Composite person

Use in the book

Socrates offers three alternatives: soul, body, or the combination. The list is treated by the speakers as exhaustive. Body alone is quickly excluded because it has already been assigned the role of what is ruled. Alcibiades then tentatively accepts that the combination might rule the body and so be the person. Socrates rejects this as the least acceptable answer: if one of the two does not share in rule, there is no way for both together to rule.

The crucial step concerns the attribution of a function to a composite. It assumes that the whole cannot be the relevant ruler unless both constituents participate in ruling. A reader may question that assumption; complex agents often act through one of their components. The text does not investigate that objection. Its local force is to reserve primary agency for soul, under the description of the person as what rules the body.

The distinction must therefore not be treated as a complete analysis of embodied personhood. The proof's own qualification follows immediately: it is adequate for the current purpose, while exact knowledge awaits the larger inquiry into the self itself. Nor does rejection of the composite show that human life proceeds without bodies. The dialogue has established precisely the opposite practical relationship, a soul using a body. The issue is what counts as the authoritative self to be known and improved.

Places to read

1. 130aSoul, body, and their combination form the three candidates
2. 130b–130c2The combination is excluded because body does not share in ruling
3. 130c–130dThe resulting identification is sufficient but not precise

Translation in this edition

“The two together” accurately renders συναμφότερον without introducing the technical vocabulary of a later substance theory. The supplied apparatus at 130b11 distinguishes the printed συνάρχοντος from a reading meaning simply “ruling”; the shared prefix makes the argument about joint rule explicit.

ὅλος

Attested: τὸ ὅλον τοῦτο (to holon touto; 130a). At 130a: This whole: Socrates' explanatory phrase for soul and body taken together as one candidate account of the person. Lexical identification: lemma: ὅλος. See Composite person.

συναμφότερον

Attested: τὸ συναμφότερον (to synamphoteron; 130b). At 130b: The composite of soul and body, considered and rejected as the body's ruler because body does not share in ruling. Lexical identification: substantivized neuter of συναμφότερος. See Composite person.

συνάρχω

Attested: συνάρχοντος (synarchontos; 130b). To rule jointly; the body is denied a share in ruling, the premise used to exclude the soul-body composite as the ruling person. Lexical identification: lemma: συνάρχω. See Composite person.