REPUBLIC BY PLATOBOOK X

PLATO’S ARGUMENT AGAINST POETRY

• Earlier in “Republic” Socrates mentioned that certain kinds of music and poetry should be banned from the curriculum of study for the future rulers of the state.

• Because some art is not morally uplifting,hence perhaps bad for children,here Socrates considerably broadened his attack on visual & dramatic arts

THE ARGUMENT

• He starts out by trying to come at a definition.

• He says that “Artists are said to create things.They are therefore known as creative artists.

EXAMPLE

• Lets take an example of something an artist produces e-g a bed.

• When a painter paints a picture of a bed,we agree that it is not a real bed.

• The artist has probably seen a bed built by a carpenter and copied his picture.

THEORY OF FORM

• The bed which was built by the craftsman and on which we sit and rest is not the “real bed” either.

• The true real bed is the form of the bed.

• Only the forms are real;the bed is the copy of the form and the paiting is the copy of that copy.An image of an image.

POETS & DRAMATISTS

• What is true for the painter is true for the poets & the dramatists as they also paint pictures with their words “creating” what we call images.

• So when they pretend to be authorities on morality religion nature and all sorts of truth that is all simply but pretense.

PHILOSOPHERS & FORMS

• Philosophers know the form & Goodness itself.Artists do not know the truth.

ART IS THRICE REMOVED FROM REALITY

• Take an example of a birdle.

• The craftsman who made it,has better knowledge of it than the painter who paints it.

• The man who is to use this birdle and the one who has ordered it and knows how he wants it,knows a little bit more about the birdle than the craftsman.

• But the real birdle is the “form of the Birdle”.

• The painting made would be thrice removed from reality i-e it would be an immitation of an immitation.

ILLUSIONARY NATURE OF VISUAL ARTS

• We are surrounded by superious info and illusionary experience.

• Only an experience in reason can correct it.

• What is wrong with arts is that it deals with things illusory.

• Art depends on illusion to achieve desired end.

• Any illusion is contradictory to man’s best virtue Reason.

ILLUSIONARY NATURE OF POETRY AND DRAMA

• The same can be said about poets and dramatists.

• They create language to create unstable,tragic and comic characters of men and women.

• People who are driven by their emotions and desires.

• People who lack reason.

• It is true that some drama & poetry is exciting but the excitement it provokes is irrational.

ILLUSIONARY NATURE OF POETRY AND DRAMA

• Socrates believe that men in dramatic presentation act like homer or buffens.

• We are deluded to sympathize with the artifice of the stage which is bad for our character.

ANALYSIS

• This debate that Socrates started is continuing till present.

• Many societies have been formed advocating censorship of the arts because

- either they give wrong message to citizens whose reasoning power is weak.

- or they manifest themes that are morally corruptive.

CRITICISM ON PLATO’S THEORY

• A totally opposite view is adopted by various schools of criticism who maintain that

- art is apolitical.

- essentially amoral.

- should not be under any censorship.

CRITICISM ON PLATO’S THEORY

• Plato is not handing out aesthetic criticism as is said and he is not in favour of stripping away all the entertainments from the state.

• What Plato is refuting is the popular claim of his day and in ours that poets are good moral teachers.

• Socrates make fun of theatre goers and actors with a certain degree of contempt.

• Aeschylu’s portryal of Agememon.

• Homer.

IMMORALITY OF SOUL

• Socrates says that rewards of justice are granted to the just after their moral life is over.

• The interlocutor is shocked that Socrates believe in immortal soul to which he answers that he can prove it.

SOCRATES’ PROOF ABOUT IMMORTALITY OF SOUL

• There are all sorts of illness that can and do attack a body bring about its demise.

• Every material falls prey to its unique evil.

• Wood rots,iron rusts,body dies.

PECULIAR EVIL OF THE SOUL

• Just like every other material thing all the soul’s peculiar evil is “injustice”.

• But the souls of unjust men are not destroyed by injustice and neither are the souls of just men.

• So if things can be destroyed by their particular evil and the soul cannot be destroyed by its particular evil then the soul must be immortal.

ENTHYMEMES

• If-then argument

A=B & B=C

then

A=C.

• Reaches Sorites.

CRITICISM ON PLATO’S THEORY OF IMMORTALITY

• Just because soul cannot be destroyed by injustice does not prove that soul is immortal.

• Socrates may believe that soul is immortal we may believe that the soul maybe immortal but we and Socrates do not

THE JUST LIFE IS THE LIFE TO BE LIVED

• The just life is the only life to be lived because the just would be rewarded in the after world and the unjust would be punished.

CRITICISM

• To prove his logic Plato has to give authority to the myth of Er.

• He had to embrace the myth of reincarnation.

• Plato believes every man hold the reins of his fate.A bad man chooses to be bad.

• The question arises here Why.

• This choice is made because of amathia(ignorance)

• Unexamined life is not worth living.