BY
TEJAS SRINIVAS
A poet
is an airy thing, winged and holy, and he is not
able to
make poetry until he becomes inspired and
goes
out of his mind and his intellect is no longer in
him.
(Plato Ion 534b)
In the Republic, Plato
voices his ambivalence toward poetry and poesis in
general.1 Plato admires art for its great
inspirational power, but at the same time detests it because its creator has “no
grasp of the truth” (Plato Republic trans. Grube 600e). He states that the artist
produces an insubstantial “imitation” of objects in the sensible world that are
themselves less real than the forms, which comprise reality itself (Plato
Republic trans. Grube 598b). Further, he argues that the appeal of poesis
stems
solely from its ability to arouse the emotions by “gratifying the irrational,”
appetitive part of the soul while “destroy[ing] the rational” part (Plato
Republic
trans. Grube 605 b-c,
605b). Consequently, poesis is psychologically
damaging in its subversion of reason (Plato
Republic trans. Grube 441e). The vehemence of Plato’s
attack results from his desire to supplant art with
philosophy
as the major source of education in Athenian society.
Poesis itself, in fact, has the same advantages
and
disadvantages as philosophy. Many
of Plato’s charges against poesis apply
to philosophy itself and his own methods of
writing philosophy. Just
as the enchanting rhythms and captivating images
of poesis may seduce an audience with their
beauty,
so too may the tight syllogisms and authoritative
pronouncements
in the dialectic of philosophy may elicit emotional
response. It is unfair and, moreover, erroneous
for
Plato to conceive of poesis as
exclusive of rationality, and
similarly, of philosophy as independent of the faculty
of emotion. Philosophy is a form of art, for the
medium
through which it operates, speech, is imitation,
and
art is, by Plato’s definition, imitation.
It follows that a
philosopher is an imitator whose representation of reality is limited by the
extent to which words approximate an object, and further, the approximation of
the object to the reality of the forms. Conversely, poesis
is
a form of philosophy, for its comprehension too involves intellectual contemplation
and an active use of the consciousness. Through thoughtful reflection, both
philosophy and art are capable of evoking knowledge of the forms.
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