Poetic Imitation: The Argument of Republic 10

1 The Ignorance Charge

2 First Corruption Charge (602c–605c)

Suppose we’ve been persuaded that traditional poetry is not real education. Someone could object that, as long as we don’t mistake it for real education, it is quite harmless (see Leg 667e). Socrates needs to demonstrate that the poets are harmful even if we only listen for pleasure. This is his goal in the second part of the argument. While scholars typically read this phase as one piece, I will show that it consists of two distinct charges, both relying on the tripartite theory, and each targeting a different part of the nonrational soul. It will emerge that this argument does not rely on the theory of Forms, as it would have to if it showed that poetry is harmful because it misrepresents ethical matters. Instead, we will see the ignorance charge become relevant in another way. Poets exploit their imitative skill to reproduce overt behaviors, especially speech, imitating the manners of various characters in the city: the elite, as well as the lower, uneducated classes. This, in turn, attracts different audiences to these characters in ways that are, according to Socrates, harmful to them.

In the remainder of the paper I will attend carefully to the workings of Socrates’ two corruption charges against the poets. Although scholars have emphasized that audiences play a role in their own corruption, they do not notice the argument’s classist undertones.^[24] The two charges focus on audiences from different social classes: hoi polloi (605a4) and hoi epieikeis (605c6), respectively. Scholars take the two as moral categories; for them, the former group are ethically flawed individuals, while hoi epieikeis are decent or reasonable people. But these categories are elitist, denoting two echelons of society: the uneducated many and the ruling class.^[25] In this section, I will argue that the first corruption charge accuses the poets of strengthening the appetitive part of the soul and the demotic element in the city. After that, I will turn to the second corruption charge, i.e., ‘the greatest accusation,’ arguing that poetry weakens spirit in the souls of the educated elite.

The first corruption charge begins when Socrates asks, ‘on what sort of element in the human being does imitation have the power it has?’ (602c4–5).^[26] To answer this question, he revives once again the analogy between painters and poets, this time with the aim of showing that both associate with an inferior element in us. On some accounts, poets relate to the nonrational part of the soul, appetite alone, or together with spirit, which believes on the basis of appearances.^[27] Others have thought that Socrates re-divides the soul along different lines than in book 4, between an uncritical aspect of human reason, and our capacity for reflective judgment.^[28] Both camps seek an account of the inferiority of the part to which imitators relate, in poetry as well as painting. By contrast, I suggest that Plato is not interested in theorizing about our nonrational nature. He begins by calling attention to sight’s vulnerability to error, and continues to elucidate the vulnerability of appetite by analogy. This paves the way for him to show that poets promote unlawful desires by presenting them in a powerfully alluring light.

Painting has its power relative to sight, which is inferior to reason with respect to its ability to correctly register visible properties: ‘The same magnitude surely doesn’t look equal to our sight from near and from far’ (602c7–8); ‘The same things look bent and straight when seen in water and out of it, and also both concave and convex, due to the sight being misled by the colors (dia tên peri ta chrômata au planên tês opseôs)’ (c10–d1). When this happens, ‘measuring, counting, and weighing,’ come to our aid, thanks to which ‘we are not ruled by a thing’s looking bigger or smaller or more or heavier,’ but rather ‘by that which has calculated, measured, or weighed,’ that is, by reason (to logistikon, d6–e1; cf. 605b4–5).

Although Socrates does not identify poetry’s partner-faculty by name, some scholars have thought that it is appetite.^[29] We know from previous discussions that appetite, left to its own devices, has a tendency to proliferate (588c). Here the part with which poets associate is the cause of ‘countless factions’ (muriôn toioutôn enantiômatôn, 603d5–6). Socrates also blames the poets for satisfying this element, which by its very nature craves (epithumein) tears, and is hungering (pepeinêkos) for a satisfying cry (606a3–7; cf. 605b1–3). If we thought that appetite is concerned only with basic physical needs, then we would be inclined to dismiss this language as metaphorical. However, by the time we read this we’ve already seen various ways in which appetite expands beyond a narrow concern with nourishment and sex. A notable example is ‘profit,’ that is, financial gain, which at a certain point appears definitive of appetite (to philokerdes, 586d5).^[30]

It has been argued that things appear to appetite as good when they are not, just as a stick might appear bent when it is really straight.^[31] However, in book 4, Socrates emphasizes that appetite is just for the thing toward which the appetite is directed: e.g., thirst is for a drink, not a good drink (439a1–b1). This suggests that while the objects of appetite are subject to normative evaluation, and by consequence the appetites themselves, the faculty as such is desiderative, rather than cognitive.^[32] How are the two cases analogous, then?

