Plato’s

Plato’s (427-347
(427-347 BC)
BC) View
View of
of Aesthetics
Aesthetics from
from
the
the Republic.
Republic.
Plato is considered to be the father of
& fiercest critic of aesthetics.
He is mainly concerned with the
application of aesthetics, not offering
a systematic understanding of it in a
well-ordered society.
Like Xenophanes, Heraclitus, &
Socrates, in Plato’s earliest
dialogues:
He distrusts art, poetry, and theatre;
Yet Plato a strong fascination with it,
esp. poetry because of its power to
arouse emotions.
 Plato’s
Plato’s View
View ofof Aesthetics
Aesthetics from
from
the
the Republic
Republic
If poets are not able to clearly
justify “inspiration, not knowing
how or what they create, they are
to be suspect because poetry
evokes powerful emotions (cf.
Lysias 214a1-2).

Yet, when it comes to the pleasure

of art, Plato is able to allow for
“internal” aesthetic principles,
such as those of form,
organization, and coherence
(Phaedrus 268-9; Republic
4.420c-d),esp. if it will contribute
to a well-ordered society.
 Plato’s
Plato’s View
View ofof Aesthetics
Aesthetics from
from
the
the Republic
Republic
A turning point occurs in Cratylus
whereby he focuses his questions
about are on the concept of “mimesis”
(whose Greek senses include
imitation, representation, and
dramatic enactment).

In essence, poetry, visual arts, &

music can be treated as analogous in
their representational relation to the
world. This finds further discussion in
the Republic, books 2-3, and 10.
Books
Books 2-4:
2-4:

Books 2-4 presents a critique of false & harmful views which

poets, especially Homer and other tragedians express, then
invites an insidious act of psychological identification on the part of
actor, hearer, or reader, esp. in view of education of the young.

But in doing so he constructed an aesthetic scheme and challenge

which judges art by a 3-fold criteria:

Truthfulness (he does not exclude fiction);

Ethical quality of content;
Psychological benefit.
The point: the underlying justification of art in life, both individually and
collectively as a (and for) well-ordered society or city-state.
Books
Books 2-4:
2-4:

Plato refuses to allow the pursuit of art to be self-

sufficient because of its power to “enter the soul” and
its ability to influence culture; the risk is too great to
the city-state.

Consider the following quotes:

Books
Books 2-4:
2-4:

“Moreover, these stories [Greek myths &

heroes, demons, Hades] are harmful to people
who hear them, for everyone will be ready to
excuse himself when he’s bad…
For that reason, we must put a stop to such
stories, lest they produce in the youth a strong
inclination to do bad things.” 3.391-392.
Books
Books 2-4:
2-4:

Then what’s left is how to deal with stories about human

beings, isn’t it?...
Because I think we’ll say that what poets and prose-writers
tell us about the most important matters concerning human
beings is bad. They say that many unjust people are happy
and many just ones are wretched, that injustice is profitable if
it escapes detection, and that justice is another’s good but
one’s own loss. I think we’ll prohibit these stories and order
the poets to compose the opposite kind of poetry and tell the
opposite kind of tales. Don’t you think so?...
Books
Books 2-4:
2-4:

Then we’ll agree about what stories should be told

about human beings only when we’ve discovered what
sort of thing justice is and how by nature it profits the
one who has it, whether he is believed to be just or not.

…We should now, I think, investigate their style, for

we’ll then have fully investigated both what should be
said and how it should be said.
3.392a-c.
Books
Books 2-4:
2-4:
“Above all, they must guard as carefully as they can against any
innovation in music and poetry or in physical training that is counter to
the established order. And they should dread to hear anyone say:
“People care most for the song
That is newest from the singer’s lips.”
Someone might praise such a saying, thinking that the poet meant not
new songs but new ways of singing. Such a thing shouldn’t be praised,
and the poet shouldn’t be taken to have meant it, for the guardians must
beware of changing to a new form of music, since it threatens the whole
system. As Damon says, and I am convinced, the musical modes are
never changed without change in the most important of a city’s laws.”
4.424b-c.
Books
Books 2-4:
2-4:

“Aren’t these the reasons, Glaucon, that education in music and

poetry is most is most important? First, because rhythm and
harmony permeates the inner part of the soul more than anything
else, affecting it most strongly and bringing it grace, so that if
someone is properly educated in music and poetry, it makes him
graceful, but if not, then the opposite. Second, because anyone
who has been properly educated in music and poetry will sense it
acutely when something has been omitted from a thing and when it
hasn’t it been finely crafted or finely made by nature. And since has
the right distastes, he’ll praise fine things, be pleased by them,
receive them into his soul, and being nurtured by them, become
fine and good. He’ll rightly object to what is shameful, hating it
while he’s still young and unable to grasp the reason, but, having
been educated in this way, he will welcome reason when it comes
and recognize it easily because of the its kinship with himself.”
3.401-402.
Consider
Consider this
this commentary
commentary on on this
this
section
section of
of Plato’s
Plato’s Republic:
Republic:
“The modes and rhythms of music, and the guardians’
physical training, all aim at producing tough soldiers,
experienced enough in intellectual culture not to treat the
unarmed citizens savagely, but not so softened by sweet
food and music as to become incapable of fighting the
city’s enemies. Education unites their aesthetic taste with
their conscience….For Plato, education begins with the
inculcation of good habits…He may insist that drama
corrupts the city by multiplying citizens’ tasks, but he
seemed more moved by the claim that mimicry [imitation]
establishes ‘habits and nature’ in the mimic.
Consider
Consider this
this commentary
commentary on on this
this
section
section of
of Plato’s
Plato’s Republic:
Republic:

Plato’s reader must not neglect this side of the

pedagogical theory, for it underwrites an important
aspect of his moral psychology. Perfect virtue
might work from the inside out, with intellectual
understanding of the good coordinating one’s
actions in service to the good, but virtue also
works from the outside in, which is to say that
copying fine habits helps to produce fine natures.
Consider
Consider this
this commentary
commentary on on this
this
section
section of
of Plato’s
Plato’s Republic:
Republic:

Painting, furniture-making, architecture, and the other

crafts can issue an either graceful or malformed
productions (401a). The beautiful productions dispose a
soul toward virtue-reason and the virtues themselves
being beautiful-before that soul even has the capacity to
follow.”

~ Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Plato and the Republic, 2nd

edition by Nicholas Pappas (London: Routledge, 1995), 72.
Book
Book 10:
10:
But then in Republic 10, Plato impugns
aesthetics with the problem of “mirror making” or
“art qua mimesis”, the creation of mere
appearances that fall short of even sensible
reality, thus “twice removed” from transcendent
truth (the plane of the forms). Poetry, once
again, has bewitching power to arouse emotions
that are contrary to virtue. Therefore, aesthetics
must be placed under “political control.”
Book
Book 10:
10:
Like a painter, he [poet] produces works that is inferior with
respect to truth and that appeals to a part of the soul that is
similarly inferior rather than to the best part. So we were right not
to admit him into a city that is to be well-governed, for he
arouses, nourishes, and strengthens this part of the soul and so
destroys the rational one, in just the way that someone destroys
the better sort of citizens when he strengthens the vicious ones
and surrenders the city to them. Similarly, we’ll say that an
imitative poet puts a bad constitution in the soul of each
individual by making images that are far removed from the truth
and by gratifying the irrational part, which cannot distinguish the
large and the small but believes that the same things are large at
one time and small at another…
Book
Book 10:
10:
However, we haven’t yet brought about the most
serious charge against imitation, namely, that with a few
rare exceptions it is able to corrupt even decent people,
for that’s surely an altogether terrible thing….
An in the case of sex, anger, and all the desires,
pleasures, and pains that we say accompany all our
actions, poetic imitation has the very same effect on us.
It nurtures and waters them and establishes them as
rulers in us when they ought to wither and be ruled, for
that way we’ll become better and happier rather than
worse and more wretched.
Book
Book 10:
10:
….If you admit the pleasure-giving Muse, whether in lyric or epic
poetry, pleasure and pain will be kings in your city instead of law
or the thing that everyone has always believed to be best,
namely, reason….

