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Plato Revisited

© James Quinton

In Plato’s ideal state, The Republic, there is an attempt to eradicate the poets because "poetry has no serious value or claim to truth." A startling claim that; if accepted, it could've possibly been the death of poetry. However, Plato announces in the same chapter that if anyone can prove to him that poetry has a place in a well-run society he will allow the poets in.

Almost two thousand years later, the English scholar Sir Phillip Sidney wrote A Defence of Poetry (1595). Shelley’s essay of the same title (1821) consolidated much of what Sidney had argued.

Due to the unrivalled craft of poetry, it did have a valid place in society. Why then, in 1996 did Penelope Murray revisit Plato’s ideas on poetry? I think to remind us of the intellectual and economic pressures poets work within. This essay will discuss the arguments from Plato to Murray and provide examples of poetry that reflect its status throughout each period. I will conclude by citing and discussing a contemporary Australian poem that signifies the position of poets and poetry in modern society.

Overall, it appears that intellectual arguments may be driven to the point of being arbitrary, since the act of poetry has never ceased. However, there is a divide between those who believe in poetry's validity and those who think it is wishy-washy hedonism.

Integral to Plato’s argument attacking poetry and art is the concept of representation or mimesis. Plato claims that reality can be categorised in three ways: the ideal, the real and the representation of the real. The gods create the ideal, for example what everyone understands as being a bed... the IDEA of a bed. The real is what is actually materialised in the object. Hence, the mimesis of the object is twice removed from the ideal: "what [the artist] makes is not "what a bed really is", but something that resembles "what is without being it." Here, Plato argues that artists and poets, using the technique of representation, create a false understanding of reality and are therefore decadent to civil society.

In Plato’s, "The Effects Of Poetry And Drama", he expands upon his argument that poets have no valid role in an ideal state. Plato places primacy on reason and intellect. He accuses the poet of inciting emotions that are normally disallowed in the public domain. Consequently, poetry corrupts the mind whereby "pleasure and pain become your rulers instead of law and the rational principal commonly accepted as best."

The copyright of the article Plato Revisited in Performance Poetry is owned by Billy Marshall Stoneking. Permission to republish Plato Revisited in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.