Bring out the salient features of Plato's attack on poetry'

 Plato can be easily interpreted as someone who is an enemy of the art, because considered all the forms of art like painting, poetry, drama, etc. as inferior and imitation of imperfect world which in itself is an imitation of ultimate reality. So, why Plato? A question worth concern. Because Plato did not intend evaluate the value of aesthetic pleasure all he wanted to show that art is inferior to ultimate reality and through art one cannot attain level of ultimate truth.

His ideas and concern were certainly not artistic, but philosophic. He was worried that art can cause some sort of emotional arousal in audience, which is not good for an ideal human being, as he versioned in his Platonic Utopia. In order to get to the idea of Plato on poetry and other art forms, the best book to refer is his Republic, wherein he talks about the idea of a perfect state and divides it in three different categories.

In his utopian state the philosopher are the administrator and ruler and they have a great understanding of the true nature of things. In this state poetry is welcomed because it is an enemy of the reason and does not consider the value of reason much, which is very close to philosophers. And that is why teaching of poetry and other art form is not healthy for the creation of perfect moral character which is required in an administrator.

Another thing which is to be noted that in curriculum of Greek education one of the prominent poet was Homer. From Plato Homer should not be taught, because his portrayal of Gods and heroes is not ideal. He has portrayed Gods as human like. And such a portrayal is not good form the formation of a worthy character.  In the similar vein the theater must not be appreciated because while enacting plays actors shed their own character and tries to put on someone else, which is not praiseworthy, therefore forbidden in Platonic Utopia.

Apart from above points, for Plato art was an imperfect presentation of reality and the artist sometimes pretend to know thing which they are not even aware of For example, Homer was no military general, nor did he fight any war but still he write about warring heroes. Homer was also not a teacher of some reputation, but still he is said to have written the words of wisdom on everything. All these points, make Plato conclude that art and by extension artists should be abandoned in his utopian vision of state.

Let us now take a look at the Pluto’s view of mimesis.

Platonic View of Mimesis :

Historically, the word ‘mimesis’as re-enactment first appears in such rituals, and the historical origin of the term, as located in Dionysian cult drama, coincides this meaning in that ‘mimesis’ in both cases refers to imitation, representation and expression It is argued that myth, and divine symbols of the rituals are transformed to artisticdramatic representation through which it became possible to represent the divinity and Gods in drama.

Tragedy, for instance is the transformation of the myth and rituals. In a different context ‘mimesis’ may refer to identi-fication. People identify themselves by means of their mimetic ability when they see themselves in the other and perceive a state of mutual equality. In this sense, ‘mimesis is distinct from mimicry, which implies only a physical, and no mental relation. That is, a person regards the Other as equal and assumes the ‘Other to be doing the same in reverse. 

Associated with the physical aspect of ‘mimesis’ is its performative aspect, as an actualization, a presentation of what has been mimetically indicated. Thus, the term “mimesis’ is combined with an action-oriented speaking. Plato takes the term ‘mimesis’ with several meanings and connotations in the dialogues and alters the meaning of the term according to the context in which he uses it. He uses ‘mimesis in the context of the education of the youth; he discusses the function of ‘mimesis’ as likening oneself to another in speech and bodily behaviour and as addressing the lower part of man’s soul; he also refers to the epistemology and metaphysics of the concept. He takes the word ‘mimesis’ with pedagogic attributes and uses it in educational and ethical context when he says ‘guardians of an ideal state should be educated to imitate only what is appropriate’.

In the third book of the Republic, for instance, Plato provides further definitions of ‘mimesis’, centering on the relation between ‘mimesis’ and poetry, “mimesis’ and education and also poetry and education. Since young people learn essentially through imitation, it is significant to select the models’. ‘Mimesis suggests unfavorable effect on the part of the young people and poetry is one important source of the youth’s experience with examples and models’; therefore, if the world of models and examples ought to be controlled in the interest of education, poetry must be likewise subject to control. Plato argues the case in the Republic as follows: 

The youth cannot distinguish what is allegorical from what is not, and the beliefs they acquire at the age are hard to expunge and usually remain unchanged. That is important that the first stories they hear should be well told and dispose them to virtue. The contents, forms, and representational modes of poetry play an important ethical role in the education of guardians and should, because of the effects they exercise through mimetic process, be based on ethical principles. Young people should only imitate brave, sober, pious and noble men, which will increase their strength and will not infect them with weakness.

