Plato’s Republic justified class rule by mapping soul parts onto the three classes

Evidence

Plato’s The Republic, addressing the question of justice, deduces that the human soul has three parts: the “logical”, thinking part; the “spirited” part, by which we develop anger and get into a temper; and the “appetitive” part, by which we experience hunger, thirst, eroticism, love for moneymaking and other such desires. The book also categorises men into three classes based on which part of their soul masks the others: the ‘guardians’ are persons in whom the logical part dominates, in the ‘auxiliaries’ spirit dominates, and the ‘producers’ are people who have let their appetite dominate. The guardians must rule, the auxiliaries must help in running the guardians’ writ, and the producers must work. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 1114

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains Plato’s tripartite soul and corresponding class scheme that Ambedkar is critiquing.
• XREF: Plato’s three-part soul as a precedent for varna ideology connects to the guna-karma theory of the Bhagavad Gita and to the general pattern of justifying caste by scripture/deduction. — connects to: A single reason-over-nature dualism structures every domain of Plato’s philosophy — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 312; Liberalism’s model of reason derives from Plato’s myth of the soul’s three parts; Plato through German idealism grounded reason in an objective hierarchy of beings. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1457 (+4 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: A single reason-over-nature dualism structures every domain of Plato’s philosophy — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 312; Liberalism’s model of reason derives from Plato’s myth of the soul’s three parts; Plato through German idealism grounded reason in an objective hierarchy of beings. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1457 (+4 more)