Chryses seems to be present to our eyes as well as our ears. The generalisation still does not provide a definition of mimesis, only a sufficient condition. Socrates will not offer a general, explanatory account of mimesis until Book X. We have to catch on piecemeal as he adds in new types of example. Yet Socrates continues to speak of the poet as the imitator. This way of thinking about actors as extensions of the poet is taken further when Socrates goes on to say the Guards should not imitate neighing horses, lowing bulls, the noise of rivers, the roar of the sea, thunder, hail, axles and pulleys, trumpets, flutes, Pan-pipes and every other instrument, or the cries of dogs, sheep and birds.
Is he talking about some crazy pantomime, in which people mimic everything under the sun, including axles and pulleys? I suggest the latter.
If the imitator is taken to be the poet rather than the actors, then it is Aristophanes himself who makes these noises, while his voice modulates into the trumpets and flutes of the accompanying music, or rumblings from the thunder-machine off-stage. If you find it grotesque, this picture of the poet sprouting extensions of himself and his voice all over the theatre, Plato will be well pleased. His point is to forbid the Guards to engage in dramaturgy.
They must practise one craft only, that of defending the freedom of the city. They are not even to do what cultivated Athenians often did, combine their main pursuit with the writing of tragedies. In real-life Athens, Sophocles did it the other way round: he served twice as general. The ideal city is founded on the principle that each man devote himself to a single craft. In itself, this is not an argument for a ban on purely mimetic storytelling.
There are lots of things the Guards must not do which, nevertheless, someone in the ideal city has to do: pottery and painting, for example. Not only must no Guard write plays, but if a professional dramatist turns up at the city gate and asks to present his works, he will be treated as if he were a one-man band at the street corner asking to join the Berlin Philharmonic.
It is not even lawful for such a multiplex personality to grow up within the ideal city, let alone for one to be let in. You may object that a professional dramatist does not really exhibit the multiple-personality disorder Socrates ascribes to him. He only seems to do so. Plato knows this very well; in Book X he will insist on it. Imitation may have consequences.
It is not a thing to take up lightly, still less to make a profession of. Some film stars have been said to lack a stable self of their own, to live only in the public appearance of a bundle of different roles. Not a person who will contribute to the austerely civilized life of Kallipolis.
In Book III the decision is political. Euripides is an undesirable character to have around; so are politicians and military men who write plays in their spare time. And beware of politicians like Tony Blair and Bill Clinton who play musical instruments. Athenian tragedy and comedy were intensely democratic institutions, not only in the way they were organized, but also in their physical presence.
During the Great Dionysia, citizens — men plus adolescents — took part in the choral singing and dancing of the various competitions tragedy, comedy, dithyramb. In oligarchic Sparta there were choral festivals, but no theatre.
The link between theatre and democracy is not explicit in Book III of the Republic , but elsewhere the connection is loud and clear. Book VI includes a discussion of what is likely to happen if, in a non-ideal state like Athens, a truly philosophic nature is born, capable of becoming one of the philosopher-rulers of the ideal city.
Would the young man escape the corrupting influence of the culture under which he grows up? The chances are small, says Socrates. Think of the impression made on a really talented soul by the applause and booing of mass gatherings in the Assembly, the courts an Athenian jury was not 12 good men and true, but several hundred and one , theatres and military camps.
Is not the young man likely to end up accepting the values of the masses and becoming a character of the same sort as the people he is surrounded by? A democratic culture does not nurture reflective, philosophical understanding. His vitriolic denunciation of the mass media of his age argues for rejecting democratic control in favor of his own, authoritarian alternative.
Even stronger is the claim at the end of Republic VIII that tragedy both encourages and is encouraged by the two lowest types of constitution, democracy and tyranny. Note the interactive model of cultural change. As in a bad marriage, playwright and polity bring out the worst in each other. So what occasions for the performance of poetry will remain in the ideal city, after the dramatists have been turned away at the gate?
Despite a stringent ban on innovation in musical technique, new songs are allowed — provided they are in the same old style. Delphi will be invited to prescribe rules for religious ceremonies founding temples, sacrifices, burials etc , all of which would in the Greek world involve singing hymns and other poetry.
