I GOT OVER IT BUT NOT QUITE IN THE NICK OF TIME

I'm not sure what did it, but, albeit at the last minute, I got over the writer's block and began making significant progress on all my papers. Two of them were even finished within my deadline. The third, unfortunately, is now going to be at least 18 hours late. I've had to spend all my time working on these damn papers that I've had no time to prepare for my Latin test, which I take in 7 hours. Special.

Here is one of my outlines for an article summary I used for one of my papers:

In Cooper’s “Plato’s Theory of Human Motivation”, he argues that a proper understanding of Plato’s tripartite distinction of the soul yields an understanding of the central facts of human psychology, and that these facts provide a theory of human motivation that is superior to subsequent theories of motivation.
He begins by situating the question “How many parts does the soul have?” as a constituent aspect of the discussion of justice in the city. Cooper claims that, within that theoretical backdrop, the question of the number of the parts of the soul becomes the question of how many distinct psychological determinants there are for voluntary choice and action. Plato’s tripartite theory, then, is the theory that there are three distinct determinants for motivation. Cooper disabuses us of the view that Plato’s theory is similar to the Hobbesian view that one’s actions are jointly produced solely by his relevant beliefs and desires-desire being the motivator and belief the informative content by which desire is satisfied. Thus, the Hobbesian view has two factors relevant for motivational determination. Similarly, Plato’s view can be misleading read as pitting reason against appetite and spirit, where reason is the belief content, and spirit and appetite the desire impetus. Cooper shows the wrongness of this view by citing passages in which Socrates claims that each soul part provides its own set of independent desires. A dual partition of independent motivating factors, thus, is contrary to what is stated in a number of passages in the Republic.
Cooper must now demonstrate that each soul part generates its own motivating factors, and that these factors are generated independently of one another. He accomplishes this task by separately expositing each soul part, delineating those passages and parsing terms, which are relevant for understanding Plato’s account. He begins with reason, arguing that reason desires both knowledge of truth and to rule in light of truth. From this he claims that these two notions collapse into the second-order notion of reason desiring the good; and since only reason can determine what goals to pursue in life and how to best achieve them, Cooper argues that the claim that reason desires the good is just the claim that reason desires to rule. He then identifies biological urges as typical appetitive desires; but he also argues that other physiological causes contribute to appetitive desires: e.g., desires to be warm when cold and aversion to pain. Those, along with more complex instances of them, are also appetitive motivations: particular preferences for food tastes. These count as instances of pleasantness to the palate, which is generated by physical causes, hence, is physiological. So, while reason plays a role in parceling out the priority of urges to act upon, reason plays no motivating role. Appetitive desires are not limited merely to the biological or physiological, but extend to the imaginative as well. Leontius’ morbid desire to view dead bodies and the democratic man’s desire to dabble in philosophy, are cited as metaphors for desiring what is pleasant in the world of appearances. Both are instances of appetites because they focus upon the superficial aspects of what is desired—Leontius’ imaginative thrill and the democratic man’s amusement in manipulating words. All such thrills and amusements have as their foundation subjective facts grounded in experience. Cooper analyzes spirit last, giving an etymological account of “thumos” and related cognates dating back to Homeric usage. Cooper argues that the various notions of spirit used by Plato are understood as deriving from competitiveness and the desire for both self-esteem and the esteem of others. Spirit is then distinguished from appetite because appetitive desires are not self-referential, which are paramount for notions of self-esteem and esteem; moreover, while reason can function self-referentially, it is distinct from spirit by two constitutive aspects: The spirit’s ordering of desire priority (those which render competitive success and esteem), and secondly, the spirit’s nature to not always support the rule of judgment.
It is the spirit part of the soul in which, Cooper argues, Plato’s theory of motivation derives. It is the desires for competitiveness, and self-esteem and the esteem of others that are innately motivational. These developments of spirit, as found in Plato’s theory of the tripartite soul, are the important features, according to Cooper, that ought to make up any plausible account of human motivation.
[Possible things to consider]: Cooper’s argument relies upon the plausible correlation of the etymological accounts of “thumos”and Plato’s use of it in his account of the spirit. While that may be the best we can hope for in reading ancient texts, how is this fact about textual analysis relevant for scientific discovery? Cooper claims to be offering an account that is superior to contemporary views, but he fails to contrast his account with any contemporary account that is more than a caricature. Moreover, his conclusion is trivial: it has long been a recognized fact of psychology that competitiveness, and desires for self-esteem and esteem are an innate form of motivation. [ Cooper didn't make any claims that Plato's thoery was the first to makes use of these notion, so I have to think that Cooper considers this to be independantly significant?]Cooper’s accountalso fails to explicitly showcase the so-called central facts of human psychology. [Plenty of other readings on the soul parts that are equally plausible--it's an underdetermination problem]

Don't bother critiquing this since it is only an off-the-cuff outline of a summary.