Summary
Socrates has now completed the main argument of The
Republic; he has defined justice and shown it to be worthwhile. He turns back
to the postponed question concerning poetry about human beings.
In a surprising move, he banishes poets from the city. He has three
reasons for regarding the poets as unwholesome and dangerous. First, they
pretend to know all sorts of things, but they really know nothing
at all. It is widely considered that they have knowledge of all
that they write about, but, in fact, they do not. The things they
deal with cannot be known: they are images, far removed from what
is most real. By presenting scenes so far removed from the truth
poets, pervert souls, turning them away from the most real toward
the least.
Worse, the images the poets portray do not
imitate the good part of the soul. The rational part of the soul
is quiet, stable, and not easy to imitate or understand. Poets imitate
the worst parts—the inclinations that make characters easily excitable
and colorful. Poetry naturally appeals to the worst parts of souls
and arouses, nourishes, and strengthens this base elements while diverting
energy from the rational part.
Poetry corrupts even the best souls. It deceives us into
sympathizing with those who grieve excessively, who lust inappropriately, who
laugh at base things. It even goads us into feeling these base emotions
vicariously. We think there is no shame in indulging these emotions
because we are indulging them with respect to a fictional character
and not with respect to our own lives. But the enjoyment we feel
in indulging these emotions in other lives is transferred to our
own life. Once these parts of ourselves have been nourished and strengthened
in this way, they flourish in us when we are dealing with our own
lives. Suddenly we have become the grotesque sorts of people we
saw on stage or heard about in epic poetry.
Despite the clear dangers of poetry, Socrates regrets
having to banish the poets. He feels the aesthetic sacrifice acutely,
and says that he would be happy to allow them back into the city
if anyone could present an argument in their defense.
Socrates then outlines a brief proof for the immortality
of the soul. Basically, the proof is this: X can
only be destroyed by what is bad for X. What
is bad for the soul is injustice and other vices. But injustice
and other vices obviously do not destroy the soul or tyrants and
other such people would not be able to survive for long. So nothing
can destroy the soul, and the soul is immortal.
Once Socrates has presented this proof, he is able to
lay out his final argument in favor of justice. This argument, based
on the myth of Er, appeals to the rewards which the just will receive
in the afterlife. According to the myth, a warrior named Er is killed
in battle, but does not really die. He is sent to heaven, and made
to watch all that happens there so that he can return to earth and
report what he saw. He observes an eschatalogical system which rewards
virtue, particularly wisdom. For 1000 years,
people are either rewarded in heaven or punished in hell for the
sins or good deeds of their life. They are then brought together
in a common area and made to choose their next life, either animal
or human. The life that they choose will determine whether they
are rewarded or punished in the next cycle. Only those who were
philosophical while alive, including Orpheus who chooses to be
reborn as a swan, catch on to the trick of how to choose just lives.
Everyone else hurtles between happiness and misery with every cycle.