Like Heroes of the Soviet Union, the good will be constantly extolled in public — to reward them and hold up models for everyone else. This list is enough to show that poetry, of the approved sort, will be a pervasive presence in the life of the warrior class. But I have had to compile the list from scattered remarks. No detail is given about how the various ceremonies will proceed. The Homeric Hymn to Hermes , for example, is an engaging narrative, nearly six hundred lines long, with lots of mimesis, about the birth and impudent tricks of the robber god.
Adventure stories will often be the order of the day. One occasion for poetry does receive fuller treatment — the symposium. This has not been noticed, partly because Plato expects readers to recognise the familiar setting without being told.
Another reason is that in the past scholars have preferred not to wonder why the discussion of poetry ends by imposing austere limits to homoerotic sex.
Drama is not all the Guards are deprived of. Their epic recitals will be very unlike those the ancients were used to. No rhapsodic display, and much less speechifying than in the Iliad and Odyssey. The story will be mostly plain narrative, interrupted by the occasional stretch of mimesis. The mimesis will be largely restricted to auditory and visual likenesses of a good person behaving steadfastly and sensibly.
There will be little variation in his voice, and the accompanying music will stick to a single mode and a single rhythm. Even good people are struck down by disease, fall in love or get drunk, but mimesis of such events is to be very sparing.
The other side of the coin is that a villain may do the odd good deed: mimesis of that is admissible, but it is not likely to happen often. The final exception is that poets may imitate bad characters in jest, to scoff at them.
Already it seems that the Iliad will have to stop as soon as it has started, but Plato delays until Book X the shocking news that Homer will be banished as well as the dramatists. But remember that Book II implies that a purged tragedy will still be allowed. Tragedy and comedy are not explicitly banned until Book III. Plato deals out the pain in measured doses, allowing his readers to get used to one shock as preparation for the next.
No objections have been raised to mimesis or to poetry in themselves. There will in fact be lots of poetry in the ideal city, some of it mimetic.
The shock is, how little is to be mimetic; and how thoroughly edifying it all has to be. The third stage of the discussion confirms that Plato has no objection to mimesis as such.
Here Plato deals with the non-vocal side of music: the modes, instruments and rhythms which make the music in our narrower sense of the word. Some Bach might scrape by; certainly not Beethoven, Mahler or Stravinsky.
This is where Plato gives examples of the kinds of mimesis to be permitted. On the contrary, mimesis has a formative educational role to play in the culture. What you imitate regularly is what you become, so from childhood the Guards must imitate appropriate models of courage, temperance and other virtues. These things must become second nature to them. Just as graceful architecture and bodily movement have a gradual, unnoticed influence on the souls of those who grow up in their presence, so, too, do the mimetic likenesses of the poetry Plato allows for the Guards.
The passage I shall quote is designed to illustrate the permitted modes of music, but appropriate words are taken for granted. In the songs permitted at social and sacred gatherings, both music and verse will imitate the way persons of good character deal with the ups and downs of fortune; later we will meet the contrasting case of bad mimesis, the way a tragic hero reacts to misfortune.
A mode is an attunement, a way of tuning the instrument to certain intervals, which lends a particular character to the tunes that can be played with it. Leave me that mode which would fittingly imitate the tones and cadences of a brave man engaged unsuccessfully in warfare or any other enforced endeavor, who meets wounds, death or some other disaster but confronts it steadfastly with endurance, warding off the blows of fortune.
And leave me another mode for the same man engaged in unforced, voluntary activities of peace: he may be persuading someone of something or entreating them, either praying to a god or teaching and admonishing a human being. In either case he does what he is minded to do without arrogance, acting throughout and accepting the outcome with temperance and moderation.
Just these two modes, the one enforced, the other voluntary, which will best imitate the tones of brave men in bad fortune and of temperate men in good — leave me these. If it was always these two types of song that we heard when we turned on the radio or went out to a social gathering, our culture would be very different.
But not necessarily boring. Nothing stops a poet weaving the permitted types of mimetic display into a gripping third-person narrative, short or long; nothing stops a story including the imitation of more than one good character. We might even be sympathetic to the idea that it would be indecent to give the Nazis any significant speaking parts.
