August 3, 2009
Clarification: “poetry” to Plato is more similar to what we call theatre (performative context).
Plato thought he innovated the distinction between style and content:
Distinguishing the story from the way the poet tells the story
E.g. style could vary between 3rd person, 1st person narration for the same story
The effect of being exposed to poetry: one tries to be many things, instead of one thing.
Background: Plato + Aristotle both believed a good human life is unified
A single goal, so you could say what it was about
(they happened to think the best goal was contemplation of eternal truths).
We share this intuition, though now we also praise people for having a variety of interests.
How can you be a mother and a working professional at once?
We would rather try to make the two identities compatible, rather than try to argue that people should be comfortable/adept at having multiple identities.
What is the distinction between unity and diversity:
A single person does many things (shoemaker has to cut leather, sew, negotiate, …) and these are all ways of expressing a single identity (illusory multiplicity).
Plato objects to the multiple identities.
Also note: Plato not opposed to all poetry, since he thinks it is valuable in early moral development as a form of play.
Rather, we should reform poetry to prevent it from encouraging multiplicity.
Example:
First you are Homer narrating, then you are Achilles, then you are Helen, etc.
We come to enjoy being many people by being exposed to this.
When you seek to be many things, you are no particular thing at all.
The single identity of ‘a poet’ is not a real identity.
Poets were master entertainers, aiming at producing pleasure
Pleasure should be a means to an aim (directs one towards satisfying one’s identity), but pleasure as the goal is not genuine (meaningless pleasure, which is our modern conception of pleasure)
For Plato, then, pleasures can be false, and poets do not provide genuine pleasure.
By aiming at appearances, the thing the poet aims for cannot serve as a genine telos.
A shoemaker does not have to constantly vary his output to stay satisfied, but the poet has to keep changing is stories to keep people interested, because his pleasure is fleeting / they’re not actually satisfying (only seeming to satisfy us).
The difference between going to the gym with the intention of becoming strong vs the intention of going to the gym just to feel like one is a gym person.
We have lots of fleeting/meaningless pleasure that is not actually satisfying (we have to keep varying things to keep interested). Was Plato predicting the emptiness of contemporary society and shallowness of popular culture?
Plato’s remedy is austere: the only goal capable of having the stability of unifying a life is pursuit of reason. (Not incompatible with modern conceptions of the good life, for theists or academic-minded people).
Plato offers valid criticism of entertainment and high culture, but he underestimates the value of certain kinds of play. He didn’t see that we play not at things we want to become, but also things we’re afraid of or want to learn about.