The answer depends on the way appetite and sight tend to oppose reason: ‘when reason has measured and indicates that some things are bigger or smaller than others, or equal, often contrary appearances are presented at the same time about the same things’ (602e4–6).^[33] Because we have contrary opinions ‘about the same things at the same time,’ Socrates attributes these opinions to different parts of us: ‘the part which trusts measure and calculation’ is the best and ‘the part opposed to it is one of the inferior things in us’ (602e8–603a7).

Usually, it is thought that the inferior and opposing part is not sight, but a subject that believes sight. However, it is also possible that sight is thought of as both source and subject of affections, just as reason calculates and endorses its own verdicts. Socrates would then be contrasting two cognitive agencies within us, each issuing its own claims independently of the other, sometimes resulting in contrary assertoric content present in the soul.^[34] This does not preclude that sight belongs to our nonrational nature.^[35] But the argument does not require that we make this connection, if Socrates is calling attention to sight’s inferiority. On my preferred reading, sight itself stands in opposition to reason as a source and subject of incorrigible erroneous affections.^[36]

But how does sight’s tendency to deliver erroneous perceptions elucidate appetite’s conflict with reason, and how does poetry make matters worse? The poet ‘imitates human beings performing forced or voluntary actions, and, as a result of the action, supposing themselves to have done well or badly, and in all of this experiencing pain or enjoyment’ (603c5–8). A person is not always ‘of one mind’ with respect to what they want to do, but rather, ‘just as with respect to sight there was faction and he had contrary opinions in himself at the same time about the same things,’ so also ‘in practical affairs’ (en tais praxesi), we sometimes want to-φ and also want not-to-φ, and do as reason commands (c11–d3; cf. ‘embracing’ and ‘thrusting away,’ 437b1–d5). Socrates illustrates this conflict with the example of the bereaved father. He describes an upright man^[37] who has suffered ‘a stroke of fortune as the loss of a son or something else which he cares particularly about’ (603e4). This man exhibits contrary attitudes to grieving. When others are watching him, he does his best to avoid weeping; however, when he is alone he is inclined to let go (604a1–8). The superior party ‘wants to cure and set right what has fallen and is sick’ by reasoning (tôi logismôi) and deliberation (bouleuesthai) (604c5–d5; cf. 439c–d). ‘Whereas the part that leads to recollections of the suffering and to complaints and can’t get enough of them … is irrational, idle, and a friend of cowardice’ (604d7–9). On the proposed interpretation, these compliments go to appetite, which is able to cause even a good man to feel torn between two opposing desires.

Notice that the narrative presupposes a high level of cohesion between social norms and reason. This is clear from the pairing of ‘reason and the law’ (logos kai nomos) who speak in one voice, telling our man ‘to hold out,’ whereas ‘the suffering itself (auto to pathos) draws him towards grief’ (604a9–10). In addition, the person feels ashamed before his friends, which suggests that the agreement between reason and the law isn’t merely formal, but is actually enforced by society and internalized psychologically by its members. This harmony shouldn’t be taken for granted. As we know from books 8–9, social norms are not always lawful or reasonable (see 563d3–e1). In terms of Plato’s psychological apparatus, our man can be described as someone whose spirit properly functions as an ‘ally of reason’ (summachon tôi logoi, 440b3).^[38] We should keep this in mind as we approach the greatest charge against poetry: it will turn out that spirit can be co-opted by appetite and that the poets play a pivotal role in bringing about this unnatural alliance.

This is not yet an example of poetic corruption. While the bereaved father anticipates the second corruption charge, both in theme and in audience, in context it illustrates appetite’s innate tendency to oppose reason and the law even in good people. We raised a puzzle concerning the analogy between sight and appetite, which we can now solve. Both appetite and sight oppose reason, but in different spheres: appetite leads us astray in practical affairs just as sight tends to confound us about shapes and magnitudes. We get the following analogy: sight opposes measurement (roughly, reason in mathematical deployment) as appetite opposes wise deliberation (roughly, reason in practical deployment). In each case, the opposition to reason is due to the inferior nature of the faculty. Sight often gives rise to erroneous perceptions, and some appetites are for bad things.

