Abstract

CORNELLI, Gabriele  and  COSTA, Thiago Rodrigo de Oliveira. Prolegomena to Plato’s critique of poetry in the Republic. Educ. Pesqui. [online]. 2019, vol.45, e183807.  Epub Jan 01, 2019. ISSN 1678-4634.  https://doi.org/10.1590/s1678-4634201945183807.

The objective of this essay is to situate Plato’s critique of poetry in the Republic on its implicit conceptual base, giving visibility to important aspects postulated ab anteriori to the critique. The theological motivation for the defense and apprehension of Díke in its formal manifestation, on both political and individual levels, leads us to examine a morphism between the parts of the psyche and the polis. The principle of the insufficiency of the polis elements applied to the psyche leads to a more positive appreciation of the concupiscent part of the soul. However, that same portion of the soul is responsible for introducing luxury. And luxury in the individual’s soul, or in the polis, is responsible for the need for defense and for a government to manage an aggregate of wide dimension. In a wide dimension psychism, or in an inflated polis for the satisfaction of superfluous needs, the need for resource management introduces a calculation principle which results in the rise of reason. However, the role of reason is to confine the concupiscent part of the soul, from where it comes, thus its paradoxical aspect. However, it is the calculation and the measure of the reason of rulers that impose, as a condition to come true, a formation which is very restrictive to the concupiscent part of the soul and is incompatible with the mimetic form of the poiesis. It is as if reason were a product of the desire aimed at suppressing it and as if poiesis were a means to resist desire from reason.

Keywords : Plato; Republic; Poetry; Desire; Reason.

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