'Crucial indeed is the struggle, more crucial than we think - the choice that makes us good or bad - to keep faithful to righteousness and virtue in the face of temptation, be it of fame or money or power, or of poetry- yes, even of poetry'
Plato's theories of love and beauty have inspired thousands of poets, nevertheless the critics must not ignore Plato's continual attacks on poetry, especially in his final and complete exclusion on of poets his great ?Republic X'. Despite the fact that he often quotes poetry with obvious approval, in the ?Republic X' he strongly condemns poetry, both for its confusing of the intellect and for its corrupting of the emotions
?Good' in Plato's terms which is bonded to what is ?just' is closely allied with pure reason, and therefore the ?emotional' part of the state, or of the man, must be ?purified' or eliminated if the state or the person is to be as ?good' as possible. In the end, what is ?good' is beyond this material world: for the best we can do is only a hopeful reach towards the perfect goodness that exists in the changeless, eternal world of the forms that lies beyond our material existence. What Plato really wants to ask is the question of whether the pleasure produced by poetry is good for us. Plato finds poetry unsuitable as a vehicle for understanding, and thus as a means to approach or insure what is ?good' or ?just' of many reasons. The poet write not through understanding or reason but by inspiration. Poetry teaches the wrong stuff: for instance, ?god' is by definition all that is ?good', thus the poets clearly do not represent the gods as they really are. Poets not only lie, says Plato, but ?lie in an ugly fashion'. Plato also thinks that poetry ar ...