Furthermore, both affections are incorrigible: erroneous perceptions remain even after reason overrules them; similarly, some appetites remain even after reason has resolved that they should not be pursued. In Republic 9, Socrates introduces the category of unlawful desires, i.e., unnecessary appetites that are contrary to what reason and the law bid us to do.^[39] Socrates seriously entertains the possibility that even the best of us experience them, but in smaller number and less intensely (571b). As the example of the bereaved father shows, the desire to dwell on one’s suffering is probably inevitable; even a good man does not relinquish it entirely (603e8–10).^[40] At the same time, it should not be indulged. This is like the incorrigibility of sight’s deliverances which remain with us even after reason has discredited them: we cannot get rid of erroneous perceptions, but we should ignore them, and let reason guide our thinking on measurable properties.^[41] Similarly, whenever unlawful cravings emerge, we shouldn’t satisfy them, but follow reason instead.

Finally, we are ready to extend the analogy to illuminate the first corruption charge. After he observes that sight doesn’t reliably tell us how things stand, Socrates disparages the use of ‘shadow painting and puppeteering and many other tricks of this kind, which fall nothing short of wizardry’ (602d2–4). Painters take advantage (epithemenê, 602d3) of sight’s incorrigible affections (hemôn tôi pathêmati tês phuseôs, d2; cf. dia tên … planên tês opseôs, c11–d1) by the use of these and similar techniques; thus they produce and hold our attention on misleading perceptions (602d6–9). Socrates will show that poets likewise tend to increase and intensify unlawful appetites that should be minimized and weakened, since reason and the law forbid their satisfaction. They make it more difficult for the audience to deny themselves the pleasures they crave.^[42]

As imitators of human action, the poets face a moral choice.^[43] This aspect of Socrates’ critique has received relatively little attention in the literature, which focuses much more on ignorance.^[44] But it is important. The poets could, if they wanted to, use their poetic gift to support the rational element.^[45] One of Plato’s favorite lines exemplifies this: ‘Smiting his breast he reproached his heart with word. Endure, heart; you have endured worse before’ (390d4–5; Od XX. 17–18). Odysseus does not merely behave as he should, but the effective use of poetic techniques also casts reason’s struggle for goodness in a beautiful light. In general, beneficial poetry involves not only veridical claims, but presents the good life in an appealing light through poetic skill. Unfortunately, this line is an outlier. By and large, poets use their poetic charms to advance appetitive causes, for the following reason:

‘The irritable part affords much and varied imitation, while the wise and quiet character (to de phronimon te kai hesuchion êthos), which is always nearly equal to itself, is neither easily imitated nor, when imitated, easily understood, especially by a festive assembly where all sorts of human beings are gathered in a theater. For the imitation is of an experience that is surely alien to them (allotriou pathous)’ (604e1–6).

Corrupt spirit is associated with excessive anger, so some commentators have thought that ‘the irritable part’ (to aganaktêtikon) refers to a ‘degenerate variety’ of to thumoeides, that is spirited emotions.^[46] But the irritable disposition in our passage seems different. The verb aganakteô, from which Socrates derives the name to aganaktêtikon, connotes irritability due to physical discomfort, e.g., being cold. Plato doesn’t use it in the discussion of spirited anger (see 411b1–c2). He does, however, deploy it metaphorically to describe states that are associated with appetitive desires, most strikingly in the Phaedrus, where it describes the pangs of erotic passion (251c1, c3). Arguably, ‘the irritable part’ denotes a degenerate variety of appetites. Because ‘the irritable part’ is contrasted with the disposition (êthos) of someone ‘wise and quiet,’ it is clear that the conversation has shifted from reflection on opposing forces within a single individual, to contrasting ethical dispositions: wise people whose reason-opposing, unlawful appetites ‘are few and weak’ (571b3–c1; cf. 431c5–7) on the one hand, and people whose appetites irritate them, on the other.

Some scholars single out the monotonous character of the good person as the reason to imitate their opposite: the wise person is relatively unaffected by circumstances, which also makes them boring to watch.^[47] While attractive, this interpretation doesn’t explain the difficulty of imitating wise characters, but only why they are unpopular. The key lies in the claim that the experience (pathos) of the wise is alien. Arguably, most poets cannot imitate such people because they do not know what goes on in the life of such a person; accordingly, they cannot anticipate what someone wise would think or feel or say or do in different situations as they would have to if they were going to imitate them well.^[48] Notice that the knowledge that is denied here is experiential, not scientific; most people are neither wise nor have lived among wise people and for that reason, arguably, it is difficult for poets to give proper voice to such lives.^[49] Most of their listeners, of course, are in the same situation, which means that they wouldn’t be able to identify with or perhaps even recognize authentic representations of such people if they were to appear on stage. Thus the unfamiliarity of the life of the wise explains both why it’s hard to make such art and why a poet who could, would not be popular. Instead, they portray appetitive characters in a sympathetic light.

