Chapter 1 : Plato and Mimesis

Question 1

In Greece, poetry is central. How do Ion and Plato characterize poetry?

Answer 1

Ion characterizes poetry as a product of irrational inspiration and not of practical or rational knowledge. Considers poetry as a form of madness or divine possession

Plato has doubts about the Greek tragedy’s heros, Odysseus and Achilles and of them being held as examples of virtue in Athens. Calls for banning Homer and tragedies because they nourish the desiring part of the soul, which leads to the opposite of truth, virtue, and the good.

Question 2

Rather than tradition (Greek tragedies and poetry), what does Plato believe the authority on virtue and how to lead a good life in his Republic should be based on?

Answer 2

Plato attempts to effect a change of the source of authority from tradition to the divine, from the prophetic and inspired, to knowledge grounded in rational and critical thought about matters as they present themselves here and now to reasonable people.

Plato’s Socrates considers doxa (unexamined beliefs) to be his number one enemy.

PHILOSOPHY is to be the new source of authority on values and how to live one’s life.

Question 3

How is philosophy a drastic change from tradition and tragedians in the Greeks’ belief system?

Answer 3

Philosophy itself is already an alternate value system, an ethics, to what Socrates and Plato saw prevailing in Athens :

Since the virtues required for rational philosophical dialogue in search of the truth - CALM, CONTROL OF EMOTION, NON ASSERTIVENESS, NOT SEEKING TO DOMINATE FOR EGOTISTICAL OR DOGMATIC REASONS, TOLERANCE OF OTHERS VIEWS, IMPARTIALITY, HONESTY - are not merely INTELLECTUAL views but they are general MORAL AND POLITICAL views.

Question 4

Plato’s Republic claims that poetry does not have knowledge. Explain this.

Answer 4

Plato believes poetry to be full of bad example, and believes poetry and the arts (with their power to evoke and provoke emotion) to whip up feeling : highly dangerous to the just city and happy individual.

Acc. to Plato, poetry and visual art are lost in the realm of illusion and becoming, in contrast to the state of Being found in the ideal world of Forms.

Question 5

How does Socrates say that those in education should treat poetry and music in the Republic?

Answer 5

With a sense of utmost control; they must guard against any innovation in poetry and music.

Plato calls for a censorship against the tragedians ( a ban against Homer and Greek tragedians)

Question 6

What are the soul’s three parts according to Plato?

Answer 6

The Rational
(likened to philosopher kings and queens)

The Desiring or appetitive (likened to worker class)

The Spirited
(likened to the warrior class)

(with the Rational and the Desiring in opposition, giving rise to his claims against poetry and the arts)

Question 7

Plato distrusts the world and the evidence of the senses, perceiving people’s desires as dangerous and destructive. What is more real than this world?

Answer 7

Plato postulates an ideal world of Forms, which he considers more real than this world.

They can only be accessed properly by our rational part because our world is an inferior copy of the ideal world of Forms (Mimesis).

Allegory of the Cave

Question 8

How do Ion and Plato differ in characterizing the poet?

Answer 8

In Ion, the poet is divinely inspired.

In the Republic, the poet is a trickster/sorcerer who deceives and harms. (Built off assumption that the rational part and desiring part of the soul are in opposition.)

Socrates claims: the poet arouses, nourishes, and strengthens the desiring part of the soul, thus destroying the rational part.

Question 9

What does Plato believe about mimesis and why it is so harmful to civilization?

How does mimesis contrast with virtue in the Republic?

Answer 9

Mimesis produces work that is far from the truth.

It consorts with a part of us that is far from reason and nothing sound or true can emerge from this relationship.

Mimesis is an inferior thing consorting with another inferior thing ; an inferior copy of an inferior copy.

Virtue in the Republic is a HARMONIOUS ORDERING of the soul, in which there are no conflicts or tensions. For Plato, such a state is STABLE and UNIFORM.

Question 10

Acc. to Plato, what are the greek heroes and gods representative of?

Answer 10

They are models of vice ; these varied and contradictory characters appear excellent, but in reality are vicious since “true human excellence lies in the stability and uniformity of the soul”.

Question 11

In the Republic, what is the supreme entity in the ideal world of Forms?

