Paper-3 Plato’s objection to poetry

Vaghani Hitesh s

Roll no. - 38

SEM - I

Department of English

Paper no. – 3

Year – 2010-11

Topic:

Plato’s objection to poetry                                                                         

                           Submitted to Dr. Dilip Barad

Department of English,

Bhavnagar University.

Plato’s objection to poetry

        

                He was the first systemic critic who inquired into the nature of imaginative literature and put forward theories which are both illuminating and provocative. He was himself a great poet and his dialogues are full of his gifted dramatic quality. His Dialogues are the classic works of the world literature having dramatic, lyrical and fictional elements.
               According to him all arts are imitative or mimetic in nature. He wrote in The Republic that ‘ideas are the ultimate reality’. Things are conceived as ideas before they take practical shapes. So, idea is original and the thing is copy of that idea. Carpenter’s chair is the result of the idea of chair in his mind.

             

              Ploto’s three main objections to poetry

            

               1} Ethical

             

               2} Philosophical

           

                3} Pragmatic

                        In other words, he objected to poetry from the point of view of Education, from philosophical point of view and from moral point of view.

         It is not ethical because it promotes undesirable passions, it is not philosophical because it does not provide true knowledge and it is not pragmatic because it is inferior to the practical arts and therefore has no educational value. 

                    

* Plato’s objection to poetry from the point of view of Education: -               In ‘The Republic’ Book II – He condemns poetry as fostering evil habits and vices in children. Homer’s epics were part of studies. Heroes of epics were not examples of sound or ideal morality. They were lusty, cunning, and cruel – war mongers. Even Gods were no better. Troy-Achilles beheding Apollo’s statue, oracles molested… insults of Gods, Gods fight among themselves, they punish instead of forgiveness…Ahaliya-Indra, Kunti’s children, Narad’s obsession to marry, Hercules son of Zeus and Alcmene, Here’s jealousy-snakes-fenzy to kill children...

            

                 Plato writes writes:-

                                                 “If we mean our future guardians to regard the habit of quarreling among themselves as of all things the basest, no word should be said to them of the wars in the heaven, or of the plots and fighting of the gods against one another, for they are not true…. If they would only believe as we would tell them that quarreling is unholy, and that never up to this time has there been any quarreling between citizens…… these tales (of epics) must not be admitted into our State, whether they are supposed to have allegorical meaning or not.”        

                            Thus he objected on the ground that poetry does not cultivate good habits among children.

  * Objection from Philosophical point of view: -                                                                                                                       In ‘The Republic’ Book X: poetry does not lead to, but drives us away form the realization of the ultimate reality – the Truth.
                  Philosophy is better than poetry because Philosophy deals with idea and poetry is twice removed from original idea.
Plato says: “The imitator or maker of the image knows nothing of true existence; he knows appearance only …. The imitative art is an inferior who marries an inferior and has inferior offspring.”

           Dorothea’s ideal in Middlemarch shattered, Kshtriya dharma – not to hit enemy without weapon, Tess’s providence, evil wins & God is silent, unrewarded virtue….

      *Objection form the Moral point of view: -                                                                                                             In the same book in ‘The Republic’: Soul of man has higher principles of reason as well as lower constituted of baser impulses and emotions. Whatever encourages and strengthens the rational principle is good, and emotional is bad.
               Poetry waters and nourishes the baser impulses of men - emotional, sentimental and sorrowful.

Plato says:-

                  “Then the imitative poet who aims at being popular is not by nature made, nor is his art intended, to please or to affect the rational principle in the soul; but he will prefer the passionate and fitful temper, which is easily limited …. And therefore we shall be right in refusing to admit him into a well-ordered state, because he awakens and nourishes and strengthen the feelings and impairs the reason …Poetry feeds and waters the passion instead of drying them up; she lets them rule, although they ought to be controlled, if mankind are ever to increase in happiness and virtue.”

     *These are Plato’s principal charges on poetry and objection to it. Let us reply them one by one in defense of poetry:-

               Plato says that art being the imitatation of the actual is removed from truth. It only gives the likeness of a thing in concrete and the likeness is always less than real. But Plato fail to understand that art also give something more which is absent in the actual. It is the representation of selected events and character necessary in a coherent action for the realization of artist’s purpose. Namesake Jhumpa Lahiri and Mira Nair. The artist does not simply reflect the real in the manner of a mirror. Art is a not slavish imitation of reality? Literature is not the photographic reproduction of life in all its totality. It is the representation of selected events and characters necessary in a coherent action for the realization of artist’s purpose. He even exalts, idealizes and imaginatively recreates a world which has its own meaning and beauty. These elements, present in art, are absent in the raw and though real.

           R.A. Scott – James rightly observes: “But though he creates something less than that reality, he also creates something more. He puts an idea into it. He put his perception into it. He gives us his intuition of certain distinctive and essential qualities.

            This ‘more’, this intuition and perception is the aim of the artist. Artistic creation cannot be fairly critized. On the ground that it is not the creation in concrete terms of things and beings. Thus considered it does not take us away form the Truth, but leads us to the essential reality of life.

          Plato again says that art is bad because it does not inspire virtue, does not teach morality. But is teaching the function of the art? Is it the aim of the artist? The function of art is to provide aesthetic delight, communicate experience, express emotions and represent life. It should never be confused with the Function of ethics which is simply to teach morality.

          If an artist succeeds in pleasing us in aesthetic sense, he is a good artist. It he fails in doing so, he is a dad artist. There is no other criterion to judge his worth. R.A. Scott-James Observes:

               

                          “Morality teaches.  Art does not attempt to teach. It merely asserts it is thus or thus that life is perceived to be. That is my bit of reality, says the artist. Take it or leave it-draw any lessons you like from it that is my account of things as they are if it has any value to you as evidence or teaching, use it, but that is not my business: “I have given you my rendering, my account, my vision, my dream, my illusion call it what you will. If there is any lesson in it, it is yours to draw, not mine to preach”.

        

                Similarly, Plato’s charge that needless lamentation and ecstasies at the imaginary events of sorrow and happiness encourages weaker part of soul. And numbs faculty of reason. This charge is defended by Aristotle in his. Theory of katharsis. David Daiches summarizes Aristotle’s views in reply to Plato’s charges in brief: “Tragedy gives new knowledge, yields aesthetic satisfaction and produces a better state of mind.” 

           Plato judges poetry nowthe educational standpoint, now from the philosophical one and then from the philosophical one and then from the ethical one. But he does not care to consider it from its own unique standpoint. He does not define its aims. He forgets that enery thing should be judged in terms of ite own aims and objective its own criteria of merit and demerit. We cannot fairly maintain that music is bad because if does not paint, or that painting is bad because it does not sing. Similarly, we cannot say that poetry is bad because it does not teach philosophy of ethics. If poetry, philosophy and ethics had identical function, how could they be different subjects?, To denounce poetry because it is not philosophy or ideal is clearly absurd.