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lotesseMy essay telling Socrates off for being a militaristic gorillabrain and devaluing stories.
To read Homer, Aeschylus, or any of the “imitative” poets is an emotional, thought-provoking experience. It's a basic human desire, the love for the escape of storytelling and story-hearing, as old as human thought and quite instinctual. However, Socrates argues against poetry, saying that it is three removes from the truth, an image of and image, and thus untrue enough to have no real value in his ideal, “just” republic. And while it's possible to make a case for hypocrisy on his part or on Plato's, the imitator banning imitation, he or they are overlooking something essential. They are misconstruing the intent, and thus the nature, of poetry. True, if you buy into the concept of forms and the idea that a craftsman is merely imitating that form when he creates something, poetry is an imitation of an imitation. But while a craftsman is striving to make a tangible object that functions is a way as close to that of the form as possible, I would say that the intent of the poet is quite different.
(I take Socrates as meaning by poetry something more along the lines of “story” as we would currently understand it. Earlier in the Republic he used “music” explicitly for all art in general, so I think that it's fair to understand the word in a non-contempory sense. After all, in those times stories were only contained in verse. They hadn't gotten around to novels yet.)
The goal of the poet is not to produce as perfect as replica of real life as possible. Although a story needs to have a certain amount of realism in order to maintain belief in its hearers, and although realism is essential to its actual purpose, that is not its primary for-the-sake-of-which, to borrow terminology from Aristotle. The purpose of poetry is to create something beautiful which stirs emotion, and to allow the hearer or reader to experience something which they ordinarily would not be able to, such as a historical event or a viewpoint far removed from their own.
Actually, that's one of Socrates' points against poetry: that it appeals to the emotional aspect of the soul, rather than to the rational aspect. This is true, although perhaps not enough to warrant the abandonment of the entire art form. It's debatable whether this appeal to emotion is actually a bad thing in and of itself. As logic, pity pleas are not valid, but poetry does not claim to be logical, nor is logic the only form on goodness or justice. Socrates also holds against it the opinion that it is detrimental to the sort of emotional stoicism that he evidently prefers as being the best way of life. But I think that his logic can be questioned. The emotional catharsis of poetry can be a very good thing. It can allow the release of certain emotions, such as anger, without the nastiness of pounding someone else into a pulp in the process. To contain all emotion completely is, I think, a very unwise thing to do. It means that the slightest loss of control could lead to the loosing of enough pent-up emotion to be potentially dangerous. We need to admit to having our feelings, to allow them to be and then to get beyond them. To deny them is to refuse to move forward with life.
Sometimes, too, the expression of emotion can be a noble thing. While I am willing to agree with Socrates that too much self-pity for oneself is not a good thing, pity for another is a worthwhile emotion that no one should be ashamed to feel. It shows the presence of compassion within the soul, a virtue which Socrates does not seem terribly interested but which I would say is the most essential to a good life. Compassion is an unselfish emotion. It's doing good not because you know that to be good will make you happy in your soul, as Socrates claims we do, but because you feel that it is right, because you want for others the happiness that you would wish for yourself. It's doing good even when it doesn't profit yourself, only because it profits someone else and because it is the right thing to do.
Compassion is a big part of the good of poetry. Through the pity engendered by stories it is possible to eliminate elements of bigotry and divisive hatred, not to mention selfishness. Discrimination results in many ways from the practice of “othering.” The thought is that it's okay to treat them like that, because they're different. They're Not Like Us. And when human beings begin to perceive others as inherently different from themselves they are, in essence, perceiving them as less than human. It's a lot harder to allow bigotry against a person that you know is just like you.
And that's what stories do. They allow us to glimpse for a moment some small part of what it is to be something else, to identify with them or at the very least to obtain some understanding of who they are and why they take the actions that they do. I, a young girl, can experience part of what it is to be an old woman, and little boy, a soldier, a whore, or a king. And I can see that, for all the ways in which they are not at all like me, we are at the base of it all pretty much the same where it counts. We're all human beings with wants and needs and sorrows and struggles. While it seems arrogant to say that I can understand them, I can at least identify with them and think that I do, can feel like I know what it is to be them. And this is always to the good. Through story and poetry we can see people who are different from us in the light of our samenesses, not only our differences. We can stop “othering” them.
