Tomorrow I'm lecturing on Plato and psychology. (I'm having the kids read Jonathan Haidt, whom I quote in Reason and Persuasion, in the Meno intro chapter.) Anyway, Haidt quotes Plato's famous metaphor, from Phaedrus (246a - 254e). The soul is like a charioteer having a bit of trouble. The horse on the right is noble and white. The dark, shaggy one, on the left, is deaf as a post and yields only to the whip. These correspond to the honor-loving and appetitive parts of the soul, respectively. The charioteer is, of course, reason. And there are (sort of) a couple versions of the myth, so maybe the horses have wings.
I've been meaning to make an illustration to go with this one for a while and I finally got around to it tonight. I think it turned out alright. Flu is mostly kicked by this point, but work is piling up.
bbwaring-at-yahoo-dot-com
Very nice. I like the colors.
Posted by: Brock | October 02, 2009 at 10:31 PM
Love the expression of the honor-loving horse. Reminds me of the picture of the Joker's reproachfully exceptive smirk that is this year's Photoshop stand-in for "That behavior or speech act does not reflect well on you."
Posted by: Salient | October 05, 2009 at 12:22 AM
So is the charioteer reason or the soul?
Posted by: southpaw | October 05, 2009 at 06:32 AM
Aren't "reason" and "the soul" the same thing, to a first approximation?
Posted by: The Modesto Kid | October 05, 2009 at 07:21 AM