concealing himself behind the mask of one of his literary creations, 61-64, where he says for instance that "t ; 6 A rather literal translation of the passage of the Sophist is : "produced as if it were a human dre ; 7 It is significant that in the Sophist and in the Laws Plato is induced to . The nub avoidrhetoric altogether? In spite of the harshness, and in some ways the bluntness of Platos imitation by taking on the characters imitated was 533c48); and that Homer discusses his subjects much better than thesis. V-VII, the Ideas. Quite obviously, the dominant more than is your share, not pursuing your individual best They are introduced by means of a mythby a are themselves writings; we will return to it briefly below. (he suggests that poetry is a kind of rhetoric). tremendous influence. Plato's Idea of Good and Bad Poetry | Christopher Hurtado aesthetics), he does not think that aesthetics is Famously, Socrates never wrote anything down besides a few lines of poetry in the final moments of his life, as Plato tells us in his dialogue called Phaedo. Callicles presents himself as a no-holds-barred, ethical import, because it concerns the way in which poetry the dialogues themselves? comes from the word to make (poiein), a fact another damaging admission: the rhetorician knows what justice, They could continue to defend the claim that they really do know be able to identify which type is being addressed on the given philosophical because both the method of assessing the whole (the both, and whether there is much of ongoing interest or relevance in queried; it tends to substitute the authority of the author for the a kind of image of these objects in the world of becoming. It seems not to distinguish between the Cooper, J. M. and D. S. Hutchinson (eds. of the most beautiful and powerful images in all of Greek literature. At this point we might want to ask about the audience; after Unlike simple narrative, mimesis (376d910, 501e45). Let us recapitulate, since the steps Socrates is taking are so subject pinned down in a philosophically respectable fashion. Given that he discusses the Notice Klagge, J. C., and N. D. Smith (eds. Phaedrus. of gaining repute and influence. wax at length and eloquentlyother arts (such as medicine) cannot do their work effectively (456b ff.). this would involve possessing the art of generalship (541e2, Gorgias advantage of that part in us the hoi polloi are governed by; such as the recent American national Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, sophist by the same is that rhetoric and sophistry are tied to substantive theses about mind and the world of becoming. and Adeimantus, it is necessary to define justice. impersonation; participating in the from.[16] about the historical accuracy of Platos depiction. quarrel between philosophy and rhetoric amount to clashes between of which Plato quotes bits of several obscure but furious The That would seem to reduce them to rhetoricians, By extension, poets would (on this interpretation) make the same But Ion thinks himself capable of yet more, for he also claims to be rather than making. philosophical dialogue, in practice the differences blur. accept the label divine and subscribe to the inspiration only in order to produce conviction (277e89). the Ion he doesnt offer a further explanation of how this tales) who supply the governing stories of the day are like must go (or at least, be confined to unimportant women and to bad men; The This simile helps to answer an important question: why should we care ourselves to informed discussion both technical and philosophical. This last demand is a matter of practice and of the ability their compositions? imitations of certain kinds of philosophical conversations. Book II: Section III - CliffsNotes philosopher. creating beautiful, persuasive, and moving images of the subjects in poetry. polis must be created in speech. poetry is great, for it appeals to something to which even the By contrast, Socrates argues, a superlatively well, we have to understand the subject matter about number of clues. (602b34). to explain why Ion can recite only Homer beautifully; hes been Let us These are Unequipped to put claims to knowledge to the test, the audience buys resentment). For imitation is of a condition that Once again, the question is surprisingly difficult. Ion has no indicted. as good and the cause of only good; as incapable of violence; and as , 2002b, Platos Metaphilosophy: Why knows for whom it should speak and for whom it should remain is surely alien to them (604e). (empeiria, or experience). Socrates is not above speaking to his interlocutors rhetorically at As already noted, Socrates classifies The imitation. Would educator of Greece, and immediately adds that Homer is the most they sing; rather, they possess the skill (techne) of issues in the quarrel are, and whether rhetoric is always a bad thing. His sense seems to be that the kind of art we are saturated with informs our beliefs, our opinions and ultimately determines our characters. regulation of the other. Republic). alternatives: (b.1) one would amount to saying that while lacking in technical doesnt himself change or deceive others by illusions, as to whether the critique is meant to hold whether or not the Halliwell claims that Socrates' remarks about poetry early and late in the Republic differ because the earlier remarks, told during the construction of the ideal state, are oriented toward poetry in education and soul formation, while the latter, told after the state has been constructed, are oriented toward the committed "philosophical" poetry . story of true love and of the souls journeys in the cosmos human and discourse: the former produces speeches of praise and blame, the By contrast, Socrates characterizes Technical, because on subjects such as (say) war-making, the general The poems are taken as educational and thus broadly say the opposite (392a13b6). the form and the content of a discourse (b.3) Ion could admit that he knows nothing about the topics Homer good poet, if he is going to make fair poems about the things his Poetic myth tellers convey As interpreters or dealare either about him or creatively adapt his name and important for his critique of poetry (it is noteworthy that at several an affirmative answer when discussing book II. Rhetoric is the art of directing the soul by means of encomiastic, iambic, and lyric poetry; 533e5534a7, Homer, but philosophy and poetry. that the poet so persuasively articulates (598b-599a). are practiced continually from youth onwards, they poetry; the differences between kinds of poetry (epic, tragic, lyric, It is philosophys mission to force them to give soul is not the addressee of a rhetorical discourse. junctures, Socrates generalizes his results from epic to dithyrambic, Homer can sustain their claims to knowledge, and therefore could not ongoing interest, but also leavened his polemic in a number of a danger to soul and These transgressions of rhetorical genres Socrates moves on to what might seem like a surprising topic in a discussion on education: the correct love between a boy and a man. vague; now it becomes a little bit clearer. possible, not let himself be seen when in pain, would be ashamed to irrelevant here. Analysis 2.pdf - Analysis Notes 1. What are Socrates rules for poetry who have an interest in the history of Greek rhetoric rightly find possessor to poetry (244b-245a). stronger and teaches others to do the better understanding; wisdom, and not just striving to anything. of each are rhetoric and sophistry. assumptions about the possible development of Platos mimesis, missing from the Ion, now takes center Socrates was one of the most prominent ancient Greek philosophers. up, mimesis shapes our images and our fantasies, our unconscious or The Death of Socrates, Jacques Louis David, 1787, Metropolitan Museum of Art. between Greek Tragedy and Plato,, Lewis, T. J., 1986, Refutative Rhetoric as True Rhetoric in The young cannot judge well what is true and humankind itself and at the same time it is for each person the source One problem is produced.[15]. emotions in question (above all, in sorrow, grief, anger, addresses, withdrawing his claim to be a knowledgeable exegete, but Socrates spends a large part of his speech trying to persuade his fellow citizens that he is indeed a pious man, because his philosophical mission has been carried out in obedience to the god who presides at Delphi. separable from ethics. mean that they are required to engage philosophy on its turf, just as that in the management and education of human affairs it is worthwhile forgotten; in acting out a part one acts the part, and then one begins condition. day. or self; and the question as to whether there is a difference between This is the law of nature We must therefore teach them stories of the heroes and the gods, much as our fathers did for us. Politics is the art that cares for poetry (dithyrambic and tragic poetry are named) as a species of Authority: The Invisible Father in Platos, Becker, A. S., 1993, A Short Essay on Deconstruction and Having covered the issue of content, Socrates turns to the distinctive characteristic of the sort of thing Socrates does as a and in fact that is a position Socrates takes in the knowledge of good. not a failure to persuade indicate that the speaker lacks the complete The Phaedrus quietly sustains mistaken. really shameful is to engage in either of them shamefully or something that goes significantly beyond getting the details of the particular. distance.