if you're so concerned is simply for the pleasure of taste, you're going to make a lot of really bad choices. So pleasure is a good thing, but it's not the only good thing. It's not the only thing worth considering, and it's really not the most important thing. So beyond that anyway, what kind of choices can we make? What kinds of goals are good ones? That's a really interesting question. We already have some idea that pursuing just any goal is not really a great thing to do. It is possible for me to start collecting and make the largest ball of twine. Does that mean I should do that? Well, you know, I kind of think I ought to study philosophy. Kind of think I ought to do more than just simply amass twine. So the question of which goals are going to be the most important ones and how do we discover those? That's the job of reason to carry that out. If you want a clue as to how reason is supposed to do this, remember we just got finished talking about the good, the true, and the beautiful with those platonic forms. So Plato's giving us this picture, the three parts of a person. What it means to be person is to have spirit, life, animation, drive, motivation. It's to have the appetites, food, pleasures, health, exercise. It's also to have reason. That's knowledge. It's awareness of the goals, which means you have to be aware of what's real. And you can see very quickly how this ties in with what he talks about with the forms. Because remember, these appearances are not as real as the objects. The objects, the particular objects are not as real as the forms. And what's the most real of all the forms is the true, the good, and the beautiful. So we'll very quickly paint this picture for Plato that this ultimate goal for people to pursue is this contemplation of the forms, of the true, the good, and the beautiful. We're going to talk more about that in the next time. But for the moment, this gives Plato kind of an explanation of why people do the wrong thing. So he's following very closely along with Socrates here, but he probably loads in a little bit more. I remember Socrates said that knowledge is virtue. To know the good is to do the good. And Plato's pretty much following Socrates here. He's following along with this idea that knowledge is virtue. So why is it that people do the wrong things? Well, Plato says it's because reason hasn't been doing its job guiding spirit. Spirit doesn't care where it goes. It just goes. It just goes. And spirit could just follow appetites or just pursue pleasures. And before long, you're not healthy. You're not in a good way. You haven't achieved that goal overall. Now, if reason is doing its job, it guides spirit and it guides appetites. It balances both of them. So what happens when people are not doing the right thing is because they're pursuing the wrong goal. Knowledge will always direct spirit towards the right goal. Or reason will always direct spirit towards the right goal. But if reason doesn't know enough or is not doing its job, it could be pulled away by the appetites. So this is Plato's idea of morality. Reason discovers the goals that directs the person, reigns in the spirit and the appetite. Now, already this sets up kind of this harsh contrast between bodily appetites and reason, or we might call intellectual appetites and bodily appetites. And Plato very strongly sides with the intellectual appetites. And we do this a lot too. What we sort of do, we talk out of both sides of our mouths with this one. But Plato's definitely painted this picture where reason is guiding you. And if you are doing the wrong thing, it's because you don't know what you're doing.