G. R. F. Ferrari

What Is Imitative Poetry and Why Is It Bad

Platos argument against poetry in Republic 10 is perplexing. He condemns not all poetry, but only “however much of it is imitative [ hosē mimētikē ]” (595a). A metaphysical charge against certain works of poetry - that they are forms of imitation, “at a third remove from the truth” - is thus used to justify an ethical charge: that these works cripple our thought and corrupt our souls. Unfortunately, it is not at all clear how to understand the connection between the two charges. We can see how they are related in a loose way: imitators are concerned with images far removed from the truth about what they represent (596a-598b); many people are too foolish to distinguish imitation from reality and thus accept ignorant imitators as experts and guides (598c-602b); imitation appeals to and thereby strengthens an inferior part of the soul unconcerned with truth (602c ff.); worst of all, the charms of imitation can seduce even those who generally know better (605c-607a). But when we try to make Book 10s argument more precise, trouble ensues. Plato certainly never spells out the connection between the metaphysics of imitation and the charge of ethical harm. Moreover, he seems in the end (603c ff.) to abandon metaphysical considerations and give a straightforward argument against tragedy and the works of Homer based on their content - they represent people behaving immoderately - and psychological effect: as audience we weep and wail and behave as immoderately as the characters, and this undermines the order of our souls. This argument makes no mention of imitation or ignorance or removes from truth; what, then, is the relevance of the metaphysical charge, to which Plato devotes so much discussion?

The Three-Part Soul

A full picture of the human soul emerges only gradually from the Republic . In Book 4 we come first upon a conventional enough distinction between calculation and desire, which under pressure from the correspondence between the microcosm of the just individual and the macrocosm of the just society, with its three different classes, is complicated by the addition of a third element, the element of “high spirit” ( thumos ). At this stage the three elements in the soul are distinguished principally by their functions: calculation calculates, desire desires, spirit gets spirited. If the text is pressed to assign them an object or goal as well as an activity, the indications would be that calculation is concerned with the good (i.e., with the best course of action); desire is concerned with pleasure; while spirit reacts to perceived slights or wrongs. When we revisit these three elements in Books 8 and 9, however, they have taken on a different look. In Book 4 they seemed most like faculties; now they seem more like drives. The desiring element is specified as the drive toward material satisfaction; spirit as the drive to win and to amount to something; calculation as the drive to discover truth. They have not shed their characteristic functions, but these have found a new context; and the biggest change is to the calculative element. Previously, it had been unclear whether this element even had a goal of its own or was merely a supervisor that placed limits on the interests of the other elements in the interest of the individual as a whole. Now it is assigned an object of desire all its own, and that object is not the good, whether the good of the individual or the good tout court , but wisdom. Wisdom is a good, of course, arguably the highest good.

Sun and Line: The Role of the Good

“I understand that less than I understand the Good of Plato,” says a slave in comedy. The slaves understanding of the Good would not have been much helped by attending Platos own public lecture on the subject: the majority of the audience “came in the expectation of acquiring some of those things that conventionally count as human goods, such as health, wealth, strength, and in general some wonderful happiness; but when the discussion turned out to be on the mathematical sciences - numbers, geometry, astronomy - and the conclusion to be that good is one, this struck them as utterly paradoxical; whereupon some came to despise the business, and others started to make complaints.” Nevertheless, in one respect at least, it is actually quite easy to grasp what Plato has to say about the Good. If for the moment we confine our attention to Forms of artifacts, it is easy to understand and accept the Republic s claim that the Good has the privileged position of being what accounts for the existence and intelligibility of Forms, much as the Sun has the privileged position of being what accounts for the growth and visibility of plants (508b-e, 509b). For the claim will then be that everything about an ideal artifact is teleologically explicable. The ideal wheel is circular, and it has its axle in its center. These things are so because that is the best way for a wheel to be: a buckled wheel, or for that matter a circular wheel with its axle off-center, would give a bumpy ride. And the Good accounts in this way for every aspect of the ideal wheel: if, for example, we ask about the color of the ideal wheel, then the only answer is that it has no particular color; and that is because there is no one color that is the best one for a wheel to have.

Eros in the Republic

The Republic repeatedly treats eros as if it were unruly or bad and ought to be remade to be more congenial to good government. The illegality of choosing a mate for oneself, compulsory coed exercising in the nude, the imposition of eugenically determined match making, and the enforced discipline of having many sexual partners but no single partner to call “ones own” are decidedly strange institutions. Such attempts to coerce and mold eros to fit abstract justice imply a negative judgment about the political effects of ordinary erotic desire that is not in harmony with the liberated views about love and sex prevalent in most liberal democracies today. Nor are the coercive and legalistic stances toward sexual unions taken in the Republic and other political dialogues (e.g., Pol . 310bff.) in harmony with certain other dialogues of Plato, namely, the “erotic” dialogues, which literally sing the praises of eros: in the Symposium and Phaedrus , eros is said to lead upward to pure beauty and goodness. In fact, the coercive parts of the Republic are not even in harmony with other parts of the Republic itself, for - just after the erotic regimen has been legally imposed - there follows a disquisition on eros that reads like a Symposium in miniature, with a profligate, promiscuous eros providing humanitys primary mode of access to the Forms.