Similarly, in Greek mythology we see the con-
sequences of foolishly following ambition. In his
Metamorphoses, Ovid tells the story of Phaethon,
the son of the sun god Helios. Phaethon succumbs
to his ambition for pride and reputation and brags
to his friends that he is the son of Helios. Angered,
Phaethon meets with his father and takes advantage
of his father’s goodwill, securing permission to drive
Helios’s chariot (the sun) for a day. Phaeton’s ambi-
tion exceeds his grasp, however, as he loses control
of the horses, scorching the earth and turning Africa
into a desert. The chariot is so out of control that
Zeus is forced to intervene, striking down Phaethon
with a lightning bolt.
Phaethon was not the only character to “fall” due
to his ambition, however. John Milton’s epic poem
paradise Lost tells the story of the fall of man, but
also of the fall of Satan. Satan, filled with ambition
and pride, wages war against God, thinking to sup-
plant him. Satan is defeated and cast out of heaven;
his ambition does not leave him, however, as he
quickly decides to bring about “the fall of man” by
introducing evil to the world. But beginning with
the romantics in the 19th century, the character
of Satan was not seen as an antagonist but as a
protagonist, celebrated for his flawed but idealistic
nature. In his 1932 essay on Dante, T. S. Eliot would
refer to the character of Satan as a “Byronic Hero,”
strengthening the image from 17th-century Britain
to the romantic poets to the modern world.
Since ambition is such a human struggle between
making choices—and dealing with the consequences
that result from these choices—philosophers, psy-
chologists, and academics have been attempting to
understand how and why we are driven by ambition.
Perhaps one of the earliest examinations came when
Plato presented his concept of the “tripartite soul” in
Phaedrus (the concept of which he would later refine
in The Republic). Plato’s analogy depicts the soul as
a charioteer, noble horse, and base horse. Essentially,
the charioteer (the individual) is always struggling
to keep the two horses in control. In general, these
three parts of the soul are taken to represent, respec-
tively, reason, our noble desires (such as honor and
courage), and our base or animal desires (such as
ambition, lust, greed, avarice, and anger).
In many ways, this way of thinking about human
desires and ambitions is quite similar to the model
the Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud pro-
posed in his 1920 essay “Beyond the Pleasure Prin-
ciple,” in which he argues that the human psyche
is divided into three parts: the id, the ego, and the
superego. The id represents the human unconscious,
amoral desire to be satisfied, whether it is by food,
sex, drugs, or power. The ego strives to mediate
between the id and the superego—sometimes hav-
ing to satisfy one or the other; the ego is a conscious
attempt to balance primitive desires with a rational
need to negotiate the “real world.” The superego
essentially functions as an individual’s conscience,
reminding him or her what the “real world” views
as acceptable and moral—and what it does not; the
super-ego is at odds with the potentially ambitious
id.
Shortly after Freud presented his model for the
psyche, human desires—of which ambition is one
of the most powerful—found itself being examined
through the lens of psychology yet again. If we con-
sider ambition as essentially a form of motivation, a
manifestation of desires, then it was the American
psychologist Abraham Maslow who, in 1943, first
helped contextualize ambition within his “hierarchy
of needs.” Within this hierarchy, Maslow argues that
humans have several types of needs, ranging from
the most basic to the most complex; these needs
address physical (hunger, sleep), safety (housing,
jobs), social (love, friendship), esteem (achievements,
power), and self-actualization (wisdom and enlight-
enment) desires. Ambition can easily be considered
a “desire for esteem,” which nicely aligns with the
Oxford English Dictionary’s primary definition of
ambition as an “inordinate desire.”
No examination of ambition would be complete
without considering potentially the most famous
literary example of “inordinate desire,” Macbeth.
Within William Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth
(the central, tragic figure) claims “I have no spur
/ To prick the side of my intent, but only / Vault-
ing ambition, which o’erleaps itself / And falls on
the other” (1.7.27–30). Macbeth faces an internal
struggle between his noble, civilized desires (admi-
rable ambition) and his more savage, primal desires
(ambition as a tragic flaw). Perhaps Lady Macbeth6 ambition