It is worth asking what poetry that overcomes this difficulty might look like. Alcibiades’ speech in the Symposium is perhaps instructive. There, the notorious politician tells us about Socrates’ profound quietness and wisdom, as he experienced it first hand, through story and image. Here are the highlights:

‘I say he is most similar to the Silenus-figures that sit in the statuaries’ shops; those, I mean, which our craftsmen make with pipes or flutes in their hands: when their two halves are pulled open, they are found to contain images of gods …’ (215a6–b3).

‘Whether anyone else has caught him in a serious moment and opened him, and seen the images inside, I know not; but I saw them one day, and thought them so divine and golden, so completely beautiful and wondrous, that I simply had to do as Socrates bade me’ (216e5–217a2).

‘I resolved to charge full tilt at the man, and not to throw up the contest once I had entered upon it: I felt I must clear up the situation. Accordingly I invited him to dine with me …’ (217c4–7).

‘I got up, and without suffering the man to say a word more I wrapped my own coat about him—it was winter-time; drew myself under his cloak, so; wound my arms about this truly spiritual and miraculous creature; and lay thus all the night long …’ (219b4–c2).

‘Imagine what a state of mind I was in, feeling myself affronted, yet marveling at the sobriety and integrity of his nature: for I had lighted on a man such as I never would have dreamt of meeting …’ (219d3–6).^[50]

A tragic poet would undoubtably cast Socrates in the role of a lover overcome with passion for the handsome youth, but in Plato’s version Alcibiades is the frustrated suitor who falls in love with Socrates’ indomitable reason. Thus Plato uses Alcibiades’ intensely erotic character to cast the life of reason, rather than appetite, in an attractive light.^[51]

Other poets harness their talent to promote an appetitive agenda. We’ve heard in passing of tragedians who ‘sing the praises of tyranny’ (568b8; cf. 607a3–4). Socrates arguably has specific poets and tyrants in mind.^[52] But the deeper issue, as we now understand, is that their work reinforces the tendency of appetite to oppose reason, even to dominate it. This, according to book 9, is tyranny in a psychological sense; the audience becomes more tyrannical themselves, more dominated by their unlawful appetites.^[53] The impulse was already there from the outset, otherwise the audience would not understand these characters or care about them. But the poets make their appetitive desires more pressing and their objects powerfully alluring, thereby strengthening the appetitive element in their souls, and in society as a whole (605b).

While Alcibiades represents the rule of appetite in a member of the elite, which according to book six poses unique dangers for its intensity, coupled with political influence (491b–e), Socrates regards this as unnatural—a symptom of a sick culture rather than something that is proper to the ruling class. According to book 4, appetitive inclinations are the hallmark of the largest uneducated political class, which is analogized to the appetitive element in individuals (430c–431d). The appetitive character of this class was already anticipated in book 3’s discussion of imitation. And it is in this discussion, I think, that we should look for examples of irritable characters, not in the grieving hero, who doesn’t appear until the final (‘greatest’) charge.

Among the characters Socrates mentions in Republic 3, we find (1) women in grief, amorous, or even in labor, abusing their husbands, striving with gods or boasting about their alleged happiness (395d5–e2); (2) slaves doing what slaves do (e4); (3) inferior men insulting and making fun of each other with shameful language and ‘in other ways sinning against themselves and others in word and deed after the fashion of such men’ (395e6–396a2); (4) mad people (a3–4); (5) manual laborers, e.g., smiths, rowers, etc. (a8–b1). In context, these characters are contrasted with guardians who are not permitted to imitate them even in play. The common thing to all of them, which is relevant to us, is that they are not ruled by reason, but rather they act with a view to the appetitive element in them. This doesn’t mean necessarily that their appetites are excessive. It could also mean that their rational principle is underdeveloped or lacking, resulting in undignified language and behavior, partly influenced, arguably, by frustrated appetitive desires (590c–d, 395c). This might be the case with the working classes and slaves whose use of reason is largely directed towards meeting their physical needs, on the one hand, and on the other hand, they lack political power and resources to indulge their appetites.

