Separation of Reason and Emotion

Raphael, School of Athens

"We shall say that the imitative poet does the same; he sets up a bad government in the soul of every private individual by gratifying the mindless part which cannot distinguish the small from the large but thinks that the same things are at one time small, at another large. He is a maker of images which are very far removed from the truth.  ...

"...when even the best of us hear Homer or some other tragedian imitating one of the heroes sorrowing and stretching out a long speech of lamentation or a chorus beating their breasts you know that we enjoy it, surrender ourselves, share their feelings, and earnestly praise as a good poet the one who affects us most in this way. ...

"But when one of us suffers a private loss, then, as you know we pride ourselves on the opposite behaviour, if we can keep quiet and master our grief; this we think to be the part of a man, and the other behaviour, which we then praised, to be womanish. ...

"If you reflect that the part which is forcibly controlled in our private misfortunes and has been pining to weep and adequately lament, as it is by nature desirous of this, is the very part which receives satisfaction from the poets in the theatre and enjoys it. That part of ourselves which is the best by nature has not been sufficiently educated either by reason or habit, and it relaxes its watch over the lachrymose part because it is watching another's suffering and there is no shame involved for itself in praising and pitying another man who, in spite of his claim to goodness, grieves excessively. Moreover, there is, he thinks, a definite gain, namely pleasure, and he would not welcome being deprived of it by despising the whole drama. Only a few will reflect that the enjoyment will be transferred from the spectacle of another's sufferings to one's own, and that one who has nurtured and strengthened the part of him that feels pity at those spectacles will not find it easy to hold it in check at the time of his own misfortunes. ...

"Does not the same argument hold about ridicule? You greatly enjoy on the comic stage, or even in private conversation, things at which you would be ashamed to provoke laughter yourself, and there you do not hate them as wicked. Indeed you do the same as in the case of the pitiful, for that part of you which wants to provoke laughter was held back by your reason, for fear of being thought a buffoon, but you let it loose in the theatre, not realizing that, by making that part strong there, you will be led to being a comedian in your own life. ...

"So too with sex, anger, and all the desires, pleasures, and pains which we say follow us in every activity. Poetic imitation fosters these in us. It nurtures and waters them when they ought to wither; it places them in command in our soul when they ought to obey in order that we might become better and happier men instead of worse and more miserable. ...

"And so, Glaucon, I said, when you meet those who praise Homer and say that the poet educated Greece, that he deserves that one should take up his works, learn from them the management of human affairs and of education, and arrange one's life in accordance with his teaching, you must welcome these people and treat them as friends, for they are as good as they are capable of being. You can agree that Homer is most poetic and that he stands first among the tragedians, but you must know for sure that hymns to the gods and eulogies of good men are the only poetry which we can admit into our city. If you admit the Muse of sweet pleasure, whether in lyrics or epic, pleasure and pain will rule as monarchs in your city, instead of the law and that rational principle which is always and by all thought to be the best."  Plato, The Republic. Book X [605b-607a] (trans. G.M.A. Grube 1974)

Through his annoyingly overbearing mouthpiece, Socrates, Plato asserts that rationality and law should govern political discourse, not the emotions—passion, pity, ridicule, hate, fear, etc.—inspired by poets. His primitive gynocomorphism© and stoicism aside, his ultimate appeal is to what is thought "by all" to be "the best". Plato's "all" was limited to those free, male, property-owning citizens who could vote in the Athenian assembly. And by "the best", of course, he means rule by educated aristocrats, philosopher-kings, the oligarchs, if you will, who have not succumbed to the shallow subjectivism, materialism, self-interest, and relativism taught by the political scientists of his day, i.e., the Sophists.