In this sense, it is argued in the Republic that tragedy and comedy, as mimetic poetry, represent injustice among the Gods in the assertion that gods are responsible for unhappiness among people. In the Platonic conception, gods cannot be evil, heroes cannot be weak. The poet’s representation violates the truth and by representing the deficiencies of gods and heroes, has negative effect on the community and the education of youth.

Theory of Forms :

As Socrates had proposed in the Meno, the most important varieties of human knowledge are really cases of recollection. Consider, for example, our knowledge of equality. We have no difficulty in deciding whether or not two people are perfectly equal in height. In fact, they are never exactly the same height, since we recognize that it would always be possible to discover some difference-however minute-with a more careful, precise measurement. By this standard, all of the examples we perceive in ordinary life only approach, but never fully attain, perfect equality. 

But notice that since we realize the truth of this important qualification on our experience, we must somehow know for sure what true equality is, even though we have never seen it. Plato believed that the same point could be made with regard to many other abstract concepts: we have genuine knowledge of truth, goodness, and beauty no less than of equality. Things of this sort are the Platonic Forms, abstract entities that exist independently of the sensible world. Ordinary objects are imperfect and changeable, but they faintly copy the perfect and immutable Forms.

Thus, all of the information we acquire about sensible objects (like knowing what the high and low temperatures were yesterday) is temporary, insignificant, and unreliable, while genuine knowledge of the Forms themselves (like knowing that 93 – 67 = 26) perfectly certain forever. Since we really do have knowledge of these supra-sensible realities, knowledge that we cannot possibly have obtained through any bodily experience,

Plato argued, it follows that this knowledge must be a form of recollection and that our souls must have been acquainted with the Forms prior to our births. But in that case, the existence of our mortal bodies cannot be essential to the existence of our souls – before birth or after death – and we are therefore immortal. The supra-sensible world of Plato must be considered as constituting a multiplicity of subsistent ideas which find their unity in the Idea of the Good (God).

Platonic Ideas in fact are but the realities which refract the single Idea (the Good). Granted, then, the identity of the Good and of the True and the Beautiful, all ideas are at the same time true, good and beautiful, i.e. perfect models. The world of Ideas is the world of true reality. The existence of a transcendent world (Ideas) presents Plato with new and grave problems regarding cosmic and psychic nature.  Both the sensible world and the human intellect participate in the world of transcendence, the first under the form of essence and the second under the form of Ideas.

How can this participation be understood? In other words, what is the relationship between the sensible world and that of transcendence; why are Ideas present in the human mind independent of all contact with the sensible world? The attempt to resolve these new problems forms what we will call the cosmology and the psychology of Plato.

The Lower Status of Art :

The Symposium contains Plato’s other major analysis of beauty. Socrates claims to be quoting his teacher Diotima on the subject of love, and in the lesson attributed to her she calls beauty the object of every love’s yearning. She spells out the soul’s progress toward ever-purer beauty, from one body to all, then through all beautiful souls, laws, and kinds of knowledge, to arrive at beauty itself. Two remarks suggest that works of art count as beautiful things. Diotima describes the poet’s task as the begetting of wisdom and other virtues.

Ultimately moved by desire for what is beautiful the poet produces works of verse; and who would not envy Homer or Hesiod? And yet, aside from these parenthetical comments, the Symposium seems prepared to treat anything but a poem as an example of beauty. (In a similar spirit the Philebus’s examples of pure sensory beauty exclude pictures). The Republic contains several tokens of Plato’s reluctance to associate poetry with beauty.

The dialogue’s first discussion of poetry, whose context is education, censors poems that corrupt the young. Then almost immediately Socrates is speaking of cultivating a fondness for beauty among the young guardians. Their taste for beauty will help them prefer noble deeds over ugly vulgar ones.  How can Plato have seen the value of beauty to education and not mentioned the subject in his earlier criticisms? Why couldn’t this part of the Republic so much as concede that false and pernicious poems affect the young through their beauty?

If anything, Plato takes pains to prevent beauty from appearing in poetry. Republic calls the beauty of poetic lines a deceptive attractiveness. Take away the decorative language that makes a poetic sentiment sound so right and put it into ordinary words, and it becomes unremarkable, much as young people’s faces beautified by youth later show themselves as the plain looks they are.

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