My Thoughts On Plato

DISCLAIMER: As usual, if you are not interested in Plato, I wouldn’t bother reading this post, it is probably really, really boring.

Believe it or not, I had my first encounter with Plato’s Republic today. I am doing a Ph.D. in English so you’d think I’d have read it; but until now I have successfully avoided it. It is interesting — but really problematic. Here’s the deal, if you’re at all interested:

Republic Books II, III, and X are dialogues all about how to properly educate the future rulers, or guardians, of the hypothetical ideal society they (Socrates and his buds) are constructing. These books are of particular interest to literary studies because they are about poetry and art, as acts of representation, and their role in this ideal society.

According to Plato’s Socrates, the education system should be comprised of “exercise for the body and cultural studies for the mind” (49). [As an aside, I'm not talking about Plato's opinion or Socrates' opinion -- it is all spoken by Plato's textual representation of Socrates; a clever way of disavowing responsibility for the opinions put forth]. In the dialogue, they agree that cultural studies should come first, as children are told stories from the beginnings of their lives. What is made clear right from the get-go here is that there is a strong moral imperative to censor poetry and stories for children, as these representations shape their view of the world; and, according to Plato’s Socrates, once a world view or ethical code is impressed upon a child, it cannot be changed. Though poetry may be allegorical, children do not have the capacity to tell the difference between something that is allegorical and something that is not; thus, it is important to shield them from the possibility of corruption by censoring poetry (and other art) that is not “true” and morally good. I put true in quotation marks there because I think that Plato’s notion of truth and morality is rather more ambiguous than he would like it to be. More on that later.

So, what he argues is, ultimately, that “a very great deal of importance should be place on ensuring that the first stories [children] hear are best adapted for their moral improvement” (51). From there he is challenged to define what the boundaries of poetry should be. It is unquestionable that the state’s rulers will decide what can be written and what cannot; but how do the rulers make those decisions? It is here that Plato’s Socrates makes his appeal to a universal morality.

First, he takes issue with the idea that gods be represented as all-powerful and responsible for everything. After all, god is good, and hence cannot be responsible for any bad in the world. Gods should not be represented as performing actions out of ill will, as they often are in the epics of his time. It is okay for gods to punish in poetry, but only if it can be shown that those on the receiving end were deserving of punishment, and only as long as the audience does not see those people suffering as a result of their punishment. He also takes issue with gods being represented as shape-shifters. If gods are perfect (as, for him, they undoubtedly are), then they could only change their form for the worse; and any being who is intrinsically good would not even consider changing for the worse. So not only should they not be represented as such in poetry, but women should also refrain from telling their children stories of gods taking on disguises and spying on them in order to encourage good behaviour. Plato’s Socrates claims that if gods are allowed to be represented as such by poets — as shape-shifters, trouble-makers, or fallible beings who act out of vengeance or emotion or trickery — then the future guardians of the Republic would not grow up as religious people, nor would they strive for godliness themselves.

Not only should poets not create unfavourable representations of the gods, but they should also not represent Hades in a negative light, for that instills a fear of death in children and when they grow up to be soldiers they will not have the courage to die in battle if necessary. The logical following from this is that poets should not represent mourning either, for mourning for the loss of someone else implies that their death is not a happy and courageous moment. There is a strong suggestion here that mourning and sadness is also a weakness; that it is not manly or desirable to indulge in emotions. He even goes so far as to say that representations of laughter are equally bad because they encourage laughter in their audience, and laughter is too emotional. Of paramount importance is that poetry not represent indulgence in any bodily pleasures either, including food, drink, and sex. If these things are mentioned in poetry it should only be to show a hero refusing temptation. These criteria don’t only apply to representations of the gods, but also of human heroes and regular people. So Plato’s Republic is a truly ascetic state, rooted in detached rationality.

When a child is raised with only images of beauty and goodness, then they will inevitably become rational and reasonable. They would learn to love only beautiful things and be necessarily offended by badness or ugliness.

What the dialogue comes to in Book X is that poetry (and all types of artistic representation) is “two generations away from reality” (70) — God creates the true thing, the human manufacturer makes a copy of it, and the artist is only representing the copy. And in addition, representations are always representations of the appearance of things and not things as they actually are. This logic of course relies on the theory of the Idea or the Form: that, of each thing, there is an innate Form or Idea, a type, and all singular manifestations of that type are copies of how the individual creator interprets the Form or Idea. For example, there is the Idea of a table — and there are all the tables that ever were. No individual table contains the complete essence of table-ness. And the artist who paints a table is only representing his own perception of how a particular table looked from a particular angle, through the distortion of his own position. It is a copy of a copy. The audience is the final link in the artistic chain and, by their own perceptions, they further distort the image. So, in the end, there is no truth.

By this logic, poetic representation is merely a form of trickery that plays on our perceptions’ propensity to distort things. His conclusions are such: “a representer knows nothing of value about the things he represents; representation is a kind of game, and shouldn’t be taken seriously; and those who compose tragedies in iambic and epic verse are, without exception, outstanding examples of representers” (74-5). The only way around this problem is the use of reason and rationality — rational thinking, like for instance measuring and counting, cannot be fooled by distorted perceptions.

Not only does poetry provide false representation, but it engages that part of a person who is vulnerable to wrong thinking by moving them to emotion and irrationality. Because of these dangers then, poetry must be banned from the Republic in order to protect the future guardians and provide them a proper moral upbringing. All that Plato’s Socrates would allow would be “hymns to the gods and eulogies of virtuous men. If you admit the entertaining Muse of lyric and epic poetry, then instead of law and the shared acceptance of reason as the best guide, the kinds of your community will be pleasure and pain” (79). What is at stake in this decision is nothing less than the morality of men and the stability of the state.

There are a few things at issue here. First of all, these decisions are all made by the state’s rulers. He even claims that, though poets lie, and lying is tantamount to committing a crime against the state, it is necessary for the rulers to lie to the people to maintain order and peace. This is a truly terrifying totalitarian state. Who places boundaries on the rulers? No one. They are not even subject to the same morality as everyone else as it is deemed okay for them to take whatever liberties necessary to maintain peace and order, otherwise known as control and power. It is the ongoing state of exception in which all kinds of atrocities are permissable if rulers perceive a threat to their state, which inevitably means a threat to their own power.

Second major issue: This all depends on a universal idea of moral goodness. But where is this morality coming from for Plato? It is clear that he refers to the morals laid out by God — but what are those morals? Is there agreement on them at this particular historical moment? I wasn’t around in Greece a few millennia ago, but I seriously doubt it. If there were agreement, these sorts of writings and reflections would have been unnecessary. Or at the very least, Plato’s Socrates wouldn’t find it necessary for rulers to lie to their people to maintain order, for the people and rulers would already agree on the principles of conduct.

At the conclusion of Book X, he says that what is at stake is “whether one becomes a good or a bad person, and consequently has the calibre not to be distracted by prestige, wealth, political power, or even poetry from applying oneself to morality and whatever else goodness involves” (80). I suppose that, in Plato’s Republic, if people are brought up in the way he suggests, they wouldn’t be vulnerable to those things that make the terrible totalitarian ruler. But I imagine that once those people experienced the power that comes with the state of exception, they may not be so impermeable to corruption.

Incidentally, part of my need to summarize the basics here is to make sure that I actually get the basics… So if you are familiar with Plato, and you think I’m missing something, please tell me!