They are unable to react to people or the world around. This treatment brings the patients to life again, but only for a while. The doctor accepts the outcome with temperance and moderation. He did what he could; medical science made a modest advance. It is an engaging, sympathetic story. But if you want more action, Plato has nothing against adventure stories. Heroism in military and civil life is exactly what this education aims to promote.
Austere, yes; an eventoned, calm expressiveness prevails. Growing up in such a culture would be like growing up in the presence of sober people all of brave and temperate character.
But the ideal city already ensures, so far as is humanly possible, that the young grow up in the presence of sober people of good and temperate character. Why worry about likenesses, the cultural icons, if kids are already surrounded by the real thing in flesh and blood?
When the influence of human role models is at odds with the cultural icons, there is a risk of change. It is not just that multiplicity and variety are bad in themselves. But the main point is that change from the ideal is change for the worse. To avoid change as long as possible, the entire culture must be in harmony both with the people you meet in life and with those you know from poetry. That is why the discussion of musical poetry turns next to gracefulness in architecture, clothing, and everything that craftsmen make.
A graceful material environment will ensure that the young are always and everywhere in the presence of likenesses of the same good and temperate character as the people whose lives and stories they know.
The entire culture unites in harmonious expression of the best that human beings can be. A musical education which forms a sensibility able to recognize gracefulness, and respond to it as an image of good and temperate character, also lets you recognise, and respond to, other images of good character — images of courage, liberality, high-mindedness.
A Guard so educated, and old enough to understand some of the reasons why these are images of goodness, is ready to fall in love. Thanks to his education, the younger male comrade he favors will be one with beauty of character to match the beauty of his physical appearance. Socrates has now moved from the material environment to the social setting for musical poetry. The symposium is not the only social gathering where musical poetry is performed, but it is the one most relevant to love.
But the rule presupposes they will drink wine. No Greek ever equated sobriety with abstinence. After the meal in their Spartan-style common messes, the Guards will drink in convivial moderation.
We have actual figures for Spartan wine consumption: Sparta was famous for its sobriety, yet their daily ration was well over our driving limit. And the symposium is the main social occasion for dalliance: the couch is wide enough for two. The combination of wine, music and homoerotic love at the symposium was widely used in the Greek world not only in Sparta to forge bonds of loyalty and comradeship among those who fight for the city.
Plato is adapting this institution to the austerely controlled ethic of Kallipolis. Also, on what grounds does Plato condemn poetry? Plato also was a philosopher; to prove his superiority over poets , he attacked poetry on four grounds —moral, emotional, intellectual and utilitarian.
This has a demoralising effect. First, Plato , concerned with finding truth, has the poets banned from his imagined republic because they are merely imitators of truth and thus distort truth. Yes, a prose poet , and virtually every major writer on Plato agrees that this is so.
Asked by: Arianny Valdes books and literature poetry Why did Plato banish poets? Plato is famous for having banished poetry and poets from the ideal city of the Republic. But not because they were poets. He banished them because they produced the wrong sort of poetry.
Yosune Zouina Professional. What is theory of mimesis? In his theory of Mimesis , Plato says that all art is mimetic by nature; art is an imitation of life. He believed that 'idea' is the ultimate reality. Art imitates idea and so it is imitation of reality. He gives an example of a carpenter and a chair. So to Plato, philosophy is superior to poetry. Tiny Asterain Professional. What is Plato's view of art? In the Republic, Plato says that art imitates the objects and events of ordinary life.
In other words, a work of art is a copy of a copy of a Form. It is even more of an illusion than is ordinary experience. Celi Pauen Professional. Who coined the term mimesis? Originally a Greek word , it has been used in aesthetic or artistic theory to refer to the attempt to imitate or reproduce reality since Plato and Aristotle. Bin Ritzmann Explainer. What are Plato's argument against poetry? Plato argues that Homer, the doyen of Greek poets , has enthralled his audiences by inciting their baser natures.
He does not appeal to their morality, he inflames their passions. In his narratives, gods are capricious, kings are spiteful, heroes are vengeful, and common soldiers are cowardly. Luzdivino Mazkiaran Explainer. Why does Plato not like art? These remarks prompt yet another question. However interesting the topics of poetry and rhetoric may be, when we read Plato, why group them together? Few people today would imagine that there is any interesting relation between poetry and rhetoric.
