The central thesis of the book is that emotions – and together with them thumos – are ‘intermédiaire et médiateur’ (p. 11). This is so because, as is told in the Republic, thumos is the middle part of the soul and its role is to mediate between reason and desire.

In the first part R. begins with an overview of the place of emotions in Greek thought before Plato. He presents Homer's use of moral emotions such as anger (nemesis), high-spirit (thumos) and reverence (aidôs) in depicting human motivation and deliberation. In the Homeric epics thumos is the very seat of sensitivity to other people, to moral norms and to one's own image. Then Plato's early dialogues (Symposium included) are considered in order to account for the importance of emotions in organising and sustaining the moral order on the one hand and their functioning in collective life on the other. R. presents several meanings of thumos, the most important of them being ‘spontaneous reaction’ (p. 73), the core of several moral emotions such as shame, right anger and restraint. Yet, thumos as such can hardly be a basis for constructing ethics. Finally R. passes on to Socrates' intellectualist approach to emotions which, however, is not about eliminating emotions altogether but about their modification so that they be guided by rational thought. This is feasible since Socrates ‘defends a cognitivist conception of desire and emotions’ (p. 80). Seen from this angle, an attempt at making emotions more rational or in agreement with reason amounts to putting order into the structure of the soul.

This is what R. analyses in the second part. In the Republic, theorising of the tripartition of the soul is completed by means of explicitly making thumos its middle function or element. Thumos is intended to solve problems of mental conflicts, for it is conceived as intervening between reason and desire. Desire, thumos (emotions) and reason are three elements of a hierarchical structure which works better or worse in each particular case. That depends on how a mental conflict is solved which, in turn, depends on the role emotions play in a conflict. To understand this better, R. analyses the particular ontology of thumos. Despite all efforts Plato makes to grasp the essence of thumos, its limits can be defined – R. claims – only by reference to both reason and desire. Because of that, ‘the limits of thymos’ actions are hazy and its definition is left deliberately vague' (p. 176). Obviously, thumos is a faculty which makes the soul sensitive to a number of affections. But to the question about the nature of these affections, R. answers that they are such as to make a human being ‘be committed to a sort of relation with himself’ (p. 180). In this context thumos is for R. the faculty which modifies ‘epistemological operations into long lasting disposition’ (p. 193). Finally R. touches upon thumos' being the middle between soul and body. To conceive it thus, R. relies on a Homeric approach (which is odd in so far as in previous chapters R. claimed that a Homeric approach is superseded by Plato's), since in Homer thumos plays a physiological as well as a psychological role. Thumos is labelled ‘literally a psychophysiological state’ (p. 203) by R. who is well aware of its ambiguous status in Plato (as it is presented differently in e.g. the Phaedrus and in the Timaeus). In R.'s view ‘thymos can and should master affections of which the soul is a victim because of the desiring part’ (p. 220). As it is, the middle position of thumos results in its double function: to open for the soul an access to the body on the one hand, and to protect the soul against too strong an influence of the body on the other.

The third part is mainly about social psychology. First R. deals in general with Plato's idea of shaping character by balancing the three parts of the soul and the inborn constitution of a human being. Since thumos is an aspect of the soul determined in the lowest degree, its modification is easier than that of the two other parts and, accordingly, its importance in education is shown to be vital. Thumos is therefore the central recipient of education, both for the worse (when it sides with desire) and for the better (when it sides with reason), for it is ‘neither good nor bad by itself, it is simply to be educated’ (p. 274). Given the parallel between the soul's and city's threefold structure, the same is valid for Plato's project of political or, better, social anthropology. The middle class because of its intermediate position is ambivalent in value: it can side with either the lowest or the highest class. At its best, the middle class is an auxiliary of the highest. And since it corresponds to thumos and emotions, it means that in the social structure too affectivity has an important function. If it is true that not all individuals are philosophers, they are to become good citizens none the less. Their structure's intermediate layer should be brought up correctly. Emotions are then the very ‘junctions of two movements: one which begins with an opinion and influences the affections of the soul, and another which begins with the affections and produces an opinion in a closer conformity with the law’ (p. 323).

The conclusions R. arrives at can be summarised as follows: Plato's view of thumos is ambiguous; the essential step in his treatment of thumos consists in neutralising its power; thumos' functions reveal that individual psychology and politics are closely related; the rationality of emotions is to be worked out and educated and to this end thumos' strength should be used properly, i.e. by its acting in favour of reason and not to its disadvantage; education of thumos can be carried on fully only in the context of political anthropology.

R.'s merit is to engage with an important topic that has been interesting researchers for the last decades. All the more so because, while the history of philosophy of the emotions is a subject more and more studied nowadays, Plato's views have attracted relatively little attention. However, the treatment R. offers is not a systematic one. He underscores a handful of questions related to affectivity. As the title makes clear, the book touches upon two separable topics: mediation as it is worked out by emotions on the one hand, and education of which thumos is the object on the other. R. identifies thumos with emotion. But I doubt whether in Plato thumos can be limited to emotions only and emotions to thumos alone, and for this reason R.'s one-to-one identification is too narrow.Footnote ¹

He conceives an entire class of affectivity as homogeneous when, I think, this is not the case at all.Footnote ²

However, R. seems to hesitate about the nature of emotions as when he speaks of impulse as being cognitive, conative and affective (see pp. 130, 137) and of thumos as being the subject of affections only (e.g. p. 163), all the while explicitly identifying thumos with impulse (see p. 201).Footnote ³

This is a welcome contribution in so far as it focuses on a theme neglected for a long time. However, I see its value less in its conclusions than in its analyses, which can stimulate further research on Plato's views on emotions.