THE MUSICAL GUARDIAN

Telling Tales (376d-403c)

Socrates vs. Achilles

I. Initial Assumptions

A. impressionable children

B. censorship of bad opinions

II. Topics (What must be said)

A. Piety

1. bad representations of the gods

a. revenge

b. murder

c. injustice

d. not to be used even as allegory (youth can't tell difference)

2. good models (379a+)

a. the gods (which by definition are good) cause only good

b. "they are neither wizards who transform themselves, nor do they mislead us by lies in speech or in deed" (383a)

the Good (theory of forms)

B. Courage (386a-389d)

1. Hades & death full of terror (b)

a. neither true nor beneficial (c)

b. poetic renditions make boys shiver and become hotter & softer (387b-c)

2. Laments & Wailings of Famous Men

a. decent men don't find death terrible

b. are sufficient unto themselves

c. won't want to be like silly women or bad men (388a)

d. don't have contradictory traits (c)

e. don't cry at the least suffering (d)

3. Lovers of Laughter seek mighty changes (e)

4. Truth must be taken seriously

a. only rulers (doctors) can lie (389b)

b. poets (liars) punished severely as subversives destructive to the city (d)

C. Moderation (389d-391e)

1. Obedience to Rulers & Self-Discipline (drink, sex, eating, money)

2. Immoderate Heroes (Achilles)

a. illiberality, arrogant disdain

b. stories neither holy nor true (children of gods wouldn't behave this way)

c. bad effect on listeners (self-sympathy vs. self-control)

D. Justice (392 b-c)

1. no tales of happy unjust people or wretched just ones

2. show only how justice profits a person, whether s/he seems just or not

III. STYLE (How it must be said)

A. Narration (393a-398b)

1. Simple Narration: poet himself speaks–dithyramb, epic

2. Imitation

a. the poet likening himself to someone else, either in voice or in looks, is the same as imitating the man imitated–drama

b. whether to allow tragedy or comedy (must follow dialectic) (394d)

c. whether guardians ought to imitate

i. artisanal model–each person does his or her own activity

ii. same person can't imitate many things as well as one

iii. imitators shirk other noteworthy activities

iv. human nature not conducive to imitating many

v. guardians as craftsmen of the city's freedom (395b)

vi. habit-forming (395d)

vii. can't imitate women, slaves, bad men, madmen, other craftsmen, animals

viii. imitate only good men

ix. allow only small changes–best = the unmixed imitatot of the decent (397e)

x. mixed is most pleasing but doesn't harmonize

xi. send this wonderful poet to another city (397e)

B. Melody

1. Speech (lyrics) most important

2. Harmonic Modes

a. must follow speech

b. must not wail, resemble symposia (drunkenness, softness, idleness)

c. must be violent & voluntary (fitting for warriors)

3. Instruments

a. not many-toned or panharmonic (lutes, harps, flutes)

b. use lyre & cither in city, pipe in country

4. Rhythm must be graceful

IV. The Result = Musical Man (401a-403c)

VOCABULARY

mythos (¦¦¦¦¦) tale, stories we tell about our place in the world

logos (¦¦¦¦¦) speech, logic, body of logical knowledge

form (¦¦¦¦¦)

dialectic (¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦)

polis ¦¦¦¦¦¦¦

mimesis ¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦

poetry (poiesis, ¦¦¦¦¦¦¦)

music (¦¦¦¦¦¦¦

arche ¦¦¦¦¦¦

telos (¦¦¦¦¦¦

nature/convention (¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦)

body/soul (¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦)

oikos/polis (¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦)

676 INTRO

Ancient Greece

contradictions

nature/convention (¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦)

poetry/philosophy

oikos/polis

ancestral/democratic

soul/body (¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦)

being/becoming

form/appearance

unity/heterogeneity

stasis/flux

one/many

hero/citizen

philosopher/poet

interests

late 4th-c.=from agriculture to market (agora, ¦¦¦¦¦)

(artisans, shopkeepers, wage-laborers)

gentlemen (kaloi kagathoi, ¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦)

citizens (politai, ¦¦¦¦¦¦¦)

oikos vs. polis

household / city

blood ties / citizenship

family / community

ancestor / demos

aristocratic / political

aristocrats / the people (demos)

aristocracy / democracy

[aristos=best]

hierarchy / equality

[hieros=holy]

patronymnic

heroic / tragic

craftsmanship (techne, ¦¦¦¦¦)

