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This chapter examines the relation between rationality and happiness in Plato's thought. In some early dialogues a correct conception of what happiness is, is sufficient to achieve it; hence all wrong-doing is caused by misconception or miscalculation, which are kinds of irrationality. In some dialogues, miscalculation is itself caused by inappropriate desires, which gives the latter motivational force, albeit not independent of cognitive irrationality. In the Republic and subsequent dialogues, non-rational impulses have independent motivational force, and rationality consists in co-ordinating them under the direction of reason to promote the individual's happiness. In the Republic, Plato is optimistic about the possibility of achieving that co-ordination, but other dialogues show a more pessimistic picture, in which one prominent type of non-rational drive, desire for bodily satisfaction, cannot be genuinely co-ordinated with reason, but can at best be suppressed. That pessimistic picture reflects a heightened insistence on the distinction between the rational soul (which alone is immortal, and which is identified with the real self) and the non-rational parts, which are temporary features of the embodied soul.

At the end of the Republic, Plato sets forth his notion of the immortality of the soul. This has something to do with the second quotation on the shaft of the Berkeley Plato which states,“Every soul is immortal.”.According to that book, soul is, indeed, immortal and that the total number of souls is immutable; each lives in cycles of eleven hundred years, depending upon the justice and virtue of the hundred years just completed. This chapter notes that the image projected by the artifact is clear: if we lead the good, the just, the wise life, at the end of the race, we will be victorious and go on our final victory lap to collect our ribbons. This is the beribboned Plato at Berkeley—a portrait of the good, immortal soul; of the virtuous member of society; of the philosopher and of his philosophy.

This chapter addresses the question of how definite and how important the distinction between humans and nonhuman animals is. It begins with a survey of the very varied and often very close relations between them. It then discusses the ideas that men have souls; that men are, or that most of them, at any rate, sometimes or even often are, truly free agents, moved by will and not merely by instinct, on the one hand morally responsible for what they choose to do and, on the other hand, because of their freedom, not to be made predictable and manipulable by having their conduct explained by their nature and circumstances together with laws of human and social science; and that men alone are the appropriate objects of direct moral consideration, the only bearers of rights, the only moral ends in themselves. The chapter asks whether the actual differences between men and animals give an adequate foothold to the exclusive status accorded to human beings. It argues that in no case is the total exclusion of animals from the respect and consideration men are accustomed to giving themselves justified, although the differences that really exist between men and animals can be reasonably argued to have some qualifying consequences for the morality of our treatment of the latter. If that is right, there are, in the case of each of the interesting ideas involved, two possibilities. Either we can conclude that animals too have immortal souls, free wills, and moral rights. Or we can conclude that since they do not, we also do not.