What are Plato's arguments against Poetry?

  Plato's arguments against Poetry 

 

 Ans. Plato was the first great Greek philosopher who systematically expressed his views on art and poetry. He was highly influenced by his master, Socrates who had taught men to think and to search for truth in a strictly detached manner. He was endowed with literacy gifts. He was a fine prose writer and being the student of Socrates, he looked at life, society, art and literature from the lofty moral point of view. In his famous book, Republic, he is concerned to construct, firstly, an ideal state, and secondly, the ideal Man who is the individual counterpart of the state. From the social point of view, Plato aimed at making everything, including art and poetry, subservient to morality or civic virtue; and from the individual viewpoint, everything subservient to the philosophic ideal, or the pursuit and realization of Truth . He looks at art or poetry from the social point of view. A piece of art and poetry, howsoever beautiful it may be, cannot be welcomed unless it contributes something in making an ideal state and a similar citizen.

Art or poetry, according to Plato, contribute neither to the making of an ideal state nor to that of an ideal citizen. So he condemns poetry on the following grounds:

 (I) Poetic Inspiration: A poet writes poetry because he is inspired. He does not use language as normal human beings do. He writes in a divinely inspired frenzy. In Ion he writes: “For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing. and there is no invention to him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses , and the mind is no longer in him when he has not attained to this state , he is powerless and unable to utter his oracles . Many are the noble words in which poet speak concerning the actions of men ; but like yourself When speaking about Homer , they do not speak of them by any rules of art : they are simply inspired to utter that to which the Muse impels them , and that only ; and when inspired one of them will make dithyrambs , another hymns of praise , another choral strains , another epic or iambic verses - and he who is good at one is not good at any other kind of verse : for not only by art does the poet sing , but by power divine . “God speaks through a poet. Poetry is divine. In his later work, the Republic, Plato drew a distinction between the poet and the philosopher. The poet is inferior to the philosopher, because he appeals to the emotions of the people and not to their intellect, and, thus, he is dangerous for society. Since poetry is mainly guided by the impulse of the moment and not by cool deliberation, like philosophy, it cannot make the individual a better citizen and the State a better organization. Poetry, according to Plato, “feeds and waters the passions “creates division and unsteadiness in the heart, or frivolous laughter, and produces the opposite of civic virtue. Poets will have no place in the ideal Republic. Being a product of inspiration, it affects the emotions rather than reason, the heart rather than the intellect. Its pictures of life of characters, scenes, or situations - overpower the emotions and hold the reason prisoner. Emotions, like the poetic inspiration, cannot be such safe guides as reason. Plato illustrates this with reference to the tragic poetry of his age, in which weeping and wailing were indulged to the full to move the hearts of the spectators.

He also indicts poetry for its lack of concern with morality. It treats both virtue and vice alike, sometimes making the one and sometimes making the other triumph indifferently, without regard for moral consideration. Plato was pained to see virtue often coming to grief in the literature popular in his day - the epics of Homer, the narrative verse of Hesiod, the odes of Pindar, and the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. In the Republic he points out that poetry deals with fictions, often in wicked fictions, wicked lies. Homer and Hesoid and the dramatists, instead of representing God as good and the source of all good, give us an anthropomorphic, wrangling, deceitful and revengeful crowd of deities. These poets show the heroes as emotional and cowardly, the wicked men as prosperous, and the just men as wretched. Plato writes in The Republic : " They give us to understand that many evil livers are happy and many righteous men are unhappy ; and that wrong doing , if it be undetected , is profitable , while honest dealing is beneficial to one's neighbor , but damaging to one's self . " Such literature corrupted both the citizen and the state.

 Pondering over the function of poetry Plato thinks that more pleasure cannot be its only object. He could not conceive of art as divorced from morals. The expression of truth is the test of poetry. It must contribute to the knowledge of virtue. In this way it can mould the character of the individual and promote. The interests of the people. A poet must be a good teacher. He says in the Republic: “We must look for artists who are able out of the goodness of their own natures to trace the nature of beauty and perfection, that so our young men, like persons who live in a healthy place, may be perpetually influenced for good.” Plato, however, admits poetry manifests highest truth, ideal forms of justice, goodness, beauty and virtue. In the Laws he speaks of an ideal, civic - minded poet, a man “more than fifty years old " , a safe one for composing patriotic songs . Plato writes in The Republic , " we are ready to acknowledge that Homer is the greatest of poets and first of tragedy writers , but we must remain firm in our conviction that hymns to the gods and praises of famous men are the only poetry which ought to be admitted in our state . "

 (ii) Theory of Imitation: To Plato poetry is based on falsehood and, therefore, it is harmful in its effect on the people. The poet is concerned with appearance only or rather the appearance of an appearance. Plato's theory of art and poetry is based on his concept of imitation or Mimesis. He observed in the Republic that certain poems simply tell what happened , others actually imitate what happened - dramas , of course and these are the most dangerous ones , because the most contagious . A man who has to play serious part in life cannot afford to imitate any other kind of part.