REPUBLIC BY PLATO BOOK X. PLATO’S ARGUMENT AGAINST POETRY Earlier in “Republic” Socrates...
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Transcript of REPUBLIC BY PLATO BOOK X. PLATO’S ARGUMENT AGAINST POETRY Earlier in “Republic” Socrates...
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.