Zgurich, Brianna2024-04-052024-04-052023-08Zgurich_cornellgrad_0058F_13861http://dissertations.umi.com/cornellgrad:13861https://hdl.handle.net/1813/114818218 pagesConfidence, courage, and shame are typically agreed upon by scholars to be what Plato refers to in his middle dialogues as spirited (thumoeidic) motivations; i.e., strong emotional responses that are not themselves rational (i.e., not calculating about what is best), nor appetitive (i.e., about bodily objects of desire such as food, drink, and sex). This dissertation focuses on courage and shame in particular. While courage finds itself as one of Plato’s four cardinal virtues (along with wisdom, moderation, and justice), shame, a particularly strong passion that can result in either virtuous or non-virtuous responses, is not quite so easy to place. Further the roles of these two motivations for virtuous action, along with their connection to reason, are not fully appreciated by scholars. I argue that we can use the psychology of Plato's final dialogue the Laws, and especially the famous "puppet passage", to understand what these “spirited motivations”. I have found that these motivations are especially closely linked to reason—not only in following reason but also in enabling reason’s best condition: wisdom. Along the way, I address some of the early and middle dialogues, arguing that the speech of the laws in the Crito appeals to shame (before those who share one’s conception of the good), and that such shame is crucial to Socrates' elenchus; however, whether the elenchus succeeds at getting the refuted party to seek knowledge or to avoid the shame by bringing down others (as in the Apology and also the Laches) depends on the person’s conception of the good. Further, I argue that the myth of the Protagoras depicts shame’s role as reason-dependent and, for that reason, is conducive to political community. Finally, I argue that courage in the Republic, understood as belief-preservation, is crucial for the development of reason’s best condition: wisdom. So, using the Laws as a framework, I argue that we can recognize the interdependence of courage and shame with rational beliefs for virtuous action, answer questions that arise from some of the early and middle Platonic dialogues, as well as see a consistent, complex, and unique moral psychology emerge from Plato’s corpus.enAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationalaischunēcourageelenchusshamespirited motivationsvirtuedissertation or thesishttps://doi.org/10.7298/kdws-gb42