Nonetheless, if the poetry that aims at pleasure and imitation has

any argument to bring forward that proves it ought to have a
place in a well-governed city, we at least would be glad to admit
it, for we are well aware of the charm it exercises….Therefore,
isn’t is just that such poetry should return from exile when it has
successfully defended itself, whether in lyric or any other meter?”
Republic X 605-607.
Book
Book 10:
10:
After his discussion of injustice in the soul and the city
he returns to his critique of poetry.

Pappas’ commentary states that every issue in Book 10

reflects back on the Republic’s psychological theory in
Book 4 and on the vindication of a life in which reason
rules in Books 8-9. Therefore, given the fact that Plato
defends “the life of reason, it becomes clearer why he
now returns to his discussion on aesthetics.
Book
Book 10:
10:

According to Pappas the general argument

against poetry is evident:
1. Poetry imitates appearance (595b-602c);
2. Poetry appeals to the worst parts of the soul
(602c-606d).
3. Poetry should be banned from the good city
(606e-608b).
Book
Book 10:
10:
Pappas offers this insight into Book 10:

“Despite his conclusion, Plato’s interest lies not in censorship

but in the new discoveries he has made about poetic imitation.
He gives no argument for the steps from [2] to (3), considering
it obvious that if he can show poetry to yield deleterious
effects, he will have made the case for its abolition. (Free
speech for views known to be harmful has no value for Plato- if
anything, it reminds him of the licentiousness of democracy.).
The work consists in showing where those effects come from.
So he will first argue that poetry is a phantom [1], then use [1]
to expose its psychological effects [2].
Book
Book 10:
10:
Book 10 contributes the following (595a-602c):
Artistic imitation is an imitation of appearance:
• Poetry imitates humans but in the ideal city it will imitate
only the best, the most virtuous of them.
• Painting, the imitation of an appearance, is a duplication
of an object as opposed to the object’s true nature.
• Poetry and Paintings reveal the ignorance of their makers
because they imitate humans or objects because the
imitate appearance only.
• The imitator lacks both knowledge and justified belief.
Book
Book 10.602-607a:
10.602-607a: The
The Arousal
Arousal of
of Unreason:
Unreason:

Book 10 contributes the following regarding the arousal

of unreason, Pappas offers the following outline (pg.
183 cf. 602c-603b):

1. Art imitates appearance and not reality.

2. Reality is the object of knowledge, perceived
by the rational part of the soul.
3. From premise 2, appearance without reality
appeals to a non-rational part of the soul.
4. From premise 1 and premise 3, art appeals
to the irrational in human beings.
Book
Book 10:
10:
Poets have a tendency to imitate the soul’s worse
impulses instead of its better ones (603c-605c).

Poetic imitation appeals to and encourages the irrational

impulses in the soul as witnessed in the dramatic
depictions of passions instead of the sobering calculating
agency of reason that reins in those passions (604e-
605a).
Book
Book 10.602-607a:
10.602-607a: The
The Arousal
Arousal of
of Unreason:
Unreason:

Imitative arts produce objects of low metaphysical status.

Aesthetic imitations are a concern for Plato because they seduce

people away from using their powers of calculation unlike other
objects. Something about the artistic image keep people from
asking rational questions.

Products of artistic imitation lure the audience with its intoxicating

enchantment. For example, the charm of poetry is its rhythm,
meter, and harmony.
Book
Book 10.605c-607a
10.605c-607a
Poetry leads it audience to privilege those parts of the
souls that ought to be kept in a subservient position
(605c-607a). Why?