Yet Plato himself associates the two very closely: at Gorgias c he characterizes poetry as a kind of rhetoric. Thus Plato provides our warrant for investigating the topics together. This linkage between poetry and rhetoric is of course controversial, and will be discussed below.
The present essay will confine itself to just four dialogues, the Ion , Republic , Gorgias , and Phaedrus. I shall look for connections between our four dialogues, though I do not believe that our chosen texts present a picture of poetry and rhetoric that is altogether unified indeed, this could not be claimed even of the Republic taken by itself.
The debate about which assumptions are best is an ongoing one, but not germane to the present discussion. Further, it is not the case that the views Plato puts into the mouth of his Socrates are necessarily espoused by Plato himself; they may or may not be those of Plato. Since Plato did not write a treatise in his own voice, telling us what his views are, it is impossible to know with certainty which views he espouses at least on the basis of the works he composed.
In several cases, one of which will be examined in the final section of this essay, it seems reasonably clear that Plato cannot be espousing without qualification a view that his Socrates is endorsing. With these principles firmly in mind, however, I shall occasionally refer as I already have to Plato as presenting this or that view.
For as author of all the statements and drama of the dialogues, he does indeed present the views in question; and on occasion it is convenient and simpler to say he is advocating this or that position for example, the position that there is an ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry.
He is a performer but not a stage actor. Ion is depicted as superb at making the Iliad and Odyssey come alive, at communicating their drama to his audience and at involving them intimately. As he puts it in the dialogue that bears his name: if he has done his job well, he will find himself weeping when reciting sorrowful lines, and expects to see his audience weep along with him b1—e6.
But Ion thinks himself capable of yet more, for he also claims to be an expert in explaining what Homer means. He does not permit Ion to actually exhibit his skills as a rhapsode, and instead insists that he engage in give-and-take about the abilities Ion claims to possess. As both reciter and exegete, the rhapsode has no exact analogue today.
Nonetheless, the implications of the Ion are broad; while Ion is not a poet himself, he bears important traits in common with the poet. Essentially, he attempts to show that Ion is committed to several theses that are not compatible with one another, unless a rather peculiar, saving assumption is introduced.
Ion claims that he is a first rate explicator of Homer; that he is a first rate explicator only of Homer, and loses interest as well as competence if another poet such as Hesiod is brought up a3—4, b8—c2; c4—8 ; and that Homer discusses his subjects much better than do any other poets d4—11, a4—8. This seemingly commonsensical point is asserted by Socrates at the start c1—5 , and happily accepted by Ion.
For example, Homer talks a great deal about how war is waged; as an expert on Homer who claims that Homer spoke beautifully about that subject in the sense of got it right , Ion must be in a position to explain just how Homer got it right and how Hesiod, say, got it wrong, as a series of simple analogies show.
If you can knowledgeably e10 pick out a good speaker on a subject, you can also pick out the bad speaker on it, since the precondition of doing the former is that you have knowledge of the relevant subject matter. Let us recapitulate, since the steps Socrates is taking are so important for his critique of poetry it is noteworthy that at several junctures, Socrates generalizes his results from epic to dithyrambic, encomiastic, iambic, and lyric poetry; e5—a7, b7—c7.
Further, Homer himself must have understood well that about which he speaks. Given that he discusses the central topics of human and godly life c1—d2 , it would seem that Homer claims to be wise, and that as his devoted encomiasts we too must be claiming to be wise d6—e1.
But claims to wisdom are subject to counter-claims the poets disagree with each other, as Socrates points out ; and in order to adjudicate between them, as well as support our assessment of their relative merits, we must open ourselves to informed discussion both technical and philosophical. It is but a step from there to the proposition that neither Ion nor Homer can sustain their claims to knowledge, and therefore could not sustain the claim that the poems are fine and beautiful works.