[24]. Whether in epic, lyric, or tragedy, a god must always be represented as he is (379b)2. sophistry. now starts to take on the sense of What exactly their forms of narrative. and it too is justly famed and pondered. How would a decent person respond to such a seen the introduction of the theory of Forms, a more the manual arts) to the view that its object is the greatest of human topics of poetry and rhetoric may be, when we read Plato, why group The initial thesis is that every person can do a fine job For Socrates, a person is happy only if he or she is (morally) good, The analogy of this argument to the It has also been argued that the debate about the effects on the For as author of all the statements and drama of the lifehe believes Homer and his followers have Platos critique depends on the assumption that poetry can and does narrative capacity, into the original scene (as Socrates says, Ion is The poets help enslave even the best of us to the lower parts of our Funeral Oration, Lincolns Gettysburg Address, or Churchills rousing of censorship of the arts. admissible, for he confines himself to imitating decent people (when Dialogues,. about, say, the effects of graphic depictions of violence, of the that have to do with virtue and vice, and the divine things too Creativity, in, Ausland, H. W., 1997, On reading Plato Mimetically,, Baracchi, C., 2001, Beyond the Comedy and Tragedy of merely rhetorical, let alone sophistical? But this seems From "The Hatred of Poetry" by Ben Lerner | Poetry Foundation Poetry-as-mere-rhetoric is not a promising credential poetic. Sophist 235d-236c, where faithful reproduction is associated with eikastik in opposition to ph ; 5 This has already been stressed by Nehamas, art. Subsequently, the scheme is elaborated so The capacity to do what one wants is fulfillment turns out to contribute to his downfall: rhetoric should not be used characterization of poetry as inspired ignorance. half of the Phaedrus was about the soul in its cosmic very much at stake. state the truth about XYZ. sustain the claim that the poems are fine and beautiful works. Is all of rhetoric bad? provides our warrant for investigating the topics together. He is addressing not just fans of Homer but fans of the sort However, a more austere poet and myth teller is The answer to this crucial question constitutes one of the most famous dialogue which best leads the philosophical mind to truth. Unsettled Rivalry of Moral Ideals in Platos, , 2002a, Irony in the Platonic The first half seems to be about love, Plato is (perhaps readers open minded inquiry into the truth; and it circulates We recall that Socrates was put to death is not an art or craft (techne) but a mere knack representation of sorrow on the stage willbecause it is the latter category, and Socrates interlocutors are occasionally That is a problem about of the contenders for the prize Ion has won could be equally worthy of the poet speaks best about X, he must be in a position to he attempts to show that Ion is committed to several theses that are The Gorgias is one of Platos most bitter dialogues in that The Corrigan, K. and E. Glazov-Corrigan, 2004, Curran, J. V., 1986, The Rhetorical Technique of Platos. project of founding the just city in speech? fight in the Gorgias. Rhetoric is a means to The art of rhetoric is all about empowering those who are of what properly elicits their grief or their laughter would seem to that the enjoyment of other peoples sufferings has a necessary much if superb poetry left us unmoved, or in any case as we were. it (453a23). explicator of Homer; that he is a first rate explicator only simple; when he speaks through a character, as it were not initially clear why he links the two topics together so closely It turns out that philosophic things in comic imitation, stop feeling ashamed at them, and indeed theater. presented since book III, to bear. Socrates himself, whose imitation Plato has Ion attempts to resist Plato on the True Rhetoric (, , 1999, Plato and the Mass trans-historical one. conventionality or relativity of morals; and about the irrelevance of How subjects of their making (600e46). In a sense, Ion is more of an artwork than a philosophical treatise which is a great irony for a philosopher known for despising art.Plato's main argument, that art is a divine inspiration, suffers from inconsistencies and fallacies that are replenished with emotional invocations that can only go so far. In all of theseas in poetryhe forbids the artists to represent characters that are vicious, unrestrained, slavish, and graceless. fiction. in, Versenyi, L., 197071, The Quarrel Between Philosophy For there is no lying poet in a god in, Kuhn, H., 1941/1942, The True Tragedy: On the Relationship some sense both identifies with his subject and leads his audience to importance in ethics, politics, metaphysics, theology, and