Part I Education of the Future Guardians (Children) of society - Poetry On The Hot Seat
In order to begin to shape the Republic properly, it was important for Plato to begin with the young who would become the Republic of the future. Plato adopted this system, that would only remove features which would not help to produce the type of character his Guardians were to have.
The education of Athenian boys, for which the family, not the state, was responsible, was carried on at private day-schools. This education might cease at about the age of 15, and then the youth had two years of military training. There were two branches of education for the young - the mind, and the physical body.
Education of the mind mainly consisted of reading and writing, learning and reciting epic and dramatic poetry, lyre-playing and singing lyric poetry, the rudiments of arithmetic and geometry (music) and athletic exercises. Music included all the arts of which the muses presided: music, art, letters, culture, philosophy. This education included reading and listening to stories.
Stories are of two kinds. Some are true and other fictitious. Both exist, but for children, it was believed it should be fictitious stories that were told (as a whole fiction, although they contained some truth). Young minds are impressionable, thus the importance of telling the 'right' stories to children. In Plato, the words 'fiction', 'fictitious' are used to represent the Greek "pseudos" which has a much wider sense than our "lie". Pseudos covers any statement describing events which never in fact occurred, and so applies to all works of imagination - all fictitious narratives ('stories') in myth or allegory, fable or parable, poetry or romance. (Plato did not confuse fiction with falsehood or identify truth with literal statements of fact). The pattern of the great stories would be used as examples. The great stories were considered to be those of Homer and Hesiod, who composed fictitious tales. If the story was ugly and immoral as well as false - misrepresenting the nature of gods and heroes, then this was to be considered a serious fault.
An example of this was the story which Hesiod repeated of the deeds of Uranus and the vengeance of Cronos, and also the tales of Crono's doing and of his son's treatment of him. (a primitive myth of the forcing apart of the Sky (Uranus) and Earth (Gaia) by their son Cronos, who mutilated his father. Zeus, again, took vengeance on his father Cronos for trying to destroy his children. (These stories were sometimes cited to justify ill-treatment of parents). Even if such tales were true, they should not be lightly told to young people, according to Plato. Jeremy Sharp, in his lecture, if you remember, also spoke about some things just not being the right thing to do - this was in regard to the treatment of Hektor's body being dragged around and mutilated. I could not see that Plato used this as an example of what would not be good for young children to learn, but I am using this reference to what Jeremy said, as an example of the idea of something not being good.
Because young children are greatly influenced and their minds shaped by what they experience, and also because they cannot distinguish the allegorical sense from the literal, Plato believed it was important that the stories children were exposed to were not of battles, but of people who didn't fight. He believed that a poet, whether he was writing epic, lyric, or drama, should always represent the divine nature as it really was, and that the truth was that the divine nature was good and must be described like that.
Plato reasoned that if something were good, it cannot be harmful - it cannot do harm, or do evil. Homer's description of Zeus was the 'dispenser of both good and ill', was therefore, thought to be foolish. It was also decided that a god is perfect as he is, and therefore remains in this form. The poet, therefore, should only be allowed to say that the wicked were miserable because they needed chastisement, and the punishment of heaven did them good.
In Greece, it has to be remembered, there was no sacred book (like the Bible), and the poets were regarded as inspired authorities on religion and morals. Socrates, when he questioned them, found them unable to give any rational account of their teaching (Apology, 22B). The Athenian child took his notions of the gods chiefly from Homer and Hesiod, who attributed every sort of immorality to the gods. Plato wanted to censor the poets.
In the 4th-century, highly educated men had ceased to believe in the existence of supernatural persons called Zeus, Athena, Apollo, with their mythical attributes and adventures. Myths were not dogma, and no one was required to profess a belief in them. Priests had no authority over belief; they were officials whose duty was to carry out the ritual. The state required only that the cult should be maintained and that the existence of gods, as implied by this worship, should not be blatantly denied. Plato did not propose to abolish the "state religion". Therefore, the first law of religion must be that heaven was not responsible for everything, but only that which was good.
The true falsehood - if that is a possible expression - is a thing that all gods and men abominate. No one, if he could help it, would tolerate, and would even fear the presence of untruth in the soul in relation to reality. Falsehood in this area was to be abhorred above everything. This real falsehood, then, is hateful to gods and men equally. In legends, not knowing the facts about the distant past, we can make our fiction as good as an embodiment of truth as possible. We cannot think of a god though, as embodying truth in fiction for lack of information about the past - there is no room in this case for poetical inventions. Would a god need to tell untruths because he had enemies to fear? Gods, then have no motive for lying. There can be no falsehood of any sort in the divine nature.
Plato concluded, then, that a god is a being of entire simplicity and truthfulness in word and deed. In himself he does not change, nor does he delude others, either in dreams (for all Plato's admiration of Homer, he could not approve in his story, the dream that Zeus sent to Agamemnon), or in waking moments, by apparitions or oracles or signs. This, then, was the second principle to guide all that was to be said or written about the gods (the religion): that they do not transform themselves by any magic or mislead us by illusions or lies.