Furthermore, in response to the idea that poetry is three removes from to truth and thus cannot have any great worth, I would say that, in Socrates' language of forms, poetry is actually just as close or closer to the truth as the craftsman's work. I'm just standing at a different vantage point. Socrates says that the point of poetry is to perfectly reproduce life, whereas I would say that the point of poetry is to produce beauty. Even when poems aren't beautiful in the “hearts and flowers” sense, they are lovely, because they showcase humanity in all its beauty and squalor and complexity, and that's a beautiful thing. And I believe that poetry sometimes comes closer to the very truth of the form-Beauty than any chair has ever come to being the form-Chair. Such is the nature of any true art: to approach the very nature of the form and to, if only for a moment, break the boundary of imitation that we as humans strain against. We can only ever imitate, but art can sometimes come close to doing more.
Poetry and stories do have value. They have an emotional nature, but in an unselfish way that seems, in a way, to go against emotion itself. If by emotion we mean the sum of our own wants and needs and frustrations at not getting them, poetry is not involved with it. Poetry is concerned with pity, identification, empathy, and hope. These things are not rational, but unlike the baser emotions they are desirable in that they promote a more peaceful, stable society in which nobody has to worry about getting stoned to death. This is a good thing.
It's no mistake that the best way to describe the concept of the form is through the arts or that it's easier to see there being a form for Beauty than for Chair. Art truly does break through the material of our existence, bursting out of its most obvious place on Socrates' divided line of truth. It does not imitate the imitation, but rather seeks to show the form itself, not as imitation but as itself, pure and complete. We cannot understand forms rationally, although we can rationally deduce that they exist. But to truly understand them, to know their being, we have to rely on intuition and feeling, on what we feel must be there. That's the instrument of art. It is as close to the perfect truth as we ever seem to get.
To read Homer, Aeschylus, or any of the “imitative” poets is an emotional, thought-provoking experience. It's a basic human desire, the love for the escape of storytelling and story-hearing, as old as human thought and quite instinctual. However, Socrates argues against poetry, saying that it is three removes from the truth, an image of and image, and thus untrue enough to have no real value in his ideal, “just” republic. And while it's possible to make a case for hypocrisy on his part or on Plato's, the imitator banning imitation, he or they are overlooking something essential. They are misconstruing the intent, and thus the nature, of poetry. True, if you buy into the concept of forms and the idea that a craftsman is merely imitating that form when he creates something, poetry is an imitation of an imitation. But while a craftsman is striving to make a tangible object that functions is a way as close to that of the form as possible, I would say that the intent of the poet is quite different.
(I take Socrates as meaning by poetry something more along the lines of “story” as we would currently understand it. Earlier in the Republic he used “music” explicitly for all art in general, so I think that it's fair to understand the word in a non-contempory sense. After all, in those times stories were only contained in verse. They hadn't gotten around to novels yet.)
The goal of the poet is not to produce as perfect as replica of real life as possible. Although a story needs to have a certain amount of realism in order to maintain belief in its hearers, and although realism is essential to its actual purpose, that is not its primary for-the-sake-of-which, to borrow terminology from Aristotle. The purpose of poetry is to create something beautiful which stirs emotion, and to allow the hearer or reader to experience something which they ordinarily would not be able to, such as a historical event or a viewpoint far removed from their own.
Actually, that's one of Socrates' points against poetry: that it appeals to the emotional aspect of the soul, rather than to the rational aspect. This is true, although perhaps not enough to warrant the abandonment of the entire art form. It's debatable whether this appeal to emotion is actually a bad thing in and of itself. As logic, pity pleas are not valid, but poetry does not claim to be logical, nor is logic the only form on goodness or justice. Socrates also holds against it the opinion that it is detrimental to the sort of emotional stoicism that he evidently prefers as being the best way of life. But I think that his logic can be questioned. The emotional catharsis of poetry can be a very good thing. It can allow the release of certain emotions, such as anger, without the nastiness of pounding someone else into a pulp in the process. To contain all emotion completely is, I think, a very unwise thing to do. It means that the slightest loss of control could lead to the loosing of enough pent-up emotion to be potentially dangerous. We need to admit to having our feelings, to allow them to be and then to get beyond them. To deny them is to refuse to move forward with life.
