The Soul at Civil War
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Socrates — ἔστι δὲ ὅτε στασιάζετον· καὶ τοτὲ μὲν ἡ ἑτέρα ἄλλοτε δὲ ἡ ἑτέρα κρατεῖ. δόξης μὲν οὖν ἐπὶ τὸ ἄριστον λόγῳ ἀγούσης καὶ κρατούσης τῷ κράτει σωφροσύνη ὄνομα·
Socrates gives the soul a constitution. Two powers move us: an inborn desire that reaches for pleasure, and an acquired judgment that aims at what is best. Sometimes they agree; often they are at war, with first one and then the other gaining the upper hand. When judgment prevails — steering by reason toward the best — the state of soul it produces has a proper name: sōphrosynē, temperance or self-command. The definition is doing real philosophical work, mapping the inner life as a contest for rule. In a moment its dark twin will get its name too: when desire wins, the result is hybris.
Socrates's definition turns political. Within us two forces — an inborn desire for pleasure and an acquired judgment aiming at the best — sometimes pull together and sometimes fall into civil war, first one ruling, then the other. When judgment wins, leading by reason toward the best, that inner regime has a name: sōphrosynē, self-command.
The word to watch is stasiazeton — 'the two are at civil war.' Stasis was the Greeks' most dreaded political word: a city torn into warring factions, citizens killing citizens. Socrates borrows it for the inside of a single person, and the borrowing is a whole philosophy in miniature. The soul is a polis; its parts can revolt against one another; and virtue is the right constitution, the state in which the better element rules. This is the seed of the Republic's grand analogy of soul and city, and of the Phaedrus's own image just ahead — the charioteer wrestling two horses toward or away from the good. Notice, though, where this speech aims the definition. It casts erōs as a form of the appetite that must be ruled, so that self-command means holding love down. The palinode will keep the picture of a soul in tension but overturn the verdict: there the maddening pull is not the faction to be suppressed but, rightly understood, the wing that lifts the whole soul upward. Same civil war, opposite reading of which side is the god's.
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