My reading sheds light on the distinctively demotic flavor of the first corruption charge. The imitator of irritable people gratifies hoi polloi (605a4), a ‘nondescript mob’ (pantodapois anthrôpois, 604e5; cf. aganaktêtikon te kai poikilon, 605a5). In a clear allusion to the city-soul analogy, Socrates compares poets who intensify unlawful desires to people who turn the city over to inferior men (mochthêrous, 605b5).

It is tempting to infer from all this that Plato saw all or most poetry as, in the words of R. L. Nettleship, ‘indiscriminate catering for common excitement’. However, the main defendants in Socrates’ ‘trial,’ i.e., Homer and the tragedians, speak to and on behalf of the educated elite.^[54] Socrates in particular confesses his love of Homer (595b9–c4, 607c8–d2, 607e4–608b2); he would not, if he thought Homer’s poems were merely vulgar excitement.

And they’re not. Although Homer and the tragedians certainly know how to ‘work’ a large audience, their main characters and themes are different from those listed. Friedrich Nietzsche put the point nicely when he said that the Greeks, specifically the Athenians, liked to hear people speak well: ‘nothing distinguishes them so thoroughly from non-Greeks as does this truly greedy craving. Even of passion on the stage they demanded that it should speak well, and they endured the unnaturalness of dramatic verse with rapture.’^[55] As Nietzsche saw it, the lofty style of Greek tragedy sufficiently refutes Aristotle’s claim that it serves primarily an emotional purpose. Two things can be true, however. The Athenians may have gone to the theater in order to pity someone who speaks well. In fact, that’s just what Socrates says in his final and ‘greatest’ accusation against poetry.

3 Second Corruption Charge (605c–606d)

The final and ‘greatest’ (to megiston, 605c5) charge against poetry is concerned with the corruption of ‘the best listeners’ (hoi beltistoi, c9; tous epieikeis, c6). Socrates develops it by focusing on a typical tragic situation, comprised of a grieving hero and a listener who pities him (605c10–d2, 606b2–3). While readers normally assume the degenerative process is the same as in the previous charge, I will argue that the mechanism of corruption here is tailored to the elite. It involves not only the strengthening of appetite, but also, crucially, a calculated softening of the spirited part of the soul.

We know from the previous discussion that upright men are restrained both by reason and by feelings of shame.^[56] The best listeners are upright men, who, ‘in their own misfortunes,’ forcibly restrain the part that’s ‘hungry for tears and sufficient lament and satisfaction’ (606a3–5). This ability, moreover, is a source of pride (605d7–e1). However, in the theater, this very restraint becomes a weapon that is wielded against them.

The best listeners want to see people like them, or better, who suffer in ways that are sufficiently similar to what they undergo in their own lives.^[57] The grieving hero gives them an opportunity to identify with the opposite side of a typical psychic conflict than they normally would: instead of deliberating, they weep.^[58] Socrates puts the point concisely. The upright listener, he explains, thinks that ‘it is no shame to [reason] to praise and pity another who, claiming to be a good man (anêr agathos), abandons himself to excess in his grief, but thinks this pleasure is so much clear gain (kerdainein), and would not consent to forfeit it by disdaining the poem altogether’ (606b1–5). By ‘clear gain’ he presumably means that the pleasure carries no consequences: the listener believes he can enjoy the play without shame, and that he is not neglecting to seek a cure by doing so. Because in their view the pleasure is harmless, ‘what is by nature best’ in them, i.e., reason, ‘since it hasn’t been adequately educated by discourse and habit (logôi oude ethei), relaxes its guard (aniêsin tên phulakên) over this mournful part’ (606a7–b1).

