Plato

 

 

INTRODUCTION:

Plato, the celebrated disciple of Socrates, lived between 427-347 B.C. Plato’s works are the earliest example of literary criticism. His writings began the arguments for and against the merits of poetry. Plato was not a professed critic of literature and his critical observations are not embodied in any single work. His interest was philosophical investigation, which forms the subject of his great work ‘Dialogues’. His utterances on literature which occur during the course of philosophic al discussion in several of his dialogues particularly in ‘Ion’, ‘Cratylus’, ‘Laws’, Philebus’, ‘Republic’ etc. They are no more than scattered references in a bigger context, the profundity of their thoughts makes them a very important contribution, the first of its kind to the art of criticism. Atkins has rightly said,

“In the suggestive and stimulating quality of his writings he remains unsurpassed.”

REASONS FOR PLATO’S OBJECTION AGAINST POETRY:

Plato is the rationalist devoted to the proposition that reason must be followed whatever it leads. Thus the care of Plato’s philosophy, resting upon a foundation of external Ideas or Forms, is a rationalistic ethics.

In his Republic Plato expresses his distrust for poetry. He was primarily concerned to construct an ideal state and ideal citizens who would be a part of this state. In order to create a good society, he makes everything including are subservient to morality. He examines the effect of literature on public life and tries to analyze the role it would play in moulding the life of the citizens of his ideal state. His analysis leads him to the conclusion that the guardians of the Republiic Inspic should send the poets and poetry to permanent exile. He criticized poetry on four grounds.

1.     Poetic Inspiration

2.     It does not deal with reality

3.     It is immoral

4.     The emotional appeal of poetry

 

PLATO’S CHARGES AGAINST POETRY

 

 

POETIC INSPIRATION:

Plato disapproves of poetry because according to him the poet writes not because he has thought over what he has to say but because he is inspired. The Muse suddenly fills him and makes him sing. And such a sudden outpouring of the soul can not be a reliable substitute for truths based on reason. Guided chiefly by the impluse of the moment instead of cool deliberation, like philosophy, it can not be relied upon to make the individual a better citizen and the state a better organization. So Plato says,

“….Hyms to the god, panegyrics on famous men are the only poetry which ought to admitted in our state.”

IT DOES NOT DEAL WITH REALITY

Plato, the philosopher disapproves of poetry because it is based on falsehood. He believes that all arts make an attempt at emulating the ultimate reality. In the ‘Republic’ Plato says that ideas are the ultimate reality. Things are conceived as ideas before they take practical shape as tings. The idea of everything therefore, is its original pattern, and the thing itself its copy. As the copy ever falls short of the original, it is once removed from the reality. Now art- literature, painting, sculpture- reproduces but things, the first in words, the next in color, and the last in stone. So it merely copies a copy, it is twice removed from reality.

Plato gives the theory of mimesis. According to this theory poetry is twice removed from truth.To explain it he gives very famous example of carpenter’s chair. In ‘The Republic’ Plato says that “ideas are the ultimate reality”. Carpenter first gets an idea to make a chair, then he shapes a chair(it is imitation of idea), then a painter draws that chair(it is imitation of imitation), then a poet with his idea writes a poem on the painting.

 

Like the example of carpenter's chair there is another example of mimesis.                                       That first God imagined nature and the universe in his mind(ultimate reality), Then he created it(imitation of an idea), then what a poet does? he writes a poem on nature which becomes imitation of an imitation. According to Plato when such imitation takes place something is lost from original. And then 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."

Plato was not willing to accommodate anything but the ultimate truth in his ideal Republic. So, according to him the production of art take men away from reality rather then towards it.

IT IS IMMORAL:

Plato indicts poetry for its lack of concern with morality. In the treatment of life it  treats both virtue and vice alike, sometimes making the one and sometimes the other triumph indifferently, without regard for moral consideration. It pained Plato to see virtue often coming to grief in the literature, esteemed in his day- the epics of Homer, the narrative verse of Heroid, the odes of Pinder and the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. In his words from the Republic.

“They give us to understand that many evil livers are happy and many righteous men unhappy: and that wrong-doing, if it be undetected, is profitable, while honest dealing is beneficial to one’s neighbour, but damaging to one’s self.”

However he found that poetry showed God to be lustful and revengeful and it painted a hero like Achilles as vengeful and bad tempered. The poets who portrayed the very icons whom the people emulate as degraded and corrupt were not accepted to Plato. Homer and other tragedians and comedians taught immorality and imitated unworthy objects and were therefore not fit to live in his ideal republic.

THE EMOTIONAL APPEAL OF POETRY

Plato’s last charge against poetry arises from its appeal to the emotions. Being a product of inspiration, it affects the emotions rather than reason, the heart rather than the intellectual. 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.

In the Republic he says that,

“If we let our own sense of pity grow strong by feeding upon the grieves of others, it is not easy to restrain it in the case of our own sufferings.”

So Plato believes that poetry makes one weak by placing emphasis on emotions rather than reason. Reason is the best guide as we act with cool and logically when under the influence of reason. According to Plato.

“Poetry feeds and waters the passion instead of drying them up and lets them rule instead of ruling them.”

CONCLUSION:

Atkins has rightly said about Plato,

“It is as a pioneer in literary theory that he figures mainly in the critical development; with him begins the larger and more philosophical criticism which aimed at viewing literature, in relation to life and at arriving , if possible, at the innermost laws of its being.”

 

So, Plato has given us some important startling points which can be listed as follows,

He has shown us that arts are imitative and that the poet imitates life. He told that this imitation gives pleasure.

He made an important contribution by suggesting that the art of a poet or a painter is less than reality. He thereby prepared a ground for Aristotle to prove that it was also something more than reality.

He understood this hidden links between the different forms of art. He understood that all arts are based on life, are mimetic and offer pleasure even though the medium of expression differs.

Plato’s contribution to the critical art, thus, is considerable. Scattered in fragments though it might be, all together read like a systematic tratise on the art of writing. Atkins has correctly gives credit to him by saying

“With him literary theory really begins, he set men thinking…it was in this way he made later criticism possible.”