1. PLATO VERSUS THE ARTISTS
REPUBLIC 10 IN CONTEXT

2. OUTLINE
Plato’s aesthetics in Rep. 10 as extension of critiques in Rep. 2 & 3
Mimesis first mooted: returns in Rep. 10
Rep. 10 critique of mimetic painting & poetry: epic and tragedy
Ontological & epistemological grounds
Psychological and ethical reasons also
Some specific targets? Scenes from Homer
Overall political & cultural critique

3. PLATONIC AESTHETICS Inseparable from
Education
Ontology: theories of ‘being’
Epistemology: theories of knowledge
Psychology
Ethics & Justice
Politics
Issues addressed elsewhere in Republic
Plato addresses legacy of poets: Homer, Hesiod, et al.
His intellectual precursors
Poets seen as teachers of religion, ethics, law

4. PLATONIC AESTHETICS II
Plato expresses different views on art & poetry elsewhere
Phaedrus: Plato admires mania of poet
Ion: poetry beautiful and true
But poets/rhapsodes irrational and lack knowledge
Have no rational control
Operate under inspiration = ENTHOUSIASMOS
Republic 10: poet = imitator only
No inspiration
Plato on poetry: Curb Your Enthousiasmos
Apology: Socrates invokes Homeric Achilles as his model!

5. SOCRATIC ACHILLES?
Achilles?
Socrates?

6. SOCRATIC ACHILLES?
Achilles?
Socrates?

7. PLATO’S FORERUNNERS Xenophanes c. 570-480 BC
Anticipated and contradicted by other Greek thinkers
Xenophanes c BC
Heraclitus, active, c. 500 BC
Protagoras, c BC
Antilogica said to contain everything in Plato’s Republic!
But Protagoras sees poetry at the heart of education
Gorgias, c BC
Democritus, c BC
Dissoi Logoi - sophistic treatise c. 400 BC
Ethics
Epistemology
Aesthetics
PLATO’S FORERUNNERS

8. Why does Plato banish epic & tragic poetry in Republic 10?
Cultural issues to be explored
Centrality of poetry in Archaic & Classical Greece
Vehicle for social values, mores,
History, education, cultural identity, politics
But also a lot more…
Greece in 400s till largely an oral & visual culture
I.e. not ‘bookish’
Literacy a public phenomenon = reading aloud
Paintings, statues, buildings also shape & reflect public sentiment & ideology

9. Athens vs Persia 480-79 Spearheads triumph over Persia Marathon 490
Major invasion 10 years later
Salamis 480, Plataea 479
Sets up Delian league

10. Athens, post 480 BC Spearheads triumph over Persia
Sets up Delian league
Source of tribute and wealth to protect states from Persia
Becomes treasury for Athenian empire

11. Athens: ‘The School of Hellas’
By 450 BC Athens is imperial power
‘ Periclean Golden Age’
Funeral Speech
Thucydides’ History book 2
Athens as cultural centre
Intellectuals
Sophists/philosophers
Poets
Playwrights
Cultural festivals:
Panathenaia, City Dionysia, etc.
Pericles rules BC

12. Athens as Cultural leader
Acropolis, Athens
Cf. Pericles: ‘Look on her power and become a lover of the city.’ (Thucydides)
Theatre of Dionysos

13. Athens: Home of Tragedy
Aeschylus: BC
Euripides, c
Sophocles, c

14. Some Greek writers on art
Polyclitus
Sculptor active c BC
Author of ‘Canon’
A technical treatise
Philosophical overtones?
Parrhasius
Empedocles
Hippias
Gorgias
Democritus
Apelles
Euphranor, et al.
Sources in Pliny
Vitruvius
Polyclitus, Doryphorus c. 445 BC

15. Athens: ‘The School of Hellas’
Socrates denounces mainstays of Attic civic and cultural life
Rhetoric
Tragedy
Homeric epic
Democracy
Legal procedures
Political leaders like Pericles, et al.
Socrates; seen by many many as dangerously pro-Spartan
Oligarchic/anti-democratic
Socrates not a fan