The education of Athenian boys, for which the family, not the state, was responsible, was carried on at private day-schools. This education might cease at about the age of 15, and then the youth had two years of military training. There were two branches of education for the young - the mind, and the physical body.
Education of the mind mainly consisted of reading and writing, learning and reciting epic and dramatic poetry, lyre-playing and singing lyric poetry, the rudiments of arithmetic and geometry (music) and athletic exercises. Music included all the arts of which the muses presided: music, art, letters, culture, philosophy. This education included reading and listening to stories.
Stories are of two kinds. Some are true and other fictitious. Both exist, but for children, it was believed it should be fictitious stories that were told (as a whole fiction, although they contained some truth). Young minds are impressionable, thus the importance of telling the 'right' stories to children. In Plato, the words 'fiction', 'fictitious' are used to represent the Greek "pseudos" which has a much wider sense than our "lie". Pseudos covers any statement describing events which never in fact occurred, and so applies to all works of imagination - all fictitious narratives ('stories') in myth or allegory, fable or parable, poetry or romance. (Plato did not confuse fiction with falsehood or identify truth with literal statements of fact). The pattern of the great stories would be used as examples. The great stories were considered to be those of Homer and Hesiod, who composed fictitious tales. If the story was ugly and immoral as well as false - misrepresenting the nature of gods and heroes, then this was to be considered a serious fault.
An example of this was the story which Hesiod repeated of the deeds of Uranus and the vengeance of Cronos, and also the tales of Crono's doing and of his son's treatment of him. (a primitive myth of the forcing apart of the Sky (Uranus) and Earth (Gaia) by their son Cronos, who mutilated his father. Zeus, again, took vengeance on his father Cronos for trying to destroy his children. (These stories were sometimes cited to justify ill-treatment of parents). Even if such tales were true, they should not be lightly told to young people, according to Plato. Jeremy Sharp, in his lecture, if you remember, also spoke about some things just not being the right thing to do - this was in regard to the treatment of Hektor's body being dragged around and mutilated. I could not see that Plato used this as an example of what would not be good for young children to learn, but I am using this reference to what Jeremy said, as an example of the idea of something not being good.
Because young children are greatly influenced and their minds shaped by what they experience, and also because they cannot distinguish the allegorical sense from the literal, Plato believed it was important that the stories children were exposed to were not of battles, but of people who didn't fight. He believed that a poet, whether he was writing epic, lyric, or drama, should always represent the divine nature as it really was, and that the truth was that the divine nature was good and must be described like that.
Plato reasoned that if something were good, it cannot be harmful - it cannot do harm, or do evil. Homer's description of Zeus was the 'dispenser of both good and ill', was therefore, thought to be foolish. It was also decided that a god is perfect as he is, and therefore remains in this form. The poet, therefore, should only be allowed to say that the wicked were miserable because they needed chastisement, and the punishment of heaven did them good.
In Greece, it has to be remembered, there was no sacred book (like the Bible), and the poets were regarded as inspired authorities on religion and morals. Socrates, when he questioned them, found them unable to give any rational account of their teaching (Apology, 22B). The Athenian child took his notions of the gods chiefly from Homer and Hesiod, who attributed every sort of immorality to the gods. Plato wanted to censor the poets.
In the 4th-century, highly educated men had ceased to believe in the existence of supernatural persons called Zeus, Athena, Apollo, with their mythical attributes and adventures. Myths were not dogma, and no one was required to profess a belief in them. Priests had no authority over belief; they were officials whose duty was to carry out the ritual. The state required only that the cult should be maintained and that the existence of gods, as implied by this worship, should not be blatantly denied. Plato did not propose to abolish the "state religion". Therefore, the first law of religion must be that heaven was not responsible for everything, but only that which was good.
The true falsehood - if that is a possible expression - is a thing that all gods and men abominate. No one, if he could help it, would tolerate, and would even fear the presence of untruth in the soul in relation to reality. Falsehood in this area was to be abhorred above everything. This real falsehood, then, is hateful to gods and men equally. In legends, not knowing the facts about the distant past, we can make our fiction as good as an embodiment of truth as possible. We cannot think of a god though, as embodying truth in fiction for lack of information about the past - there is no room in this case for poetical inventions. Would a god need to tell untruths because he had enemies to fear? Gods, then have no motive for lying. There can be no falsehood of any sort in the divine nature.
Plato concluded, then, that a god is a being of entire simplicity and truthfulness in word and deed. In himself he does not change, nor does he delude others, either in dreams (for all Plato's admiration of Homer, he could not approve in his story, the dream that Zeus sent to Agamemnon), or in waking moments, by apparitions or oracles or signs. This, then, was the second principle to guide all that was to be said or written about the gods (the religion): that they do not transform themselves by any magic or mislead us by illusions or lies.
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