Plato’s theory on human nature derived from his belief that we have a tripartite structure of our human soul as our soul contains reason, appetite and desire (aka will). He asserts that our human nature is that we have the capacity to use our reason to overcome appetite and desire to make rational decisions, and when the three sections of our soul are not in harmony, we experience mental conflict and irrationality. Plato also emphasised the social aspect of human nature. We are not self-sufficient, we need others, and we benefit from our social interactions, from other person’s talents, aptitudes, and friendship. He used the famous chariot analogy to explain our human nature to be rational: he illustrated an image of a chariot driver driving two winged horses – one black and one white – whilst having full control of the horses and where the chariot was heading. The chariot driver is called reason whilst the white horse is dubbed Thumos (representing our spirit/desire/will) and the black horse Epithumetikon representing appetite. He uses this analogy to explain that our reason has to take full control and overcome desire and appetite for us to make rational decisions and go where we want to go in life. Another common story used to describe Plato’s take on human nature is the story where a thirsty man when faced poisonous water, would control his desire to drink as his rational self would influence him to not drink the water so that he could achieve long-term goals of staying alive. Plato stated that we have the capacity for reason to make rational decisions due to our human nature but his ethics dictated the notion that we should always use our reason to overcome our short-term instincts/desires as this enables us to be objective and make rational decisions which are not influenced by our appetites. We have the capacity for reason but reason should always be utilised to experience mental harmony. Essentially, our reason should take over the other sections of our tripartite soul for us to have wisdom and cut through false information. In fact, Plato declared (in Plato's Republic) that the person who was totally driven by reason was the Philosopher King.
However, Plato’s perception of human nature could be wrong. Plato perceives man to be inherently rational as he believed that we can use our reason to control desire and appetite, but is this what is happening? Yes, Plato's theory has concluded that we can make decisions which sacrifice short term gain in exchange for long-term benefit but is our rational self really acting objectively and is it not influenced by our desires or appetites? To answer this question, I will use the example presented by Plato himself: Plato talked of how a thirsty man would control his desire to drink water in the face of poisoned water by using his rational self to exercise control over impulse. This may indeed show that we have pure objective rationality but we need to think about what exactly happened in that example – it appears that our rational self was acting on a desire itself. Our rationality was influenced by our desire to not die so this suggests that our rationality is not an objective/autonomous soul but more likely a refined set of instincts/impulses that we possess; our rationality may simply be a tool of getting what we want in the smartest way possible rather than a tool to control all of our desires and impulses. Therefore, the tripartite soul could be rendered a combination of desire, appetite and long-term desire as it does not seem that rationality is purely objective. People could also have a selective perception of facts to make a seemingly rational decision which actually fulfils their desire/appetite (their goal for their action). For example, when one is craving a McDonald’s burger, they could simply ignore anything unhealthy about it and state that the vegetables present will benefit them in the long run. Using selective facts, they would make a seemingly rational decision to buy the burger but their decision would be fulfiling their desire to eat McDonald’s. In this case, reason is not the chariot driver – desire is the driver whilst reason is rendered one of the winged horses.
