Normally when we use the term "I" it assumes unity. When we say "this is what I do" it assumes the whole of oneself. Plato reminds us that in reality we are a tripartite essence (three in one) So in reality Man is not one; Man is many, one part of our collective essence is active at a time. The three main parts and the many parts of each side of the collective psych are:
The human condition suggests the collective essence is out of balance. The majority are led by appetites. Less are led by emotions, and even less are capable of the rational dialectic. They cannot understand each other but rather talk at each other. Those ruled by the mind thinks the artist waste its time feeling while the artist thinks those ruled by the mind think too much. The person ruled by appetites is only concerned with doing what they have been taught to do.The appetites, which includes all our myriad desires for various pleasures, comforts, physical satisfactions, and bodily ease. There are so many of these appetites that Plato does not bother to enumerate them, but he does note that they can often be in conflict even with each other. This element of the soul is represented by the ugly black horse on the left in the Chariot analogy.
The spirited, or hot-blooded, part, i.e., the part that gets angry when it perceives (for example) an injustice being done. This is the part of us that loves to face and overcome great challenges, the part that can steel itself to adversity, and that loves victory, winning, challenge, and honor. (Note that Plato's use of the term "spirited" here is not the same as "spiritual." He means "spirited" in the same sense that we speak of a high-spirited horse, for example, one with lots of energy and power.) This element of the soul is represented by the noble white horse on the right.
The mind (nous), our conscious awareness, is represented by the charioteer who is guiding (or who at least should be guiding) the horses and chariot. This is the part of us that thinks, analyzes, looks ahead, rationally weighs options, and tries to gauge what is best and truest overall.
There is no inner cooperation between the three parts of our psych but Man's evolution requires freedom from the cave so they become one unified whole rather than a myriad of conflicting parts.
The whole person or the inwardly balanced person becomes aware that they experience their daily lives out of balance through the senses as devolved fragments of their reality as forms. Where we experience the visual through the senses we can experience their essence as forms through the intelligible. For example we have many concepts of justice yet the reality of justice exists as a form.“[Education] isn’t the craft of putting sight into the soul. Education takes for granted that sight is there but that it isn’t turned the right way or looking where it ought to look, and it tries to redirect it appropriately.”
- The Republic, Book VII
The purpose of education is first to balance the tripartite soul or essence so it functions as a conscious whole rather than as conflicting parts. Next it must be allowed to inwardly turn towards the light and away from the shadows on the wall to experience the source of forms. A person who has achieved inner balance of the tripartite soul and experienced the attraction to the brightest light is called an educated person. That is why there are so few educated people and so many content to argue opinions and partial truths.Education ought to strengthen and refine humans’ ability to see beyond the “visible” and into the “intelligible,” to grasp these more eternal concepts — ultimately, that unifying, singular notion of “the good” itself.
According to Plato, all universal existence is divided into two realms: the “visible” and the “intelligible.”
The former contains all tangible, material objects, what is immediately accessible to us on a day-to-day basis, but all of these are only imperfect copies of the perfect, ideal forms of the latter realm of the “intelligible.”
That is, there is a perfect “being” or essence of concepts and ideas, and the physical objects we encounter are only flawed manifestations of these ideals.