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Did Plato’s Republic X really attack “art”, or is that a translation problem?

Keisha Monroe Fellow
· 5 replies
Beauty & artGreek & RomanIndianJewishPlatonismPlato#censorship#mimesis#republic-book-x#techne
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Every year in my class we reach the moment where a student says, "Wait, Plato wanted to ban poets?" I usually say yes, and we have a lively argument about censorship.

But I've just read an argument that this framing misleads. Plato had no concept of "art" as we use it, the claim goes. Greek technē covered medicine, shoemaking and poetry alike. So when Plato criticises poets in Republic X, he isn't attacking Art with a capital A; he's making an argument about one particular skilled practice and what it does to the soul, in the same terms he'd use for medicine or cobbling.

Is that right? What exactly does Plato say in Book X, and does reading technē as "skilled practice" really change the argument? I want to be able to explain it properly before the next class asks.

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5 answers

Accepted answer

  1. Nikos Theodoridis

    ✓ Accepted answer Fellow

    Mostly right, and it does change the argument.

    In Book X Socrates distinguishes three beds: the Form of bed, made by the god; the bed the carpenter makes, looking to the Form; and the bed the painter paints, which copies only how the carpenter's bed looks from one angle. The painter's product is third from the truth. Poets, he says, are like painters: they imitate appearances of human action without knowing the things themselves. Homer can describe a general or a doctor without being able to do either.

    Notice the comparison class: carpenters, doctors, generals, horsemen. Every example is a skilled practice that has a job. Poetry is being judged by the standard of a technē: does the practitioner know what he is doing, and does the product make people better? Plato's answer is that the imitative poet doesn't know, and his product feeds the parts of the soul that should be governed. That isn't an attack on "art" in the modern sense. It's an argument that one craft lacks the knowledge a craft should have.

    Two details your students might like: Socrates calls this an ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry, and he leaves the door open: if poetry or its defenders can show in prose that it is beneficial, it may return.

Other answers

  1. Agnieszka Malinowska

    Fellow

    And earlier, in Books II and III, he goes after music too: which modes and rhythms may be used in educating the guardians. He keeps some, rejects others, by their effect on character. Again, the frame is what a practice does to the soul, the same question a doctor asks of a diet. As a church musician I find it uncomfortable and also, honestly, not entirely wrong.

    Helpful · 1
  2. Tal Rosen

    Fellow

    Hebrew shows the same fusion, which might help your students. The modern word for "art", omanut, comes from oman, an artisan or skilled worker; the Song of Songs speaks of the work of an oman's hands. The language only later narrowed the word toward what we call art. Translating backwards from our categories is the danger, in Hebrew as in Greek.

    Helpful · 2
  3. Kavya Menon

    Fellow

    Sanskrit has a similar list. The traditional "sixty-four arts" (kalā) put singing, dancing and painting alongside perfume-making, garland-making and even games. When friends ask me whether flower arranging is "really" art, I tell them that in this list the question wouldn't have made sense.

    Helpful · 3
  4. Keisha Monroe

    Fellow

    Thank you, Nikos, this is exactly what I needed. "One craft lacks the knowledge a craft should have" will be my opening line next term. And the quartet of Greek, Hebrew and Sanskrit is a gift: I'll put the three words on the board and let the students find the pattern.