16. Aftermath of Peloponnesian War 404/3 BC
Athens defeated by Sparta & Allies
Loses empire & Long Walls razed
30 tyrants imposed by Sparta
Critias, Charmides, et al.
Students of Socrates
Democracy restored 403
Amnesty granted; no political charges allowed
Socrates brought to trial on non-political charges
Extreme democrats want him punished

17. Socrates: A problem to his city
Death of Socrates,
Jacques-Louis David

18. PLATO 428-347 BC Related to oligarchs Critias & Charmides
Plato writes dialogues 380s-350s
after Athens loses war
Dialogues: scope for character, narrative, wit, irony
Plato: a great philosopher in own right
supreme literary artist
also said to be a champion wrestler when young …

19. PLATO BC
His misspent youth?

20. REPUBLIC 2 & 3: Plato on Homer and Hesiod
Homer: Iliad and Odyssey Hesiod: Theogony & Works and Days

21. Homeric poetry in schools
Recitation of Iliad & Odyssey
Seen as educative
Religion, lore, ethics
Herodotus, Plato, Xenophon
Cf. Aristophanes Frogs
But criticised early
Xenophanes & Heraclitus
Iliad very complex in ethics

22. Xenophanes of Colophon, c. 570-480
General skepticism: B34
But still dogmatic himself
Critique of conventional religion in art and epic poetry Critic of social conventions
Anthropomorphic religion
Homer & Hesiod
Mythic subject matter (B1)
Titanomachies,
Centauromachies, etc.
Postulates ethically sound sympotic poetry
François vase, c. 570

23. Xenophanes: frr. 11,14, 15, 16
B 11: Homer and Hesiod have attributed to the gods everything that is a shame and reproach among men: stealing, adultery and deceiving each other.
B14: But mortals consider that the gods are born, and that they have clothes and speech and bodies like their own.
B15: But if cattle and horses or lions had hands, or were able to draw with their hands and produce (telein) the works that men do, horses would draw the forms of gods like horses, and cattle like cattle and they would make their bodies such as they each had themselves.
B16: The Ethiopians say that their gods are snub-nosed and black, the Thracians that theirs have blue eyes and red hair.

24. Xenophanes’ theology
B 23: One god, greatest among gods and men, in no way similar to mortals either in body or shape.
B24: All of him sees, all of him thinks, all of him hears.
B 25/26: Always he remains in the same place, moving not at all; nor is it fitting for him to go to different places at different times, but without toil he shakes all things by the thought of his mind.
Cf. Homer Iliad 1.530
Zeus nods his head and ‘shakes great Olympos’

25. Heraclitus as critic of popular religion
Heraclitus not opposed to religion per se
Certain conventional aspects of it
People fail to understand nature of divine
Dionysos/Hades are one B15
Role of thunderbolt/Zeus in cosmos B64
Homer calls Zeus Terpikeraunos
B 32: The one thing which alone is wise wants to be and does not want to be called the name of Zeus.
goes beyond Xenophanes
But still invokes Zeus
Heraclitus by Raphael

26. Heraclitus as critic of Homer, et al.
Trenchant criticisms; competitive intellectual environment
B 104: For what is their intelligence or sense? They obey singers and use the mob as teachers, not knowing that many are bad, but few are good.
B 42: Homer should be thrown out of the contests and beaten; likewise Archilochos.
B 40: Learning many things does not teach intelligence; for it would have taught Hesiod, Pythagoras, and again Xenophanes and Hecataeus.
B 56: Homer ‘wiser than all the Greeks’ defeated by riddle of the lice.
Heraclitus by Raphael

27. REPUBLIC 2 & 3: Critiques of Archaic poets
Book 2: 377c-383
Homer and Hesiod tell salacious stories about the gods:
Castration of Ouranos by Kronos
Kronos’ cannibalism
Questionable theology
Poets wrong teachings re gods’ actions and natures
Cf. Xenophanes on Homer and Hesiod
Stories affect listeners & shape their soul
Power of poetry one of its problems for Plato
Recurs again in Republic 10
Must be censored (even if true! Rep. 378b)

