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technical skills of soldiers compared to what poets say about soldiering. Plato argues that a soldier can talk about soldiering, that they can teach soldiering to the next generation of guardians, because they have been soldiers. The poet, in contrast, has never been a soldier and therefore has no knowledge of soldiering except as a representation from a particular perspective. This whole argument rests on the assumption that what the poet speaks about is the technical skill of soldiering. That is, if the poet only represents what is already present, as the example of Plato’s ‘bed’ suggests, then the poet may only give a representation of the already present bed and therefore the poet brings to appearance nothing real but only appearances of the phenomenon. The problem with this account is that poetry does not talk about the technical skills of soldiering, the poetic is not concerned with ‘production’ at all, but with the heroic, the brave and the cowardly. That is, a soldier may be very skilled at soldiering but, what the poet ‘produces’, to remain within this language, is to show the soldiering in light of being heroic, brave or cowardly. So when Plato’s Socrates writes that poets have no knowledge about the subjects about which they speak, he ignores the creative power of the poet of bringing things into appearance so that it can become ‘knowledge’, as Edelman writes, ‘art generates the ideas about leadership, bravery, cowardice, altruism, dangers, authority, and fantasies about the future that people typically assume to be reflections . . .’ (Edelman, 1995: 2-3). Plato’s Socrates begins all their discussions regarding the limitations of poets with the ‘things’ already present. In Ion, as already discussed, Socrates questions Ion regarding the issue of having adequate knowledge about various subjects but this ‘knowledge’ is only possible in regards to what is already present or what has already been shown. It is always knowledge about a particular thing such as ‘health’. What the poet brings to presence is what is not already present as such. For example, a soldier might know that they must hold position in the face of the enemy at all costs as a technical skill and as an act Dialogue (2007) 5:1 35
of bravery but when a particular soldier breaks position it takes a poet to show that this act was not ‘cowardly’ at all but that it was actually ‘brave’. It is the poet and the artist that brings the actual to appearance. The struggle between philosophy and poetics is a struggle between origins and priorities. To begin with what is already ‘known’ about the world or to begin with what is already present is to priorities an abstract universalism. That is, what a thing actual is, according to the philosophers, is determined prior to it being realized. To begin with what precedes presence, with potentiality, which Aristotle associates throughout Book Theta of the Metaphysics (Aristotle, 1998) with science, art and craft, is the techne that is expressed in poiesis. Nietzsche provocatively writes, If we wish to consider Socrates . . . we need only see him as the prototype of a new and unimagined life-form, the prototype of theoretical man . . . Like the artist, theoretical man takes an infinite delight in everything that exists . . . Whenever the truth is uncovered, the artist gazes enraptured at whatever covering remains, but theoretical man takes delight and satisfaction in the covering that has been cast aside . . . (1993: 72) According to Nietzsche, ‘theoretical man’, the person of science, ‘uncovers’ in the same way as poet/artists, the difference is that the scientist stares mesmerized by the covering that has been thrown away. In contrast the artist/poet takes delight in interrogating the covering that remains. The poet, Nietzsche is arguing, remains interested in what remains concealed, as the ‘thing’ that is not present as anything. In contrast the ‘theoretical man’, like Socrates and the western metaphysical tradition, is concerned with the ‘covering’, the ‘knowledge’ that has already been disclosed and therefore ‘cast aside’. The scientific approach is initially poetic itself but then becomes mesmerized by the ‘knowledge’. They look away from or forget the concealed and become fixated by the spectacle, as Arendt writes expressing this Dialogue (2007) 5:1 36
Page 1 and 2: The Political Implications of the
Page 3 and 4: everything, the environment, others
Page 5 and 6: most important feature of Plato's R
Page 7 and 8: the gifts of the Gods but this gift
Page 9: other craftsman without understandi
Page 13 and 14: (Ford, 1981: 297). This account is
Page 15 and 16: aise the existing ‘present’ kno
Page 17 and 18: metaphysics. Jeff Payne is PhD cand
Page 19: Plato (2003) The Republic, Penguin

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