Sparta

Being and Not-Being, the One and the Many

Founding the City in Deed (474c- )

Eros: lover of the whole

philosopher is the desirer of wisdom (475b)

lovers of the sight of truth

the Forms (eide)

the one and the many

knowledge — opinion — ignorance

what participates in both (478e)

the Between

Socratic Poetry

needs an answer through an image (487e)

the Ship Pilot (p. 168)

Sophists and public manipulation (pp. 172-5)

the philosopher's lament

The Good (504a-521a)

184 greater than justice

the idea of the good is the greatest study

beyond grasp (505e)

Socrates's SUN analogy (given in the name of Zeus) (506e-509c)

what looks like a child of the good and most similar to it

deferral: Another time you'll pay us what's due on the father's narrative."

tokos: ofspring & interest

one idea

things seen (the power of being seen)

sight

god, craftsman of the senses

the mediating third: light

the SUN (508a)

the eye is the most sunlike of organs

the sun is the offspring of the good

good : intelligible region (noumena)

sun : visible region (horomena)

sight — light — objects

intelligence —the good — that which IS

what provides the truth to the things known and gives power to the one who knows, is the idea of the good. (508e)

an overwhelming beauty

source of knowledge, existence, and being

"Apollo, what demonic excess."

the Divided Line (509d-511d)

the Analogy of the Cave ()

Republic Book X: Mimesis

POETRY VS. PHILOSOPHY (595a-608b)

*not admit any imitative poetry, especially now that each of the soul's parts have been sorted out= Mimesis & the Soul

*Imitation maims the thought without knowledge as remedy (pharmakon, knowledge of how they really are, their own being [onta])

*Homer as first teacher

*Imitation in general (its one particular form for the particular manys) (595c-596a)

*couches & tables: the crafstman looks to the appropriate idea of each (b)

*the artisan who makes everything (wonderful sophist; coming into being and not coming into being in a certain way): holding up a mirror (c-d)

*look as though they are, but in truth they are not (e)

*couchmaker makes a certain couch, not the form (something like being) (597a)

*3 couches: a god's (nature-begetter, makes only one ), a carpenter's (imitates nature [the form]), a painter's (imitator of the visual, 3rd generation from nature) (596b-597e)

*the visual differs from itself (perspective), is many instead of one (598a)

*an imitation lays hold of only a small part of each thing: a phantom (eidolon) (b)

*this phantom will deceive children & other foolish human beings (c)

*the poet claims to know all crafts but is a wizard & deceives those without the ability to test for knowledge & imitation (d)

Poets & Knowledge (598e-603b)

*Homer imitates many people, but does he have their knowledge?

*if so, he would be more serious and not be craftsman of phantoms (599b)

*Homer as educator: who has governed (etc.) better because of you? (d)

*Was there ever a Homeric way of life? (600b)

*Homer was neglected in his day (c)

*Wouldn't he have been a hero if he could really make people better? (c-e)

*the Poetic Man acts as though he understands, but simply deceives others with colorful charm & no substance (601a-b)

*the user is the one who knows (c-602a)

*the poet knows neither good nor bad but simply imitates the opinion of the many (b)

Power over Perception and Emotion (602c-603c)

*in this world of shadow paintings, puppeteering, and wizardry, we need the calculating part of the soul to sort things out

*imitation, an ordinary thing having intercourse with what is ordinary, produces ordinary offspring (603b)

*imitation of actions and painful or pleasurable experiences (c)

* each human being has contradictory opinions when it comes to deeds (d)

* a decent man is sensible in the face of pain and laments privately(e-604a)

* need for deliberation: accept fall of dice & settle one's affairs accordingly–in whatever way argument [logos] declares would be best. not behave like children but rather habituate the soul to turn to curing and setting aright what has fallen and is sick, doing away with lament by medicine (c-d)

*the imitative poet produces a bad regime in the soul (destroys the calculating part) (605b)

*when we identify with emotions of dramatic characters (which we enjoy) we release what should remain repressed and habituate our souls to that response (606a-b)

*poetic imitation sets up pleasure and pain as rulers, not law & logos (d)

Banishment

*so only poetry which sings hymns to the gods and praises good men should be admitted unless poetry can prove itself worthy as pleasant and beneficial

*Old Quarrel, a contest concerning becoming good or bad (607b-608b)

JUSTICE AND IMMORTALITY (608c-614a)

MYTH OF ER (614b-620c)