28. Saturn (=Kronos) Devouring his Children
Goya
Rubens

29. REPUBLIC 2 & 3: Critiques of Archaic poets
Book 3: ethical qualms raised
Achilles vs Agamemnon: insubordinate, greedy
Heroes fear death - bad example for Guardians
Possible responses:
Allegories of Homeric poetry by Theagenes, et al.
Plato/Socrates assumes depiction=endorsement
Ignores Nestor’s attempt at reconciliation
No aesthetic differentiation
Cf. Democritus and Gorgias focus on emotive pleasure of poetry: anticipate Aristotle’s Poetics

30. REPUBLIC 2 & 3: Critiques of Archaic poets
Mimesis: 395b & ff
Poet/rhapsode’s performative art
Violates one-person/one job rule of Republic
Affects poet and listeners - emotional power again
Fall under its spell
People become assimilated to characters they see, hear
No aesthetic differentiation again
But concedes mimesis of good men acceptable: 398b
Plato contrasts with diegesis (=prose narrative)
No meter, harmonies, hyper-stylised language
implications for Rep. 10

31. REPUBLIC 10: Critique of Mimetic Painting & Poetry
Mimesis now rejected
Psychology, epistemology, education
Theory of Forms
Outlined in books 4-9 of Rep.
Painting used as extensive analogy for mimetic poetry
Both media subject to Plato’s
Ontology: theory of being
Epistemology: theory of knowledge
Psychology
Ethics & Justice: political implications

32. REPUBLIC 10 (595-603): On Painting & Poetry
: Ontology
Painting = mimesis phantasmatos
Imitation of an appearance; on 3rd remove from reality
Couch example and invocation of Forms
: Epistemology
Painters and poets = ignorant, so, too, their public
Operate at 3 removes from truth & deceive public: 598c
User/maker/imitator argument
602-3: Psychology
Painting plays havoc with our senses
Seductive, erotic, magical language used
Mimetic art as courtesan (hetaira) to our senses
Epithumetikon vs Logistikon

33. REPUBLIC 10 (603-607): On Epic Poetry & Tragedy
Psychology
Meter, harmony, music beguiles us
Seductive, erotic, magical language used (cf. painting)
Grief: tragedy, etc. panders to ‘irrational’ and emotive elements in us
Epithumetkon implied
This part is opposite to ‘what is best in us’
Logistikon implied
But NB the ‘noble lie’ behind the political structure of the Republic
What makes this better than poets’ ‘lies’?

35. REPUBLIC 10 (605c-607b): ‘The Greatest Charge’
It corrupts the best of us (cf. painting)
NB its emotive power
pleasure in sympathising with sufferings of others
People assimilate Homeric tragic characters’ behaviour to own lives
the more you indulge these emotions, the more you encourage them
no ‘cleansing’ katharis here
Poets destabilise our psychological ‘order’
Justice = Psychological order
Mimetic poets to be banned (!)
but encomia to good men allowed (607a)

36. Specific Platonic Targets?
Hector and Andromache,
Cf. Iliad 6
Priam and Achilles
Iliad 24

37. Specific Platonic Targets?
Priam and Achilles Iliad 24

38. Specific Platonic Targets?
Sophocles’ Ajax;
cf. amphora by Exekias, c. 530 BC

39. NEXT TIME: SOME RESPONSES
Plato ignores moments in Homer of heroic restraint of emotion; Achilles and Priam again
Gorgias on cleverness of audience (B23)
recognition of artistic fiction
Cf. Dissoi Logoi on painting and tragedy
Aeschines and Isocrates (orators, active c ) provide opposite evidence to Plato
Democritus - other people’s suffering can make us count our blessings and help

40. Poetics defends art and poetry
SOME RESPONSES
Aristotle: Plato’s greatest student and greatest critic:
Poetics defends art and poetry

41. Poetics defends art and poetry
SOME RESPONSES
Aristotle: Plato’s greatest student and greatest critic:
Poetics defends art and poetry
Aristotle Contemplating Homer (Rembrandt, c. 1650)