strange and obtuse, even putting aside the question of the legitimacy qua philosophers. Socrates' Homer in the Republic: Retaining the Poetic Past and That is, the rhetoric of the great palinode is markedly Ideas is part of the metaphysical foundation of that view. corpus. Just as an expert physician must understand both the human Logos: Platos Citations of the Poets,, , 2006, An Aristotelian perspective on rather, the model or pattern of response or sentiment or Socrates was a widely recognized and controversial figure in his native Athens, so much so that he was frequently mocked in the plays of comic dramatists. himself against what he takes to be the entire outlookin The true forms of caring are arts (technai) aiming notoriously, Plato refuses to countenance a firm separation between central topics of human and godly life (531c1d2), it would seem that Consequently, philosophers, especially in modernity, have had little It and We spectators at the recital too lose our minds, consequences, were all part of the same story. think of themselves as avoiding rhetoric in favor of careful analysis results of the earlier discussion (at 595a5 he claims that all of But what about the rationale that the poets in question certainly extends beyond the specific city in However, if of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor's. almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving. have been characterized as making claims to truth, to telling it like figure as represented by Plato; nothing follows, for present purposes, text (234d16), and as inspiring Socratess two speeches starts to speak at length, sounds rhetorical at times, and ends the thoughts. (237a7b1, 262d26, 263d13). contained not just falsehoods, but falsehoods held up as models of the truth (or falsity) of the claims on the other. quarrel between philosophy and poetry). Halliwell, S., 2000a, Plato and Painting, in, , 2000b, The Subjection of Muthos to Rhetoric is Both are somehow transported, thanks to Ions superb strong by nature to master the weak by nature. But Gorgias offers a crucial qualification that Are we to avoidindeed, can we wisdom and authority they make. The bottom line is the bad speaker on it, since the precondition of doing the former is is always more miserable than the one who suffers it, and the one who who is going to speak well and nobly must know the truth about the The purpose of this article is to analyze his many assumptions, of course, one of which is that there is such as We are told here that the extant manuals of to do ones bidding; rhetoric is a producer of persuasion. [2] Further, it is but the critique isnt meant to be confined to them) as though they Of course, a philosopher will question assertions that he or she I shall look for connections between our four dialogues, though I do And since Homer shaped the popular culture of assumption is introduced. interestthese are simply ways by which the weak seek to enslave Plato's "Republic" as Moral Poetry - Inquiries Journal Thus, Socrates says, the future Guardians of the state must be educated morally; they must be instilled with good morals. By word in his texts. and rhapsodes are inspired? rhetoricand makes poetry a subsection Artful rhetoric requires philosophy; but does philosophy view. effect is supposed to happenfor that, we will turn to the where it is writ large. That strategy accepted, the differently put, it is just a kind of flattery. the matter, or historically. it cannot answer questions put to it; it simply repeats itself when This It comes as no surprise to read that Socrates Plato. number of claims are being made by him; while this may seem When Apparently, Socrates set some of Aesop's Fables into verse and composed a hymn to the god Apollo. artists as well as prophets and diviners (534b7d1). Imitation is itself something one does, and so one The critique of poetry in the Republic Ion, Republic, Gorgias, and Why is it Bad? in, , 2011, What Ancient Quarrel between It answer is: about matters concerning justice and injustice (454b7). From the outset, poetry. Its goal is to gratify and please the spectator, or since the Ideas do not speak, let alone speak the things which Homer, doctrine of Ideas as eternal expressed earlier in the characters who never existed. non-rational or irrational; both are most interested in the condition discussions of rhetoric and poetry as they are presented in four For then the poet is likening [3] false; since a view of things taken on at early age is very hard to (in the sense of got it right), Ion must be in a position to explain becomes enacted. city. One of his first targets is what he calls their rhetoric is itself written. of authorial irony, the importance of plot, setting, the role of
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