The Intelligent Troglodyte’s Guide to Plato’s Republic, 2016a

91 Second Accusation: Injustice Promoted in the Soul
See 602c-606d. Socrates’ second accusation, going beyond the claim that poets
know less than they pretend to know, positively asserts that their poems are a
threat to justice in the soul, and therefore, a threat to human happiness. A soul is
just when each part is doing its proper job, and in particular, when the rational part
rules and the spirited and appetitive parts follow. Socrates’ accusation is that
poetry undermines this state of affairs by arousing and strengthening the appetitive
part to the detriment of the rational part’s authority. People enjoy having the
appetitive part stimulated through fictional representations, and poets generally
give people what they enjoy. So poetry tends to feature displays of lamentation,
buffoonery, seduction, and rage. Besides, people who suffer from grief and other
disturbances of the soul are relatively easy to imitate; whereas “the wise and quiet
character, which always remains pretty much selfsame, is neither easy to imitate
nor easy to understand when imitated – especially not at a festival where
multifarious people are gathered together in theaters. For the experience being
imitated is alien to them.” Because poetry tends to feature unjust souls, and to
cater to people’s desires for appetitive stimulation, it “nurtures and waters” in the
soul what “ought to wither and be ruled.”
Can you think of examples of literary characters with stable, aristocratic
souls?
Do unjust people make better literary characters than just people? If so, why
might that be?
What effect does the regular watching of television soap operas have on
people?
Socrates mentions “jokes you would be ashamed to tell yourself, but that
you very much enjoy when you hear them imitated in a comedy or even in
private.” What is going on when one laughs at such a joke? Is the appetitive
part of the soul being gratified, as Socrates supposes, to the detriment of the
rational part’s authority?
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