Galen is strongly Platonist in central areas of his thought; this applies in particular to his moral psychology, where he adopts the Platonic division of the soul into rational and non-rational parts, the latter being further divided into the spirited (thumoeides) and the desiderative (epithumētikon). This fundamental rational/non-rational distinction, and the further one between the two non-rational parts, are for Galen essential to a correct conceptualization of the soul and its internal workings, and in particular to a correct approach to ethics (see further §8 below).