Sometimes, too, the expression of emotion can be a noble thing. While I am willing to agree with Socrates that too much self-pity for oneself is not a good thing, pity for another is a worthwhile emotion that no one should be ashamed to feel. It shows the presence of compassion within the soul, a virtue which Socrates does not seem terribly interested but which I would say is the most essential to a good life. Compassion is an unselfish emotion. It's doing good not because you know that to be good will make you happy in your soul, as Socrates claims we do, but because you feel that it is right, because you want for others the happiness that you would wish for yourself. It's doing good even when it doesn't profit yourself, only because it profits someone else and because it is the right thing to do.
Compassion is a big part of the good of poetry. Through the pity engendered by stories it is possible to eliminate elements of bigotry and divisive hatred, not to mention selfishness. Discrimination results in many ways from the practice of “othering.” The thought is that it's okay to treat them like that, because they're different. They're Not Like Us. And when human beings begin to perceive others as inherently different from themselves they are, in essence, perceiving them as less than human. It's a lot harder to allow bigotry against a person that you know is just like you.
And that's what stories do. They allow us to glimpse for a moment some small part of what it is to be something else, to identify with them or at the very least to obtain some understanding of who they are and why they take the actions that they do. I, a young girl, can experience part of what it is to be an old woman, and little boy, a soldier, a whore, or a king. And I can see that, for all the ways in which they are not at all like me, we are at the base of it all pretty much the same where it counts. We're all human beings with wants and needs and sorrows and struggles. While it seems arrogant to say that I can understand them, I can at least identify with them and think that I do, can feel like I know what it is to be them. And this is always to the good. Through story and poetry we can see people who are different from us in the light of our samenesses, not only our differences. We can stop “othering” them.
Furthermore, in response to the idea that poetry is three removes from to truth and thus cannot have any great worth, I would say that, in Socrates' language of forms, poetry is actually just as close or closer to the truth as the craftsman's work. I'm just standing at a different vantage point. Socrates says that the point of poetry is to perfectly reproduce life, whereas I would say that the point of poetry is to produce beauty. Even when poems aren't beautiful in the “hearts and flowers” sense, they are lovely, because they showcase humanity in all its beauty and squalor and complexity, and that's a beautiful thing. And I believe that poetry sometimes comes closer to the very truth of the form-Beauty than any chair has ever come to being the form-Chair. Such is the nature of any true art: to approach the very nature of the form and to, if only for a moment, break the boundary of imitation that we as humans strain against. We can only ever imitate, but art can sometimes come close to doing more.
Poetry and stories do have value. They have an emotional nature, but in an unselfish way that seems, in a way, to go against emotion itself. If by emotion we mean the sum of our own wants and needs and frustrations at not getting them, poetry is not involved with it. Poetry is concerned with pity, identification, empathy, and hope. These things are not rational, but unlike the baser emotions they are desirable in that they promote a more peaceful, stable society in which nobody has to worry about getting stoned to death. This is a good thing.
It's no mistake that the best way to describe the concept of the form is through the arts or that it's easier to see there being a form for Beauty than for Chair. Art truly does break through the material of our existence, bursting out of its most obvious place on Socrates' divided line of truth. It does not imitate the imitation, but rather seeks to show the form itself, not as imitation but as itself, pure and complete. We cannot understand forms rationally, although we can rationally deduce that they exist. But to truly understand them, to know their being, we have to rely on intuition and feeling, on what we feel must be there. That's the instrument of art. It is as close to the perfect truth as we ever seem to get.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-18 02:20 am (UTC)But I don't, so I'll just say: Oooooooh. I LIKE this!
no subject
Date: 2004-11-18 02:44 am (UTC)(although so is analysis)