Answer 11

The Good. Being (vs. Becoming).

The coincidence of truth and goodness - the divine principle of Reason.

The origin and sustainer of all things in their essential goodness and order.

Question 12

In the Republic, who is able to access the Good / the Real?

Answer 12

Philosopher kings/queens : band of elite intellectuals whose life-long labours in learning and dialectic will finally afford them this mystic and inspired vision.

Question 13

What does Socrates postulate as the paradox of the pleasure of mimesis?

Answer 13

He claims that we sympathize, enjoy, and praise in literature/poetry what in real life we would consider unworthy and shameful.

We experience with pleasure in art what we would normally recoil from.

Question 14

What is Plato’s legacy and how have his dialogues been characterized over history?

What does Barthes say about Plato’s dialogues?

What does Elizabeth Amis say about Plato’s literary theory?

Answer 14

Plato’s legacy is the FRUITFULNESS of his dialogues and their POLYVOCITY.

(His dialogues are part of an ongoing and never completed investigation.)

For Barthes, his dialogues are TEXTS, not works.

Elizabeth Amis emphasizes the “tensions and variations” in Plato’s literary theory: trying out various approaches in different dialogues, Plato enters a dialogue with himself.

Question 15

What are the paradoxical elements of Plato’s Socrates?

Answer 15

Plato’s Socrates changes from dialogue to dialogue, displaying CONTRADICTIONS and DOESN’T PRACTICE WHAT HE PREACHES.

Question 16

What is Elizabeth Amis’s interpretation of Plato’s literary theory?

Answer 16

She insists on the “TENSIONS AND VARIATIONS” in Plato’s literary theory.

Trying out various approaches in different dialogues, PLATO ENTERS INTO A DIALOGUE WITH HIMSELF.

Question 17

What is Plato’s Phaedrus and what does Derrida argue as this work being the first emergence of?

Answer 17

Phaedrus is Socrate’s myth about how the invention of WRITING came about.

In it, he tells the story of Ammon and Theuth, the inventor of writing.

Theuth tells Ammon that he has found a potion (w/signifies both medicine and poison) for memory and wisdom - PHARMAKON.

Though Plato is seemingly attempting to exorcise the ambiguity of writing by offering an account that is clear and unambiguous, the account is ambiguous itself, and is paradoxically itself also written.

DERRIDA :
Finds in the Phaedrus, the emergence of the FIGURE OF THE AUTHOR as the FATHER and source of meaning of his work. Derrida establishes a schema that assigns the ORIGIN and POWER OF SPEECH to the paternal position.

Question 18

What does does Plato try to get across with Socrate’s myth, The Phaedrus?

How does the history of literary theory contradict this?

Answer 18

That the pharmakon, WRITING, unlike speech and dialogue is separated from the body of its father (the origin of speech), and is as a consequence, barren and dead.

Speech has a LIVING RELATIONSHIP with its father, unlike writing.

The history of literary theory shows that on the contrary - Once Plato’s thought was “separated from its father”, it started an intense and fruitful life – an ongoing and dialectical dialogue.

Question 19

What does Pater believe about literature? How does it affect its readers and what does he consider the oxymoron of Plato’s dialogues regarding literature?

What is the value in the paradoxical nature of Plato’s dialogues acc. to Pater?

Answer 19

Pater believes that literature affects its readers morally NOT THROUGH ITS CONTENT (logoi) but through its FORM (lexis).

This LEXIS, means through its many possible QUALITIES - concision, simplicity, rhythm or its abundance, variety, or discord.

Plato’s aesthetics are dry, austere, manly, ascetic and self denying, however it is an Ascetic Aestheticism because it is a fervently aesthetic community of very fervent ascetics.

One of the valuable things about this ascetic-aesthetic literature is that in its ALLUSIVENESS (suggestion or implying rather than explicit mention), it SOLICITS a certain EFFORT from the reader/spectator.

Question 20

According to Pater, what kind of art does Plato endorse and what kind does he reject?

Acc to Pater, what would be the consequences?

Answer 20

Acc. to Pater, Plato endorses centripetal classicism while rejecting centrifugal romanticism.

Since the centrifugal would represent authors such as Homer and Shakespeare, this would effectively BAN FLUIDITY and MULTIPLICITY.