Socrates disagrees: ‘what we enjoy in others’—fictional characters not excluded— ‘inevitably reacts upon ourselves’ (606b5–7; see 395c7–8). In the case of tragedy, specifically, ‘when pity is nourished and strengthened there [in the theater], it is not easy to restrain it in our own sufferings’ (606b7–8). Although Socrates doesn’t explicitly mention the tripartite theory, he relies on it. ‘The best part’ was already identified as reason (to logistikon, 602e1, cf. 572a1). And reason, as we know from previous discussions, is assisted by spirit (440b3, 440e4–6, 441a2–3). In its function as reason’s ‘ally,’ spirit causes a person to feel shame and other spirited emotions, such as anger, in relation to things of which reason disapproves, and to delight in things which reason considers beautiful and good (439e2–441a3, 441e3–442b3).^[59]

In the good case, that is in fact what spirit does. But spirit has its own vulnerabilities. A harsh spirit can raise faction against reason by engaging in excessive anger (441b4–c2). Socrates prescribes a moderate amount of the right type of music to deal with this problem (412a4–7), while warning us not to consume too much music:

‘When a man abandons himself to charming music (mousikêi parechêi kataulein) … whatever spiritedness (ti thumoeides) he had, he softened like iron and made useful from having been useless and hard. But when he keeps at it without letting up and charms his spirit (mê aniêi alla kêlêi), he, as the next step, already begins to melt and liquify spirit until he dissolves it completely … and makes it a feeble warrior’ (411a5–b4).

Poetry damages appropriately spirited people in two ways. On the one hand, good listeners increase their appetite for grieving and other appetitive desires; in this respect they are like everyone else. More critically, however, their spirited element becomes weak.^[60] Consider again, our anguished hero. The poet makes the best listeners pity him, and this enables them to finally weep. Plato’s point is that this attitude is not going to stay in the theater. As a result, they are more likely to feel pity in their own personal affairs, rather than shame, anger, or disgust, to name a few negative spirited emotions. Similarly in any other psychic conflict, whenever spirit needs to enforce the rule of reason, having been ‘liquified’ by the poets, the person will display a more lenient attitude toward bad conduct. The winner is of course appetite, which receives permission to weep.

Reason itself, as you recall, ‘relaxes’ its guard in this context, apparently on the grounds that there’s nothing shameful about such behavior; we should rather praise the poet who moves us to tears. The reasoning, however, is faulty; it rests on the illusion that our appetites can be satisfied through others without changing us, which Plato takes to be false. The mistake arguably reflects insufficient education (hate ouch hikanôs pepaideumenon, 606a7–8). Others have argued that the listeners’ insufficient education explains why they find tragedy appealing because it results, on their interpretation, in faulty moral dispositions.^[61] But we saw that even the best might not be able to fully eradicate their unlawful desires. I suggest that the inadequacy in the best listeners’ education is philosophical: they are unaware of the long-term consequences of poetry. The present argument is supposed to enlighten them.

Besides faulty thinking, tragedy contains elements that put the spirited element at ease when it should alert reason. I have pointed out earlier that the cast of characters from book 3, abusive women, slaves, inferior men, etc., do not appeal to the best listeners, but only those like them; for this reason, the hero comes to the fore, as a representative of elite sentiments and concerns. Indeed, when the problematic bunch first made their appearance, they were explicitly contrasted with gentlemanly characters, people the guardians were encouraged to imitate, so that they may eventually be like them.

These gentlemen were not only seen as morally and intellectually superior, but they were also differentiated by observable marks. A good poet, says Socrates, will imitate ‘the style of the upright man’ (tên tou epieikous lexin). In context, he doesn’t mean solely, or even primarily, the content of his speech; indeed, he distinguishes the style (lexis) of the good man from the content (ta legomena, 398b2; see: 392c7). Instead, he means an overall fine manner of speaking (eulogia); in the good case, this fine discourse projects a genuinely good ethical stance, and is accompanied by ‘good temper’ (euarmmostia), ‘gracefulness’ (euschêmosynê), and ‘good rhythm’ (euruthmia) (400d10).

As overt expressions, these characteristics can be mimicked even by people who do not possess the corresponding character and never will. Thus an individual can pass as high-minded and virtuous by affecting aristocratic manners. Similarly, poets are able to draw characters whose overt features are like those of upstanding citizens, whether or not they think or act accordingly. The tragedians are arguably very good at this. We catch glimpses of this unnatural refinement in the behavior of the hero. Where most people would devolve into an unintelligible outpouring of emotion, our hero delivers a long speech (makran rêsin, 605d1). There’s little doubt that the speech is delivered in the style of a gentleman, even if its content is quite opposed to truly noble thoughts and sentiments.