In passage after passage, Homer pronounces on subjects that are the province of a specialized techne art or skill , that is, a specialized branch of knowledge. But neither the rhapsode nor Homer possesses knowledge of all or indeed perhaps any of those specialized branches generalship, chariot making, medicine, navigation, divination, agriculture, fishing, horsemanship, cow herding, cithara playing, wool working, etc. Ion attempts to resist this by claiming that thanks to his study of Homer, he knows what a general for example should say d5.
To this might be added the claim that the poets and their exponents know the nature of the cosmos and of the divine. In the Republic Socrates in effect allows them comprehensive claims to knowledge along those lines, and then attacks across the board, seeking to show that the poets have got it wrong on all important counts.
So when Ion claims that Homer speaks beautifully about X, he just means that Homer speaks beautifully in a rhetorical sense even though he Homer does not necessarily know what he is talking about. By extension, poets would on this interpretation make the same claim about themselves. That would seem to reduce them to rhetoricians, which in effect is what Socrates argues in the Gorgias , with the further proviso that rhetoric as popularly practiced is not even a techne. It consists in the thesis that Ion recites and Homer composes not from knowledge but from divine inspiration.
Neither knows what he is saying, but is nonetheless capable of speaking or composing beautifully thanks to the divine. They are like the worshippers of Bacchus, out of their right minds b4—6. This creative madness, as we might call it, they share with other Muse-inspired artists as well as prophets and diviners b7—d1. The spark is generated by the god, and is passed down through the poet to the rhapsode and then to the audience. This simile helps to answer an important question: why should we care whether or not the poets know what they are talking about, if we enjoy their compositions?
It would seem that the audience is transformed by the experience in a way that momentarily takes them out of themselves. Perhaps it does not leave them as they were, for their understanding of what properly elicits their grief or their laughter would seem to be shaped by this powerful experience, an experience they presumably repeat many times throughout childhood and beyond.
None of this would matter much if superb poetry left us unmoved, or in any case as we were. How easy it would be to confuse divine and human madness to borrow a distinction from the Phaedrus a5—c4! And not all of the contenders for the prize Ion has won could be equally worthy of promotion to divine status. For Plato, this means that they must be held accountable. This would mean that they are required to engage philosophy on its turf, just as Ion has somewhat reluctantly done.
The legitimacy of that requirement is itself a point of contention, it is one aspect of the quarrel between philosophy and poetry. In order to respond to the famous challenge put to Socrates by Glaucon and Adeimantus, it is necessary to define justice. It turns out that philosophic guardians are to rule the polis, and the next question concerns their education e2.
The concern in book II is very much with the proper education of a citizen, as befits the project of creating a model city. The poems are taken as educational and thus broadly political texts; persuasion see c7 of a class of the young is very much at stake. The young cannot judge well what is true and false; since a view of things taken on at early age is very hard to eradicate or change, it is necessary to ensure that they hear only myths that encourage true virtue d7—e3.
Thus while the critique of poetry in book II and beyond is in this sense shaped by the contextual concerns, it is not limited to them. The scope of the critique is breathtaking.
Along the way Socrates makes yet another point of great importance, namely that the poets ought not be permitted to say that those punished for misdeeds are wretched; rather, they must say that in paying a just penalty, bad men are benefited by the god b2—6. Socrates is starting to push against the theses that bad people will flourish or that good people can be harmed. The cosmos is structured in such a way as to support virtue. In book III Socrates expands the argument considerably.
The concern now is squarely with poetry that encourages virtue in the souls of the young. Courage and moderation are the first two virtues considered here; the psychological and ethical effects of poetry are now scrutinized.
The entire portrait of Hades must go, since it is neither true nor beneficial for auditors who must become fearless in the face of death. Death is not the worst thing there is, and all depictions of famous or allegedly good men wailing and lamenting their misfortunes must go or at least, be confined to unimportant women and to bad men; e9—a3.
The poets must not imitate see c3 for the term gods or men suffering any extremes of emotion, including hilarity, for the strong souls are not overpowered by any emotion, let along any bodily desire. Nor do they suffer from spiritual conflict c. He does so in a way that marks a new direction in the conversation.
The issue turns out to be of deep ethical import, because it concerns the way in which poetry affects the soul.
