ataxiwardance replied to your post: Thought For The Day

Excellent album. However, I’m a bit confused. Not sure exactly why Socrates would have banned anything for seditious content. Is this an allusion to the charges brought against him for “corruption of the youth”?

In The Republic, Socrates is critical of both music and poetry.  He believed that poetry which incited the reader/listener to indulge their “lower” emotions was counter-productive and dangerous, because those lower impulses were better regulated by reason.  To quote from Socrates:

Listen and consider. When even the best of us hear Homer or any other of the tragic poets imitating one of the heroes in mourning and making quite an extended speech with lamentation, or, if you like, singing and beating his breast, you know that we enjoy it and that we give ourselves over to following the imitation; suffering along [‘sympaschontes’, a word related to another Greek word, ‘sympatheia’] with the hero in all seriousness, we praise as a good poet the man who most puts us in this state” (605c10-d5). So the danger posed by poetry is great, for it appeals to something to which even the best—the most philosophical—are liable, and induces a dream-like, uncritical state in which we lose ourselves in the emotions in question

Socrates concludes that such expressions should be restricted in the ideal Polis, because they tend to undermine the common good.  My implication was that RATM would fit inside the restricted field of poetry and music that Socrates thought was dangerous to the common good for its appeals to passion.

1. ataxiwardance likes this
2. magicianjustinray said: if socrates thought music and poetry should be banned, he was an idiot who did not appreciate art
3. brain-spotting likes this
4. homme-ridicule likes this
5. menalque said: Hang on a second, by my understanding, the Socrates portrayed in the Republic is little more than Plato’s mouthpiece - surely it’s a little unfair to take his representation in that book as indicative of his actual views?
6. nikko-andtheleft said: You’re awesome
7. jgreendc likes this
8. letterstomycountry posted this