Criticism

Plato rejected the poets.

The best-known locus for this dramatic gesture is the dialogue Republic, the tenth and last book, where Plato has Socrates reach the conclusion that “we can admit no poetry into our city save only hymns to the gods and the praises of good men.” “Our city” refers to the ideal community – polis – that Socrates has already sketched with the assent of his young listeners; except, in the first book, he gets some resistance from one Thrasymachos, who makes a scandalous speech in praise of injustice. This gives Socrates the opportunity to develop the connections between the true and the right and the good; his pedagogical zeal brings him on to epistemology and to statecraft, finally to poetry – and thereby to poetics and aesthetics.

The reasons poets cannot be accepted into the ideal community are both epistemological and moral, but whatever the reason they have a word in common: mimesis. Plato uses the word with a primarily visual significance; mimesis suggests image, a visual image related to imitation, re-presentation. Poetry delivers a poor and unreliable knowledge, according to Socrates – and still in the tenth book of Republic – since it is a second-hand imitation of an already second-hand imitation. The philosopher comes closest to first-hand knowledge of real reality: he can see the form or ideas or ideal form of things and can therefore disregard imitations. When the carpenter makes his platonic couch he has taken a step away from ideal form.