Up until now, the mechanism, so to speak, has been vague; now it becomes a little bit clearer. The notion of mimesis , missing from the Ion , now takes center stage. Some poetry comedy and tragedy are mentioned proceeds wholly by imitation, another wholly by simple narration dithyrambs are mentioned , and epic poetry combines the two forms of narrative.
What follows this classificatory scheme is a polemic against imitation. The initial thesis is that every person can do a fine job in just one activity only.
Consequently, nobody can do a fine job of imitating more than one thing for example, an actor cannot be a rhapsode, a comic poet cannot be a tragic poet, if any of these is finely done. Imitation is itself something one does, and so one cannot both imitate X say, generalship well and also do the activity X in question eb. It has to be said that this thesis is set out with little real argument. In any case, the best souls the guardians, in this case, in the city in speech ought not imitate anything.
And were they to imitate anything, every care must be taken that they are ennobled rather than degraded as a result. Unlike simple narrative, mimesis poses a particular psychic danger, because as the speaker of the narrative one may take on the character of literary persona in question.
There is no airtight barrier between throwing yourself especially habitually into a certain part, body and soul, and being molded by the part; no firm boundary, in that sense, between what happens on and off the stage.
By contrast, Socrates argues, a simple narration preserves distance between narrator and narrated. Before passing onto critiques of music and gymnastic, Socrates concludes this section of his critique of poetry with the stipulation that a poet who imitates all things both good and bad in all styles cannot be admitted into the good polis.
This critique of mimetic poetry has struck not a few readers as a bit strange and obtuse, even putting aside the question of the legitimacy of censorship of the arts. It seems not to distinguish between the poet, the reciter of the poem, and the audience; no spectatorial distance is allowed to the audience; and the author is allowed little distance from the characters he is representing.
In book II the critique of poetry focused on mimesis understood as representation; the fundamental point was that poets misrepresent the nature of the subjects about which they write e. They do not produce a true likeness of their topics. The renewed criticism leads up to the famous statement that there exists an ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy.
Socrates posits that there are Forms or Ideas of beds and tables, the maker of which is a god; there are imitations thereof, namely beds and tables, produced by craftsmen such as carpenters who behold the Forms as though they were looking at blueprints ; thirdly, there are imitators of the products of the craftsmen, who, like painters, create a kind of image of these objects in the world of becoming. The tripartite schema presents the interpreter with many problems.
Let us focus on one of the implications of this schema, about which Socrates is quite specific. Even putting aside all of the matters relating to arts and crafts technai such as medicine , and focusing on the greatest and most important things—above all, the governance of societies and the education of a human being—Homer simply does not stand up to examination ce.
And what, apart from their own ignorance of the truth, governs their very partial perspective on the world of becoming? Socrates implies that they pander to their audience, to the hoi polloi b3—4.
This links them to the rhetoricians as Socrates describes them in the Gorgias. At the same time, they take advantage of that part in us the hoi polloi are governed by; here Socrates attempts to bring his discussion of psychology, presented since book III, to bear.
The ensuing discussion is remarkable in the way in which it elaborates on these theses. How would a decent person respond to such a calamity?
This may be a sketch of Socrates himself, whose imitation Plato has produced. By contrast, the tragic imitators excel at portraying the psychic conflicts of people who are suffering and who do not even attempt to respond philosophically.
Since their audience consists of people whose own selves are in that sort of condition too, imitators and audience are locked into a sort of mutually reinforcing picture of the human condition. Both are captured by that part of themselves given to the non-rational or irrational; both are most interested in the condition of internal conflict. So the danger posed by poetry is great, for it appeals to something to which even the best—the most philosophical—are liable, and induces a dream-like, uncritical state in which we lose ourselves in the emotions in question above all, in sorrow, grief, anger, resentment.
That is why poetry, with its throbbing rhythms and beating of breasts, appeals equally to the nondescript mob in the theater and to the best among us. But if poetry goes straight to the lower part of the psyche, that is where it must come from. He does not separate knowledge of beauty and knowledge of good.
It is as though the pleasure we take in the representation of sorrow on the stage will—because it is pleasure in that which the representation represents and not just a representation on the stage or in a poem —transmute into pleasure in the expression of sorrow in life. And that is not only an ethical effect, but a bad one, for Plato. These are ingredients of his disagreements on the subject with Aristotle, as well as with myriad thinkers since then.