• Desires lack awareness of their own insignificance;

• Impulses that don’t flow from reason will always make
mistakes.
• Subject desires to scrutiny, weighing each non-rational
motivation against a philosophical evaluation of its worth and
meaning.
• Playwrights and actors shy away from perfect characters; they
thrive on imperfection (pg. 185).
 Book
Book 10:
10:
Pappas states:

“In his final argument, Socrates convicts the audience of poetry of the
same perverse preference (605-60a) [of desiring to arouse the emotions
against the idealized character of the just]. For whatever reason, we let
ourselves enjoy actions, passions, jokes., and drives in a dramatic or
fictional work that we would never tolerate in our private lives. Such
enjoyment amounts to privileging non-reason over reason, because
every appeal to the emotions is a seduction away from the use of
reason. Emotions by themselves are not bad; not can something like
grief e suppressed entirely. But preferring an emotional response to a
rational one is like asking the army what its leaders ought to order it to
do. And just as too many calls for votes in an army would weaken its
officer’s power, so too every indulgence of an irrational impulse leaves it
stronger (606b-d; cf 444c, 589c-d). The enjoyment of poetry leads to
injustice in the soul” (pg. 186).
Concluding
Concluding Observations:
Observations:
At the beginning of our study poetry that is mimetic is to be
excluded but by Book 10 all poetry is indeed mimetic; only
“hymns to the gods and eulogies to good people” Republic, 607a)
are retained. So, except for above, he banishes poetry from his
ideal society.

If poetry can satisfy philosophy by producing an argument that is

beneficial to the community to the well-ordered society, then it
can reclaim its place.
Concluding
Concluding Observations:
Observations:
Mimetic poetry has its greatest force on the human psyche,
appealing to the non-rational aspect of people. Even the
individual who attains the Platonic ideal and is governed by the
noble, rational, good-seeking part of the soul, is powerfully
affective by the experience of myths and stories (Republic 605c).

We begin to value responses that appeal to our feelings and this

will no doubt corrode our quest for the good in real life.

Mimetic art falsely pretends to be knowledge but is detrimental to

the human mind; it enchantment to arouse the non-rational is a
huge concern because it displaces reason.
Concluding
Concluding Observations:
Observations:

We begin to value responses that appeal to our feelings and this

will no doubt corrode our quest for the good in real life.

Mimetic art falsely pretends to be knowledge but is detrimental to

the human mind.

Therefore, except for hymns to the gods and eulogies, poetry is

to be banished.
Appendix:
Appendix: What
What is
is beauty?
beauty?
Plato’s concept of beauty finds its greatest expression in
the Symposium.
Platonic metaphysical distinction between the beauty of
things and properties as they occur in the sensible world
and BEAUTY ITSELF-the eternal, unchanging, and
divine FORM of BEAUTY, accessible only to the
intellect, not the senses (Symposium 211d).

Form of Beauty is itself beautiful (211a).

Appendix:
Appendix: Hierarchy
Hierarchy of
of Love-Objects:
Love-Objects:

(5) Form of
Beauty Itself.

(4) Laws, customs,

& ideas;
(3) The Beauty of Souls;

(2) All beautiful bodies equally;

(1) The beautiful body of a
particular human beloved;
 Appendix
Appendix on
on Beauty:
Beauty:
The highest form of love:
“If someone got to see the Beautiful, absolute, pure,
unmixed, not polluted by human flesh or colors or any
other great nonsense of mortality…only then will it
become possible for him to give birth not to images of
virtue (because he’s in touch with no images), but to
true virtue (because he is in touch with the true
beauty).”
~ Symposium, 211e-212a.
 Appendix
Appendix on
on Beauty:
Beauty:
The result:

While the poet makes imitations and understands

images, the philosopher who encounters the eternal,
pure, and immutable Beauty, is able to bring genuine
goods into the world because he understands what
virtue really is.

Christopher Janaway, “Plato” in Routledge Companion

to Aesthetics, 12.
 Bibliography:
Bibliography:

Plato: Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper

(Indiana: Hacket Publishing, 1997).

Routledge Companion to Aesthetics, edited by Berys

Gaut and Dominic McIver Lopes (London: Routledge,
2001).

Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Plato and the

Republic, 2nd. Edition by Nickolas Pappas (Routledge:
London, 1995).