Lecture Literary criticism - Lecture 3: Republic by plato book X

The contents of this chapter include all of the following: Plato’s argument against poetry, the argument, theory of form, poets & dramatists, philosophers & forms, art is thrice removed from reality, illusionary nature of visual arts,...

REPUBLIC BY PLATO

BOOK 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

• 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

• 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.

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

CRITICISM ON PLATO’S THEORY OF

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

• 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.