/lit/ - Literature

>>13897842
Imagine the possibility that what he says on the surface is not the exact thing that he means underneath.

>>13897842
hmm, define poetry

>>13897853
I know, but i don't truly see what's his point here. I was reading a SEP article and i'm not sure if experts know what he was talking about either.

>>13897842
Plato's own writings are known to be Good, whatever dipshit poet or orator spouts may or may not be Good but can definitely be convincing.

>>13897853
I don't think there's any question that he believed the strict regulation/censorship of media was critical to cultivating virtue and building an ideal state (but I repeat myself).

>>13897854
rhyming words at the end of the sentence

>>13898613

It is evident however, from what has been already said, that they are necessarily so many in
number. For those who treat of divine concerns in an indicative manner, either speak
symbolically and fabulously, or through images. But of those who openly announce their
conceptions, some frame their discourses according to science, but others according to
inspiration from the Gods. And he who desires to signify divine concerns through symbols is
Orphic, and in short, accords with those who write fables concerning the Gods. But he who
does this through images is Pythagoric.
For the mathematical disciplines were invented by the Pythagoreans, in order to a
reminiscence of divine concerns, at which, through these as images they endeavor to arrive.
For they refer both numbers and figures to the Gods, according to the testimony of their
historians.
But the entheastic character, or he who is under the influence of divine inspiration, unfolding
the truth itself by itself concering the Gods, most perspicuously ranks among the highest
initiators. For these do not think proper to unfold the divine orders, or their peculiarities to
their familiars, through certain veils, but announce their powers and their numbers, in
consequence of being moved by the Gods themselves. But the traditions of divine concerns
according to science, is the illustrious prerogative of the philosophy of Plato.
For Plato alone, as it appears to me, of all those who are known to us, has attempted
methodically to divide and reduce into order, the regular progression of the divine genera,
their mutual difference, the common peculiarities of the total orders, and the distributed
peculiarities in each. But the truth of this will be evident when we frame precedaneous
demonstrations about the Parmenides, and all the divisions which it contains.
At present we shall observe that Plato does not admit all the fabulous figments of dramatic
composition, but those only which have reference to the beautiful and the good, and which
are not discordant with a divine essence. For that mythological mode which indicates divine
concerns through conjecture is ancient, concealing truth under a multitude of veils, and
proceeding in a manner similar to nature, which extends sensible fragments of intelligibles,
material, of immaterial, partible, of impartible natures, and images, and things which have a
false being, of things perfectly true.

>>13898613
>>13898631
But Plato rejects the more tragical mode of mythologizing of the ancient poets, who thought
proper to establish an arcane theology respecting the Gods, and on this account devised
wanderings, sections, battles, lacerations, rapes and adulteries of the Gods, and many other
such symbols of the truth about divine natures, which this theology conceals;
this mode he rejects, and asserts that it is in every respect most foreign from erudition. But he
considers those mythological discourses about the Gods, as more persuasive, and more
adapted to truth and the philosophical habit, which assert that a divine nature is the cause of
all good, but of no evil, and that it is void of all mutation, ever preserving its own order
immutable, and comprehending in itself the fountain of truth, but never becoming the cause
of any deception to others.
For such types of theology, Socrates delivers in the Republic.
All the fables therefore of Plato, guarding the truth in concealment, have not even their
externally apparent apparatus discordant with our undisciplined and unperverted anticipation
respecting the Gods. But they bring with them an image of the mundane composition, in
which both the apparent beauty is worthy of divinity, and a beauty more divine than this, is
established in the unapparent lives and powers of the Gods. This therefore, is one of the
mythological modes respecting divine concerns, which from the apparently unlawful,
irrational, and inordinate, passes into order and bound, and regards as its scope the
composition of the beautiful and good.

>>13897842
Poetry was degenerate in his day. Read Augustine's commentary on the greek myths he hated and by extension the Roman fictions he once loved. He debunks both from plato's perspective without giving credit

>>13898613
>>13898631
>>13898637
But there is another mode which he delivers in the Phaedrus. And this consists in everywhere
preserving theological fables, unmixed with physical narrations, and being careful in no
respect to confound or exchange theology, and the physical theory with each other.
For, as a divine essence is separate from the whole of nature, in like manner, it is perfectly
proper that discourses respecting the Gods should be pure from physical disquisitions. For a
mixture of this kind is, says he, laborious; and to make physical passions the end of
mythological conjecture, is the employment of no very good man; such for instance, as
considering through his [pretended] wisdom, Chimaera, Gorgon, and things of a similar kind,
as the same with physical figments.
Socrates, in the Phaedrus, reprobating this mode of mythologizing, represents its patron as
saying under the figure of a fable, that Orithya sporting with the wind Boreas, and being
thrown down the rocks, means nothing more, than that Orithya who was a mortal, was
ravished by Boreas through love.
For it appears to me, that fabulous narrations about the gods, should always have their
concealed meaning more venerable than the apparent. So that if certain persons introduce to
us physical hypotheses of Platonic fables, and such as are conversant with sublunary affairs,
we must say that they entirely wander from the intention of the philosopher, and that those
hypotheses alone, are interpreters of the truth contained in these fables, which have for their
scope, a divine, immaterial, and separate hypostasis, and which looking to this, make the
compositions and analyses of the fables, adapted to our inherent anticipations of divine
concerns.

>>13897842
http://journal.psyart.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/PsyArt-2014-Article-11-M-Kardaun.pdf