The poets help enslave even the best of us to the lower parts of our soul; and just insofar as they do so, they must be kept out of any community that wishes to be free and virtuous. Famously, or notoriously, Plato refuses to countenance a firm separation between the private and the public, between the virtue of the one and the regulation of the other.
What goes on in the theater, in your home, in your fantasy life, are connected. Poetry unregulated by philosophy is a danger to soul and community. That is, the poets are rhetoricians who are, as it were, selling their products to as large a market as possible, in the hope of gaining repute and influence.
The tripartite schema of Idea, artifact, and imitator is as much about making as it is about imitation. Making is a continual thread through all three levels of the schema.
The Ideas too are said to be made , even though that is entirely inconsistent with the doctrine of Ideas as eternal expressed earlier in the Republic itself and in all the other Platonic dialogues.
Their effort has to do with discovery rather than making. Forms, images vs. Socrates implicitly denies the soundness of that claim here. Given his conception of the divine as Idea, such a claim could not be true, since the Ideas do not speak, let alone speak the things which Homer, Hesiod, and their followers recount.
Does the critique of poetry in the Republic extend beyond the project of founding the just city in speech? I have already suggested an affirmative answer when discussing book II. The concerns about poetry expressed in books III and X would also extend beyond the immediate project of the dialogue, if they carry any water at all, even though the targets Plato names are of course taken from his own times.
It has been argued that the authority to speak truth that poets claim is shared by many widely esteemed poets since then. Controversies about, say, the effects of graphic depictions of violence, of the degradation of women, and of sex, echo the Platonic worries about the ethical and social effects of art.
In these respects it goes beyond even the Protagoras , a dialogue that depicts a hostile confrontation between Socrates and the renowned sophist by the same name. What is the fight about? Socrates asks Gorgias to define what it is that he does, that is, to define rhetoric.
And he asks him to do it in a way that helps to distinguish rhetorical from philosophical discourse: the former produces speeches of praise and blame, the latter answers questions through the give and take of discussion dialegesthai , d10 in an effort to arrive at a concise definition, and more broadly, with the intent to understand the subject. Gorgias is forced by successive challenges to move from the view that rhetoric is concerned with words speeches to the view that its activity and effectiveness happen only in and through words unlike the manual arts to the view that its object is the greatest of human concerns, namely freedom.
But persuasion about what exactly? But surely there are two kinds of persuasion, one that instills beliefs merely, and another that produces knowledge; it is the former only with which rhetoric is concerned.
The analogy of this argument to the critique of poetry is already clear; in both cases, Socrates wants to argue that the speaker is not a truth speaker, and does not convey knowledge to his audience.
As already noted, Socrates classifies poetry dithyrambic and tragic poetry are named as a species of rhetoric. Its goal is to gratify and please the spectator, or differently put, it is just a kind of flattery.
Strip away the rhythm and meter, and you have plain prose directed at the mob. The rhetorician is a maker of beliefs in the souls of his auditors a3—4. And without that skill—here Gorgias begins to wax at length and eloquently—other arts such as medicine cannot do their work effectively b ff. Rhetoric is a comprehensive art. But Gorgias offers a crucial qualification that turns out to contribute to his downfall: rhetoric should not be used against any and everybody, any more than skill in boxing should be.
Although the rhetorician teaches others to use the skill justly, it is always possible for the student to misuse it. This is followed by another damaging admission: the rhetorician knows what justice, injustice, and other moral qualities are, and teaches them to the student if the student is ignorant of them a.
But Gorgias is not a philosopher and does not in fact know—cannot give an account of—the moral qualities in question. So his art is all about appearing, in the eyes of the ignorant, to know about these topics, and then persuading them as is expedient cf. But this is not something Gorgias wishes to admit; indeed, he allows himself to agree that since the rhetorician knows what justice is, he must be a just man and therefore acts justly b-c. He is caught in a contradiction: he claimed that a student who had acquired the art of rhetoric could use it unjustly, but now claims that the rhetorician could not commit injustice.
A new point emerges that is consistent with the claim that rhetoricians do not know or convey knowledge, viz. Socrates adds that its object is to produce gratification.
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