So, the reading for today... confusing... and personally damaging. As many of you might know, I'm a Philosophy, Creative Writing double major. I have been hurt by one of my loves for loving another. I'm caught in a lovers' quarrel. Socrates tells the poets to get out of his city, but leaves some room for poets to be allowed back into the city. For me, I wonder if Socrates would allow me in the city. Why should I, as some sort of poet, be kicked out of the city and why should I be let in?
We can first say that Socrates’ argument against the poets and painters is that their craft is furthest from truth. They work with images, like the shadows in the cave. I think Zak is right when he said that this has to do with the divided line. These men have opinions that aren’t fueled by knowledge, asking the question “how can a painter properly paint a couch without having any knowledge of a couch?” What a painter is a master of is of colors, and perhaps composition of images. Socrates bigger problem, it seems, is how the receptors receive poetry and paintings. If the public upholds these men as the wisest, as men who know, then we run into the problem of the cave. Those who are chained up accept the shadows displayed by he who displays the shadows. If they indeed do not know “truth” and have a mere weak opinion of “truth,” then those who believe in the displayer of shadows believe without question things that are far removed from the truth. The poet, like the politician, can play to the desires of the public and have fame, renown, glory, success, etc. They perpetuate the ordering of the soul that is not most beneficial, allowing desire to lead rather than the calculating.
The only way they can be let in is if a decent argument can be made for their benefit, and if it is acknowledged by all that poetry, music, and the like casts charm spells. It’s suggested that poetry, and perhaps the things of ‘images,” plays to our lowest parts, and the pleasure they deliver would be greatly missed. An appreciation for poetry is noted here. But only as an acknowledgement and honor to the desiring aspect of the soul, that a well ordered soul sees poetry as a place of desire rather than of the intellect. That’s certainly a low appreciation of art, poetry, and things of images. It excludes them from the intellect, but is poetry and philosophy, or desire and the intellect, mutually exclusive? We have already seen that desire and the intellect complement each other, that desire that is directed towards wisdom is a good thing. The same can be noted for poetry and philosophy. First, we are dealing with a piece of literature, the Republic, and Socrates uses a story to help guide Glaucon.
I think the argument comes down to the relationship of aesthetics to philosophy. To be honest, I have little idea of how to deal with this. But, I think I can say what the negative aspect of this relationship is. At the very least, aesthetics should be noted as something beautiful. Like seeing a Pixar film, the beauty of the images should be appreciated, but only as far as they are pretty, even beautiful, but not the kind of beauty that is associated with philosophy. This is to say, not all beautiful aesthetics is as beautiful as truth, but not all beautiful aesthetics has no association with the beauty of truth and philosophy. What the “positive” relationship is, I cannot say.
