Abstract
Book X of the Republic contains a scathing attack on poetry which is still, by turns, both incomprehensible and disturbing.1 Plato’s banishment of the poets from his model city has always been a cause of interpretative difficulties and philosophical embarrassments, even for some of his greatest admirers. But I am now beginning to believe that the difficulties are not real and that the embarrassments are only apparent, and my purpose in what follows is to offer an outline — I cannot do more than that on this occasion — of my reasons for thinking so. I am convinced that close attention to the philosophical assumptions which underlie Plato’s criticisms reveals that his attack on poetry is better understood as a specific social and historical gesture than as an attack on poetry, and especially on art, as such. But, placed within their original context, Plato’s criticisms, perhaps paradoxically, become immediately relevant to a serious contemporary debate.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Bibliography
Annas, J. (1981) Introduction to Plato’s Republic (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
Arnheim, R. (1981) ‘A Forecast of Television’ in R. P. Adler (ed.) Understanding Television: Essays on Television as a Social and Cultural Form (New York: Praeger).
Barish, J. (1981) The Anti-Theatrical Prejudice (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press).
Barnes, J. (ed.) (1984) The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
Barnouw, E. (1982) Tube of Plenty: The Making of American Television, rev. edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Booth, W. C. (1989) ‘The Company we Keep: Se1f-Makmg in Imagrnative Art’, Daedalus, 111, 33–59.
Cater, D. (1981) ‘Television and Thinking People’ in R. P. Adler (ed.) Understanding Television: Essays on Television as a Social and Cultural Form (New York: Praeger).
Cavell, S. (1982) ‘The Fact of Television’, Daedalus, 111, 75–96.
Cawelti, J. G. (1976) Adventure, Mystery, and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Collins, R. K. L. (1987) ‘TV Subverts the First Amendment’, The New York Times, 19 September.
Cooper, J. M. (1986) ‘Plato, Isocrates, and Cicero on the Independence of Oratory from Philosophy’ in J. J. Cleary (ed.) Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, Vol. 1 (Washington, DC: University Press of America).
Danto, A. C. (1986a) ‘Art and Disturbation’ in The Philosophical Dsenfranchisement of Art (New York: Columbia University Press).
Danto, A. C. (1986b) ‘Philosophy as/and/of Literature’ in The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (New York: Columbia University Press).
Else, G. F. (1972) The Structure and Date of Book 10 of Plato’s Republic (Heidelberg: Abhandlungen der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse; Jahrg. 1972, 3. Abhandlung).
Else, G. F. (1986) Plato and Aristotle on Poetry (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press).
Esslin, M. (1981) The Age of Television (New York: Freeman and Company).
Ferrari, G. R. F. (1989) ‘Plato and Poetry’ in G. A. Kennedy (ed.) The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism; Vol. 1, Classical Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Gerbner, G. and L. Gross (1976) ‘The Scary World of TV’s Heavy Viewer’, Psychology Today, 10 (4), 41–89.
Goldhill, S. (1985) Reading Greek Tragedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Grube, G. (trans.) (1974) Plato: Republic (Indianapolis: Hackett).
Halliwell, S. (1986) Aristotle’s Poetics (London: Duckworth).
Kristeller, P. O. (1951–2) ‘The Modern System of the Arts’, Journal of the History of Ideas, XII, 496–527 and XIII, 17–46.
Lucas, D. W. (1968) Aristotle: Poetics (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
Mander, J. (1978) Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (New York: Morrow Quill).
Nehamas, A. (1982) ‘Plato on Imitation and Poetry in Republic 10’ in J. Moravcsik and P. Temko (eds) Plato on Beauty, Wisdom, and the Arts (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield).
Nehamas, A. (1988) [Untitled Review], The Journal of Philosophy, LXXXV, 214–19.
Novak, M. (1981) ‘Television Shapes the Soul’ in R. P. Adler (ed.) Understanding Television: Essays on Television as a Social and Cultural Form (New York: Praeger).
Pickard-Cambridge, A. (1946) The Theatre of Dionysus in Athens (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
Pickard-Cambridge, A. (1968) The Dramatic Festivals of Athens, 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
Postman, N. (1985) Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York: Viking Press).
Radway, J. A. (1984) Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press).
Thornburn, D. (1981) ‘Television Melodrama’ in R. P. Adler (ed.) Understanding Television: Essays on Television as a Social and Cultural Form (New York: Praeger).
Walcot, P. (1976) Greek Drama in Its Theatrical and Social Context (Cardiff: University of Wales Press).
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2012 Alexander Nehamas
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Nehamas, A. (2012). Plato and the Mass Media. In: Denham, A.E. (eds) Plato on Art and Beauty. Philosophers in Depth. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230368187_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230368187_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-33965-5
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-36818-7
eBook Packages: Palgrave Media & Culture CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)