Plato's criticism of art and poetry and how the criticism is relevent to contemporary society
...ge, they will become permanent into adulthood. “A child cannot distinguish the allegorical sense from the literal, and the ideas he takes in at that age are likely to become indelibly fixed; hence, the great importance of seeing that the first stories he hears shall be designed to produce the best possible effect on his character.” (pg. 70) Finally, Plato objects to children performing poetry. According to Francis Cornford, “The Greek schoolboy was not allowed to repeat Homer or Aeschylus in a perfunctory gabble, but expected to throw himself into the story and deliver the speeches with the tone and gesture of an actor.” (pg. 80). This presented a problem for Plato, since in his just society everyone had their specific role, performing it with single-minded purpose. Worried that having children act could inspire them to become jacks-of-all-trades, Plato asks Adeimantus “Do we want our Guardians to be capable of playing many parts?” (pg. 83), and then answers “they ought not to play any other part in dramatic representation any more than in real life, but if they act, the should, from childhood upward, impersonate only the appropriate types of character, men who are brave, religious, self-controlled, generous.” (pg. 83) Moving on, the second of Plato’s criticisms is that poetry doesn’t provide true knowledge. Plato states “…the perfectly real is perfectly knowable, and the utterly unreal is entirely unknowable” (pg. 184). According to Cornford, in the fourth century highly educated men had ceased to believe in the existence of supernatural persons, and the Greek myths were no longer dogma. (pg. 66). Therefore, Plato didn’t believe that the Gods avatars walked among the common man, so Homer and Hesoid’s stories couldn’t possibly have any truth. Indeed, Plato holds that these stories “would only be blaspheming the gods and at the same time making cowards of their children.” (pg. 73) Furthermore, Plato holds that any who believe these poems are ignorant of truth—“…we said that ignorance must correspond to the unreal, knowledge to the real.” Homer and Hesoid’s poems failed to accurately depict truth about everyday life as well, according to Homer. Plato argues that, the good poet cannot compose well unless he knows his subject, and he who has not this knowledge can never be a poet. To imitate correctly, the author must have knowledge about the original. Plato argues that the poets have no knowledge of the original (in this case, the virtues that make everyday life just), comparing to the poets to a painter who paints a bed but doesn’t know how to build that bed. Plato’s third criticism of poets is actually a criticism of luxury in general- that a society can thrive when each citizen only desires fundamental necessities; that state would be small, and its neighbors would leave it alone. However, throw in poetry, art, and a host of other “luxury” crafts, and the state must rapidly expand. Look at the jobs required for the expanding state. Since each citizen performs his job only, the farmers must farm more, the fishermen must fish more; these enterprises require more land. Thus, “the country, too, which was large enough to support the original inhabitants, will now be too small. If we are to have enough pasture and plough land, we shall have to cut off a slice of our neighbors’ territory.” (pg. 61) Plato traces war, and the subsequent founding of the military, to aggression forced by the growth of luxury, and feels that society would be utopian without luxury, since each member would live a simple, just life. Concerning poets specifically, using Plato’s principles, an argument could be made that the poet would, in fact, be less just then a simple farmer. Plato’s chief criterion of “justness” in a person (and subsequently a society) is performing only your trade—“The conclusion is that more things will be produced and the work be more easily and better done, when every man is set free from all other occupations to do, at the right time, the one thing for which he is naturally fitted.” (pg. 57) Herein lies a contradiction however; can a poet’s work be better written when he has no other pursuits? Recalling that poets cannot write about what they don’t know (either mythological questions or everyday life), the poets work will be fictional. Using Plato’s definitions of justness the farmer, whose work is better done by only pursuing farming, is more just than the poet, since his work cannot improve while only focusing on poetry, since the poet has no experienced topics to write about. Taking the analogy one step further, Plato would argue that the agrarian state, with all of its members working at one trade, is more just than the luxurious state. Therefore, since Plato can find a just state without poets, and cannot find a just state with poets, it seems tha...