PLATO VERSUS
THE ARTISTS
REPUBLIC 10 IN CONTEXT
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
PLATONIC AESTHETICS
• Inseparable from
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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
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!
SOCRATIC ACHILLES?
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Achilles?
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Socrates?
SOCRATIC ACHILLES?
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Achilles?
Socrates?
PLATO’S FORERUNNERS
• Anticipated and contradicted by other Greek thinkers
• Xenophanes c. 570-480 BC
• Heraclitus, active, c. 500 BC
• Protagoras, c. 490-20 BC
• Antilogica said to contain everything in Plato’s
Republic!
• But Protagoras sees poetry at the heart of
education
• Gorgias, c. 480-375 BC
• Democritus, c. 465-380 BC
• Dissoi Logoi - sophistic treatise c. 400 BC
• Ethics
• Epistemology
• Aesthetics
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
Athens vs Persia 480-79
• Spearheads triumph over
Persia
• Marathon 490
• Major invasion 10 years
later
• Salamis 480, Plataea 479
• Sets up Delian league
Athens, post 480 BC
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• Spearheads triumph over
Persia
• Sets up Delian league
– Source of tribute and
wealth to protect states
from Persia
– Becomes treasury for
Athenian empire
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 443-29 BC
Athens as Cultural leader
Acropolis, Athens
Theatre of Dionysos
Cf. Pericles: ‘Look on her power and become a
lover of the city.’ (Thucydides)
Athens: Home of Tragedy
Aeschylus:
525-456 BC
Sophocles, c. 496-405
Euripides, c. 480-405
Some Greek writers on art
• Polyclitus
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Sculptor active c. 450-410 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
Athens: ‘The School of Hellas’
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• 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
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
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Socrates: A problem to his city
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Death of Socrates,
Jacques-Louis David
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 …
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PLATO 428-347 BC
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His misspent youth?
REPUBLIC 2 & 3: Plato on
Homer and Hesiod
Homer: Iliad and Odyssey
Hesiod: Theogony & Works and Days
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
Xenophanes of Colophon,
c. 570-480
• General skepticism: B34
– But still dogmatic himself
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• 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
Xenophanes: frr. 11,14, 15, 16
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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.
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B14: But mortals consider that the gods are
born, and that they have clothes and speech and
bodies like their own.
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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.
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B16: The Ethiopians say that their gods are
snub-nosed and black, the Thracians that theirs
have blue eyes and red hair.
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.
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• 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’
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
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• 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.
Heraclitus by Raphael
– goes beyond Xenophanes
– But still invokes Zeus
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.
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– 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.
Heraclitus by Raphael
– B 56: Homer ‘wiser than all the
Greeks’ defeated by riddle of the lice.
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)
Saturn (=Kronos) Devouring his Children
Goya
Rubens
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
REPUBLIC 2 & 3:
Critiques of Archaic poets
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Mimesis: 395b & ff
Poet/rhapsode’s performative art
Violates one-person/one job rule of Republic
Affects poet and listeners - emotional power
again
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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
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
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Ontology: theory of being
Epistemology: theory of knowledge
Psychology
Ethics & Justice: political implications
REPUBLIC 10 (595-603):
On Painting & Poetry
• 598-599: Ontology
– Painting = mimesis phantasmatos
– Imitation of an appearance; on 3rd remove from reality
– Couch example and invocation of Forms
• 600-601: 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
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Painting plays havoc with our senses
Seductive, erotic, magical language used
Mimetic art as courtesan (hetaira) to our senses
Epithumetikon vs Logistikon
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’?
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)
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Specific Platonic Targets?
Hector and Andromache,
Cf. Iliad 6
Priam and Achilles
Iliad 24
Specific Platonic Targets?
Priam and Achilles Iliad 24
Specific Platonic Targets?
Sophocles’ Ajax;
cf. amphora by Exekias, c. 530 BC
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. 410-350)
provide opposite evidence to Plato
• Democritus - other people’s suffering can make us
count our blessings and help
SOME RESPONSES
Aristotle: Plato’s greatest student and greatest critic:
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.