An Introduction to Plato and Book X of the Republic

7/29/2019 An Introduction to Plato and Book X of the Republic

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An Introduction to Plato and

Book X of the Republic

English Hrs/Ap/IB

Troy High SchoolMrs. Snipes


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Plato (427 B.C. 347 B.C.) was born to anaristocratic family.

He early on became a friend and disciple ofSocrates and his later attitude toward poetrywas then symbolically foreshadowed, accordingto legend, by his burning of the poems he had

written before turning to the study ofphilosophy.

After traveling widely, he founded a school (theAcademy) in the grove called Academus at

Athens, taught philosophy, and there wrote theworks associated with his name.


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An understanding of what Plato considered to be realityis necessary if one is to begin to sense the meaning ofhis general influence on the theory of art, and also of hisown specific remarks on art and literature.

To begin with, Platos philosophy may be described as asearch for certaintya search for a reality that neverchanges but is absolute, perfect, and fixed.

It is, in part, a reaction against the popular skepticism ofthe Greek Sophists, who believed in the doctrine that

everything is relative

that all knowledge, judgment, orevaluation of any sort depends upon the particularpersons individual reactions.

In answer, Plato turned back to the general Greekconfidencestill common in Greek thought despite the

popularity of the Sophists as teachersthat there is ameaning, an order, or purpose in things, and that themind, if it is alert enough, can discern this significance.

The persisting order of the universe and the formsthrough which it works were for Plato the sole reality.


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Platonic View of the Universe

At times he regarded it as a mere shadow ofrealitya shadow that we feel is there onlybecause our own minds are not sufficientlyawake and attuned to what isreal. It is, in short,

a world of mere appearance rather thanreality.

On other occasions, he viewed the materialworld as a chaos of imperfect elements, all

struggling vainly to fulfill themselves accordingto the absolute forms or ideas that constitutereality.


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At all events, the world of matter is at most animperfect copy of a final and absolute reality.

Through reason, man is potentially capable ofconceiving the ideas and thus attainingcertainty.

Mans other capacitiessense, imagination,emotionare of value only if they subservereason. Otherwise, they are actual hindrances.For they tend by themselves to focus upon the

world of matter, the unstable world of mereappearance, of flux, of sensations, and ofemotional opinion.


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Plato was not himself

a literary critic ortheorist in the specificsense that Aristotlewas. He did, to be

sure, discuss generalproblems and aspectsof art.


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It is largely because of Platos misgivings about thesocial and intellectual value of poetry, particularly as hisopinions are expressed in Book X of the Republic, thatthe history of criticism is sometimes said to have begun

specifically with him. For Aristotles Poetics, it is argued, is essentially an

answer to Plato, and cannot be understood apart fromthe circumstances that prompted it.

Yet it is worth remembering that the Poeticsis one of aseries of several works by Aristotle, each investigating aparticular field of knowledge; and as such, it wouldprobably have been written whether Plato hadquestioned the value of poetry or not.

Moreover, it would probably have been written in the

same spirit. For it rests upon widespread Greekprinciples, although it elaborates on them. Chief among these principles is the belief in the unique

value of poetry as a formative developer of the humanmind and emotion.


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To begin with, Plato maintained that poetry, as afictional creation, does not offer reality but unrealimitations. It not only offers mere imitations, but itsimitations are confined to copying only the concreteworld.

Ultimate truth, however, is absolute: it transcends thechanging flux of material things, which themselves areonly shadows and imitations of the fixed principles,forms, and ideas that comprise the final reality.

Philosophy, not poetry, is directed to ultimate truth.Moreover, while philosophy exercises and appeals toreason, poetry, and the arts, openly address thefeelings.

Poetry, according to Plato, feeds and waters thepassions instead of starving them. Platos attitude thusilluminates, by contrast, the contribution of Aristotle, tothe theory of art and literature.


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Aristotle admitted that artis very much concernedwith the concrete worldabout usthe world of

Becoming as distinctfrom Platos world ofideal, absolute Being.

But, in the first place, thisactivity, this process of

becomingisreality asAristotle conceived it. Moreover, art is not

confined to the merematerial side of this

activity of nature, but candraw out and emphasizethe general formemerging through it.


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Instead of being a copy of a copy, as Platothought, art is, according to Aristotle, a

duplicating of the living process of nature,completing and accentuating its potentialform.

As for the emotional appeal of art, that isall to its credit. The soul, said Aristotle, isan activity; and the capacity to feel

should be educated, developed, andextended, not suppressed or starved.


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Plato follows the general Greek tendencyto connect the conception of art as

imitation with the formative shaping anddevelopment of human character. But itshould be repeated and emphasized thathis more specific contribution to the idea

of imitation is to narrow the range ofwhat imitative art can do.

It remained, for later Platonists, to justify

art by pleading that, at its best, it canapproximately imitate those very ideasthat for Plato were the final reality.


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In Platos own theory of art, the tendencyis to conceive art as essentially an

imitation of objects or aspects of thematerialworld, and as being therefore oflimited moral and educational value.

This very restricting of the range ofimitation, on the other hand, served tofocus attention even more strongly uponthe imitative character of art, supplying a

provocative stimulus for later theorists totry to interpret the concept of imitation ina more liberal way.


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Alred North Whitehead remarked that thehistory of European philosophy is a seriesof footnotes to Plato.

Even so, the real significance of Plato for

the history of criticism lies mainly in theeffect of his philosophy as a whole ratherthan his specific remarks on art and

literature.

Documents

An Introduction to Plato and Book X of the Republic