Furthermore, the hero is ‘singing and beating his breast’ (aidontas te kai koptoumenous, d3). These are gestures of mourning, on the one hand. But in tragedy they often express guilt.^[62] As we know from reading Greek plays, the protagonist typically knows he’s in a wretched state or that he’s done something terrible, and feels deeply guilty or ashamed about it. Excruciating pain brings Heracles to behave in a way that he condemns as womanly: ‘Here I am, sobbing and crying away like a girl. No one could say he ever saw great Heracles weeping before’ (Trachiniae 1071–1073). And Ajax is tormented by shame for his mad action: ‘Here’s Ajax the brave, the bold hearted man. Who never blanched in fight against furious foes, and now he flaunts his power on poor harmless beasts! / Oh, how they’ll laugh! / How I’ve been brought to shame!’ (Ajax 363–367).^[63] Contrast this with the woman who abuses her husband, for example; such a character is less likely to beat her chest with remorse.^[64]

The tragedians thus infuse their work with a superior ethos. While some of these features are genuinely beautiful, such as the physical comportment, demeanor, and language of the aristocracy, and even though in the good case they authentically spring from a beautiful personality, they can also be used as a decoy.^[65] When the best listeners notice them, their spirit ‘warms up’ to the hero.^[66] By the time his inevitable misfortune comes, the best listeners have already singled him out as a man after their own hearts— ‘a good man,’ as the poet says, even when his words and actions fall short of this title. It doesn’t follow that the hero is a model of vice, as some have argued, only that he falls short of the ideal (as he or she is often the first to admit). What is corrupt in this is the invitation to pity the hero, rather than expecting him to overcome his pain. The long-term effect is excessive tolerance, on account of which spirit cannot serve reason as well as it did before the person became engrossed in tragedy.

4 Conclusions

At the very end of his argument, Socrates mentions comedy.^[67] But that is clearly not the focus. His aim throughout is to undermine the loftier presumptions of traditional poetry. He starts by dismissing its claim to knowledge (i.e., the ignorance charge). Some scholars have taken the upshot of this accusation to be stronger than it is; appearances, including of human excellence, are not inherently deceptive, as veridical readers hold. Rather than taking the unreality of images as false representations of things as they appear, in contrast with what they really are, I argued, in step one, that imitations are non-essential cases of F, i.e., things which appear like genuine instances of the Form but lack the essence. As producers of non-essential things, painters do not need to know what constitutes a bed, in order to produce an image of it, and similarly poets do not have to know medicine or any other craft or domain of knowledge in order to write aesthetically appealing poems about it. Just as painters rely on visual features of objects, so too poets depend on overt features of their models, especially on spoken language: what different kinds of people say and how they say it. This doesn’t qualify them to instruct by means of their poetic images, because, as I argued in step two of the ignorance charge, they lack epistemic authority over content of their work, whether their imitated experts, for example, act rightly and why. Since they are not able to determine this, their poems should not be used for educational purposes, unless someone else supervises them, contrary to the conventional wisdom that the poets are the educators of Greece.

Far from edifying people, Socrates argues that poets corrupt them. He levels two corruption charges. Neither depends on the theory of Forms, which, on my reading, has fully served its purpose in the first part of the argument. The crucial doctrine in the second part of the discussion is the partition of the soul into three parts: reason, appetite, and spirit. The first corruption charge blames the poets for strengthening appetite. I have defended a novel way of understanding this claim. Poets increase the number and intensity of unlawful appetites, i.e., desires to have or do things that reason does not permit us to have or do. Because the appetitive element of the many is strong, the poets write characters whose life are similarly appetitive; this way, they gain popularity with the many who understand and sympathize with these characters. I suggested that these appetitive, demotic types receive sympathetic treatment: their concerns seem pressing, and the things they want, attractive. Poets use their skill to magnify these appetitive desires instead of helping us to overcome them, as ethical poets would. Thus the poets are criticized not only for their intellectual shortcomings, but also for their immoral intent.

Socrates refers to his final charge as ‘the greatest accusation’ against poetry. Other scholars do not adequately distinguish this charge from the first corruption charge. However, I contended that they focus on different parts of the soul, as well as different audiences. The poets not only strengthen unlawful, demotic appetites, they also weaken the spirit of the best listeners. This category is usually understood morally, but I argued that it is classist: the best listeners are the educated elite. Poets corrupt them by imitating an aristocratic style of speech and behavior without being faithful enough to the ethical disposition from which these patterns originally emanated. The best listeners identify with the hero on stage, whose way of life they recognize as their own; but the poets use this identification for harmful emotional effect: the best audience pities the tragic hero, instead of criticizing him. This has the effect of softening spirit, thereby rendering it a bad ally of reason.^[68]