Does a Monster Rule Your Life?

What is the human soul? What does it consist of? How does justice or injustice effect the nature of the soul? These questions are what have been plaguing people for centuries. Plato attempts to answer these questions in his book Republic. Throughout the book, he utilizes many analogies to try to explain his point of view on this topic. However, the one analogy that truly sticks out in this book is the one of the multicolored beast, the lion, and the human being. This paper will attempt to reason with these questions and Plato’s view of the answers to these questions.
In the Republic, Plato introduces a few creatures. The first which is a “multicolored beast with a ring of many heads that it can grow and change at will--some from gentle, some from savage animals.”(588c) The second creature to be introduced is a lion and then a human. He then proceeds to mesh all of these creatures into one so that they grow naturally together, but to the eye the fusion of creatures ...