@article{THESIS,
      recid = {11352},
      author = {Rothschild, Nathan},
      title = {Defending One's Own: Plato's Account of Thumos},
      publisher = {University of Chicago},
      school = {Ph.D.},
      address = {2024-03},
      number = {THESIS},
      pages = {253},
      abstract = {	The main claim of this project is that in his tri-partite  psychology, Plato theorizes spirit (thumos) as the defense  of one’s own (to oikeion). 	More specifically, my claim is  that as understood by Plato, the spirited part of the soul  distinguishes between what is one’s own and alien  (allotrion) and motivates action aimed at defending what it  takes to be one’s own from alien threats. It is a central  commitment of this reading that Plato conceives of to  oikeion as a form of value, or way of being good. In the  first person, one’s own is mine, or more perspicuously, me.  Thus, I am arguing that Plato sees the spirited part as  defined by an identification of the self (to oikeion) with  the good. Plato also, and importantly, believes that this  spirited sense of self can extend to other people and  things insofar as they too are taken to be oikeion.  However, the concern for others, and “us vs. them” thinking  Plato sees as resulting from the extension of the spirited  part’s sense of self, is by Plato’s lights the expression  of a distinctive form of self-concern wherein what is good  is me, and the bad an essentially threatening other. 
	This  reading of Plato’s conception of thumos has two primary  virtues. First, it explains Plato’s sense of the spirited  part of the soul as a limited—and violent— principle of  psychic unity. Second, it shifts and deepens our  understanding of Plato’s conception of spirit, by revealing  that Plato conceives of thumos as a non-rational form of  thought constituted by a limited understanding of the good  as the self. Coordinate with these two virtues of my  reading, the dissertation has two parts.
	In the first part  of the dissertation (comprised of chapters 1-3), I argue  for reading thumos as the defense of one’s own on the  grounds that it explains Plato’s characterization of the  spirited part as a limited and violent principle of unity.  
In the second part of the dissertation (comprising  chapters 4 and 5), I further develop the content of Plato’s  understanding of thumos as the defense of one’s own. My aim  in doing so, is to both firmly establish that Plato  conceives of spirit as on par with appetite and reason in  terms of its significance for human life, and to show that  his univocal account constitutes a nuanced and illuminating  interpretation of that aspect of our psychology he labels  thumos. },
      url = {http://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/11352},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.6082/uchicago.11352},
}