THE UNACKNOWLEDGED LEGACY

Abstract

This paper presents a critical discussion of the treatment of mimetic art, and particularly poetry and the theatre, in the work of the Athenian philosopher Plato (427–347 BC). It centres on Plato’s discussion of the corrupting powers of the arts in the Republic, and the implications that his fierce attack on poetry and theatre have for his construction of the ideal polity. The legacy of Platonic ideas in later elaborations of the corrupting power of the arts is discussed. Furthermore, the paper investigates the relationship between current debates on cultural policy and the Platonic idea that the transformative powers of the arts ought to be harnessed by the state to promote a just society. The conclusion thus reached is that “instrumental cultural policy”, rather then being a modern invention, was in fact first theorized precisely in Plato’s Republic.

KEYWORDS:

• Plato
• instrumental cultural policy
• transformative powers of the arts
• poetry
• theatre
• the arts and the state

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This paper has been researched in the context of a Fellowship in Arts Impacts Assessment co‐funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Arts Council England (ACE). The author would like to thank two anonymous referees, the participants of the “Intellectuals and Cultural Policy” conference, Anna Upchurch and Dr Jane Woddis for their useful comments on an earlier draft.

Notes

1. Plato’s profound scepticism about the democratic form of political organization is also linked to his admiration for Socrates. Socrates was condemned to death in 399 by the newly restored democratic regime following the oligarchic reign of the Thirty that seized power after Athens’ defeat in the Peloponnesian war in 404.

2. Poetry in classical Greece was transmitted orally, mainly via the performances of the rhapsodes. The distinction that we make between poetry and drama would therefore not have made sense to the Greek sensibility.

3. The expression “negative cultural policy” as used here does not imply a negative value judgement, but rather it refers to non‐proactive cultural policies. I use this label to indicate policies that, rather than promote certain types of artistic form or cultural activity, aim to discourage or forbid them. Bennett (1995, p. 202) in his review of cultural policy rationales identifies what we are calling “negative cultural policy” as a typical example of governments’ first intervention in the cultural policy arena, whereby the aim is “to censor rather than support”.

4. At this stage, the label of “sophist” still had not acquired the pejorative sense that it eventually did as a result of Socrates and Plato’s contempt for the group of intellectuals who began to provide, for money, philosophical and rhetorical tutoring to the Greek youth in the fifth and fourth centuries BC.

5. There is no word in the ancient Greek language whose meaning corresponds to our “art” or “arts”. The closest approximation is represented by the word techne which covers, however, a much broader array of meanings ranging from poetry, painting and sculpture (i.e., our notion of “art”) to shipbuilding, carpentry and other activities based on craftsmanship. This is because the distinction (both linguistic and conceptual) between the “fine arts” and crafts, which is at the very basis of our modern understanding of art, simply did not exist in antiquity (Murray 1996, p. 1).

6. Plato’s writings are all in dialogue form: his philosophical concepts are proposed, discussed and criticized in the imaginative framework of a conversation involving two or more participants. Socrates appears as main character in many of them (including the Republic) and it is generally understood that his point of view coincides with Plato’s. See Cohn (2001) for an account of the rejection of the so‐called “mouthpiece theory”.

7. Asmis (1992, p. 352) observes that: “Plato’s mirror simile has had an overwhelming influence on the interpretation of his aesthetics and on aesthetic theory in general”.

8. Plato’s misgivings for Athenian democracy are very well documented (see, e.g., Stone 1989, p. 162).

9. Plato refers here to the Greek custom of massaging young children to strengthen and shape their bodies.

10. For a more detailed discussion of the arguments put forward by each of these authors against the theatre, see Barish (1981), Bruch (2004) and Spingarn (1908).