Plato Republic 427d-445e
A. 427d-434d: identification of the four "cardinal virtues" in the state
1. Wisdom: the state's wisdom is that of the rulers, exercised on behalf of the state as a whole (not some local expertise such as that of the carpenters).
2. Courage: characteristic of the military; preservation of correct belief about what should be feared.
3. Self-discipline: control of the worse by the better, without rebelliousness on the part of the worse.
4. "Justice": all "minding their own business." (Which we have had in view from the beginning of the construction of the state, in the requirement of division of labor according to aptitude.)
B. 434d/e-441c: application to the individual
1. We can adapt these accounts of virtues to the individual if we can find "the same three elements" in the individual personality; i.e. elements corresponding to the rulers (seat of the state's wisdom), military (seat of the state's courage), workers. And (Plato says) we can. What correspond in the individual to the classes in the state are (types of) motivational impulse. (The moral psychology he offers is interesting in its own right, independently of the way it gets exploited in the argument of The Republic. It's an ancestor of something we find in Freud.)
2. The separation of reason from appetite: supposedly required by logic applied to cases of conflict between e.g. thirst and concern for one's health. Appetites are seen as "naturally insatiable" (442a), and hence needing to be held in check by reason. Query: is this lifelike? Dumb animals (creatures of instinct, not "rational animals") are quite good at regulating their pursuit of appetite without benefit of reason. On a different picture, the appetites themselves are more complex than Plato allows: they discriminate among potential objects, and leave off driving an animal to behavior when satiated ("naturally insatiable" is just wrong). No doubt we, who have reason, can and should reflect (use reason) about pursuit of appetites. But part of what reason can use in this reflection is the natural structure of the appetites themselves (they aren't intrinsically disorderly, as Plato suggests). So where does Plato go wrong? Think about the claim, at 439a-b, that thirst as such is desire for drinking as such. The abstraction, allegedly required by logic, yields a dubious conception of what thirst itself is.
3. Spirit (indignation) as a third element: (a) distinguished from appetite on the ground that it sometimes allies itself with reason in conflicts between reason and appetite; (b) distinguished from reason on the ground that it's found in young children and non-human animals (which don't have reason). Point (a) is made with the story of Leontius [Lee gets the name wrong] giving in to the impulse to look at some corpses; Plato sees this as reason and spirit losing in a conflict with appetite. He casually attributes the ghoulish impulse to appetite. We get the idea of appetite (e.g. 439d) from examples like hunger, thirst, desire for sex: physiologically based needs. The original picture of why appetites need to be checked is that they push for more gratification than is right for us. This case isn't like that; it isn't going for too much of something we have a physiological need for. To accommodate it, we need a concept in the area of perversion, which is extra to Plato's official apparatus for expressing suspicion of appetite. (Leontius is said to have been sexually attracted to boys as pale as corpses; if that's right his motivation is sexual. But it's a misdirection of an instinct, not just overindulgence.)
C. 441c-end of passage: the response to the challenge. Hold this over to next lecture.