Why plato banished the poets

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Critical Reflections on Poetry and Painting 2 vols. Translated with an Introduction and Notes by James O. Art History. Art Theory. Intellectual History. Literature and Cultural Studies. Table of Contents. Sign in to annotate.

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. Later, when readers have recovered from the shock of being told in Book V that in this city women, too, are to be warriors and rulers, equally with men, they learn that those who distinguish themselves on campaign which would include symposia in camp, on beds of leaves will exchange kisses with everyone else.

Indeed, they will have an unrefusable right to kiss anyone they desire, male or female, and will be given more frequent opportunities to take part in the breeding festivals. The better you are, the more you can breed. And as Glaucon remarks, this is not creation but rather representation and he creates the link between the painter and the man holding the mirror. Put simply we have 3 couch-crafters.

Second, the craftsman who makes a version of this couch — Individual Things and thirdly, the painter or imitator who makes a representation of the couch created by the craftsman. The painter as Socrates explained is not in the realm of trying to paint in the goal of getting closer to the true inner idea of the things in their actual form.

When it comes to poetry and the poet the main question within the dialogue is can poetry propel us to wisdom or are we then mistaking imitation for truth. Poetry was considered to be a safe of some sorts for all wisdom and so, Socrates speaks on the importance of making accomplishments rather than speaking on accomplishments. Homer, for example, speaks on war but yet no city has ever been ruled or won a war under the reign of Homer himself.

Homer for Plato is then an imitator of virtue and does not know virtue in its true form. Poets imitate details, harmony, scenery, colors, emotion and so on. They exaggerate and amplify their work but in doing so lack actual substance and weight of truth. Many praise Homer and his work but according to Plato, he has never truly accomplished any of what he speaks on. Rather he imitates and thus pushes those who listen to his work if they are foolish further away from the true form of things.

Socrates thus organizes three sorts of people. Those who make things and 3. Those who imitate things. It is the person who uses things which is then the most knowledgeable. An example of this is the example of the flutist and the flute maker. The flutist is most knowledgeable in flutes and thus is best suited to advise the flute maker on how to make the best flute. Whereas the one who imitates the flute whether it be through poetry or painting and so on..

Imitation remains the furthest away from the truth and the world of forms. Appearances are only concerned with one aspect of things, the least reliable. As we see when an object looks deformed when placed in water.

Only its appearance seems to be distorted but this is an illusion of appearance and perception. It waters emotions.

As Plato says in The Republic ;. The reason represents the better part of the soul while feelings are considered to be the more evil part of a soul. Plato says Poetry should provoke reason and logic. There should be link between ourselves and ideas. The third ground is of utility. Poets contribute nothing to society. They lack the courage and dignity to participate in wars even. They can not train those who want to participate in war. Singers, musicians and poets can not defend the territories.

They give no benefit to the society. They cannot deliver knowledge to nation as they themselves do not know. Their work distorts and corrupts immature minds. The children will never understand what they are conveying. Plato says,.

If a rod is dipped in a glass of water, its surface seems twisted. The phenomenon can be defined with the help of scientific study. But if a man who has no knowledge can be deceived by Art. Art does not add utility. Moreover it distorts the immature minds.