Indignation, therefore, necessarily involves an evaluative belief, and is thus the natural ally and auxiliary of reason in its struggle with the appetites - a struggle which would otherwise be heavily weighted in the appetites' favour, since they are insatiable, while reason is relatively weak.43 Indeed, at first we are told that the thumos never takes the side of the desires against reason (440b), though this is soon qualified by the proviso 'unless corrupted by bad upbringing' (441a). In 440c the thumos is simply 'much more likely' to take up arms for reason. Does this mean that thumos is simply a 'kind' of reason (logistikou ti eidos 44oe8)? Socrates denies this: conflicts between thumos and reason can sometimes occur, showing that the two must comprise separate parts of the psuche.** As an example, he cites the anger of Odysseus when he returns in disguise to his palace in Ithaca to discover that his servant girls have been sleeping with his wife's unwelcome suitors. Odysseus' immediate response is a furious de-sire to kill the disloyal servants; however, if he gives in to his anger he will ruin his disguise and thus reduce his chances of achieving his main purpose, which is to kill the suitors themselves. With this in view, 'striking himself on the chest he called his heart to order'.45 According to Socrates, this internal dispute reflects a distinction between unreasoning thumos and 'the power to reflect about the better and the worse'. If we consider all the conflicts involving thumos^ we can begin to see why reason and thumos can be at odds. It is one of the main tenets of the Republic that reason always desires to know the truth (581b) and does not assume that the appearances are necessarily a reliable guide. The thumos\ however, does not question the ap-pearances: at 440c it is said to fight simply for 'what seems to be just'.46 Linked to this is the fact that it is also distinguishable from reason in the scope of its evaluations. It responds to certain acts as 43 442a5-7; 442C5- 44 To say that the thumos is reason's natural auxiliary only means that it is likely to side with reason in a conflict between reason and appetite; it does not preclude struggles between thumos and reason in which the appetites are not involved. See Irwin 1995: 212. 45 Od. 20.17. It is clear from 20.5-10 that Homer here views the heart (kardie) as the seat of thumos. 46 TCO 5oKOUVTi SiKaico. This unquestionin g acceptanc e of appearance s is of cours e differ-ent from the concern for appearances as appearances that we will find attributed to the thumos in Book 9 and to the timocratic state and man in Book 8. The thumos in the Republic 19 fine or shameful, just or unjust, but it is not directly concerned with the special provenance of reason, the overall good of state or soul.47 Its responses are immediate, unreflective and above all par-tial, they are concerned with moral issues only in so far as those issues relate directly to the agent's self-image. It is notable, for instance, that there is no mention of an agent's thumos becoming indignant if someone else is being wronged. At this point some may think a difficulty arises. To describe the thumos' responses as partial may be thought to beg the vexed ques-tion of whether Plato regards the parts of the soul as homunculi, as agents within agents. A proper consideration of this issue would clearly require another book; here I shall simply state that I do not believe that the homunculus question is a genuine problem for Plato. I agree with Annas (1981: 142-6) that homunculi only pres-ent a logical problem if they replicate all the features of the whole which they are introduced to explain, and that Plato's parts do not do this. I also agree with Price (1989: 260) that if the mind is partly its own construct, homunculi are thus legitimate in that they reflect this self-construction. My present point is simply that in 44oc~44ib Plato distinguishes two kinds of beliefs (though they will ideally coincide in practice): beliefs which give rise to indig-nation and anger and involve a partial viewpoint and fully rational beliefs based on reasoning about the overall good. If one grants these differences between thumos and reason, it is easy enough to appreciate how thumos on its own can get things wrong. Firstly, given that it responds to the mere appearance of an offence, it can flare up in a situation where anger is simply uncalled for: no offence has in fact been committed. Secondly, even if an offence has occurred, thumos can still overreact: it has a tendency to 'boil over' (440C7) in a way which may either be inap-propriate to the scale of the offence or unhelpful to the agent's long-term goals. In such cases, thumos must be quieted; reason must 'call it back to heel and calm it, as a shepherd calls his dog'
— Angela Hobbs
Plato's Odysseus is doing something more consequential than mastering an impulse. When he strikes his chest and calls his heart to order, he is rehearsing the entire Republic's wager: that the soul's indignant, honor-hungry fire can be domesticated into reason's servant without losing its force. Hobbs shows the wager more clearly than most commentators — thūmos is not appetite, not reason, but a third thing that fights for appearances of justice rather than justice itself. It responds to how things look to the agent, to the agent's standing in the world. It cannot step back to ask whether the offense was real.
What deserves scrutiny is what that step-back costs. The shepherd-and-dog image at the passage's close is illuminating in a direction Plato may not have intended: you do not reason with a dog, you subordinate it. The thūmos that fights for what seems just, that makes no distinction between self-image and righteous anger, is precisely the soul-organ most hostile to the pneumatic solution — the lifting out, the cooler evaluation, the all-things-considered view from above. Plato's therapeutic move quiets the very faculty that would refuse to quiet. Odysseus controls his thūmos here not because he has become wiser but because a longer revenge is on offer. Strip the revenge away and there is no obvious reason left to hold the chest.
Angela Hobbs·Plato and the Hero: Courage, Manliness and the Impersonal Good·2000