Education and the Arts in Plato's Republic

1996 ◽  
Vol 178 (3) ◽  
pp. 67-98
Author(s):  
J. David Blankenship
Keyword(s):  
Moral Education ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Psychological Resources ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Average Person ◽  
Full Discussion ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Ideal ◽  
The Way

The education in ‘music’ described in Books II-III of the Republic combines the content and the manner of presentation of stories so that moral substance and formal beauty work together to inculcate the opinions and virtues required in the children who are to become guardians of the ideal city. The principles which underlie this section constitute a theory of the role of the arts in moral education that can be applied in others contexts. Plato's view of how such education works depends upon his view of the way in which imitation affects the soul, and can be understood thoroughly only after the parts of the soul have been distinguished and the epistemological and ontological groundwork has been laid for a full discussion of imitation. These requirements having been met in the course of Books IV through IX, Plato returns to imitation in Book X, using painting as a foil to mount ontological, epistemological, and psychological criticisms of imitative poetry, now focussing upon its effect on adults, not children. His attack tacitly exempts the kind of imitations exemplified by Socrates' own frequent image making and by the philosophical poetry of the Republic itself. Socrates imagines, but rejects, a certain defense of popular poetry, the very one which Aristotle developed in his doctrine of ‘catharsis.’ But that defense rests upon views of practical knowledge and of the psychological resources of the average person that Plato would be unlikely to have accepted.

Education and the Arts in Plato's Republic

1997 ◽  
Vol 179 (3) ◽  
pp. 67-98
Author(s):  
J. David Blankenship
Keyword(s):  
Moral Education ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Psychological Resources ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Average Person ◽  
Full Discussion ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Ideal ◽  
The Way

The education in ‘music’ described in Books II-III of the Republic combines the content and the manner of presentation of stories so that moral substance and formal beauty work together to inculcate the opinions and virtues required in the children who are to become guardians of the ideal city. The principles which underlie this section constitute a theory of the role of the arts in moral education that can be applied in others contexts. Plato's view of how such education works depends upon his view of the way in which imitation affects the soul, and can be understood thoroughly only after the parts of the soul have been distinguished and the epistemological and ontological groundwork has been laid for a full discussion of imitation. These requirements having been met in the course of Books IV through IX, Plato returns to imitation in Book X, using painting as a foil to mount ontological, epistemological, and psychological criticisms of imitative poetry, now focussing upon its effect on adults, not children. His attack tacitly exempts the kind of imitations exemplified by Socrates' own frequent image making and by the philosophical poetry of the Republic itself. Socrates imagines, but rejects, a certain defense of popular poetry, the very one which Aristotle developed in his doctrine of ‘catharsis.’ But that defense rests upon views of practical knowledge and of the psychological resources of the average person that Plato would be unlikely to have accepted.

scholarly journals The role of the poet in Plato's ideal cities of Callipolis and Magnesia

2007 ◽  
Vol 48 (116) ◽  
pp. 329-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerard Naddaf
Keyword(s):  
Practical Realization ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Right ◽  
Negative Factors ◽  
The Ideal

Plato's attitude toward the poets and poetry has always been a flashpoint of debate, controversy and notoriety, but most scholars have failed to see their central role in the ideal cities of the Republic and the Laws, that is, Callipolis and Magnesia. In this paper, I argue that in neither dialogue does Plato "exile" the poets, but, instead, believes they must, like all citizens, exercise the expertise proper to their profession, allowing them the right to become full-fledged participants in the productive class. Moreover, attention to certain details reveals that Plato harnesses both positive and negative factors in poetry to bring his ideal cities closer to a practical realization. The status of the poet and his craft in this context has rarely to my knowledge been addressed.

scholarly journals Collective thought-action: On lecture performances, transmedia knowledge and designing possible worlds

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 321-340
Author(s):  
Jon McKenzie
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Common Knowledge ◽  
First Century ◽  
Arts And Sciences ◽  
Civic Discourse ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
The Republic

The election of Donald Trump has exposed a politics of resentment dividing rural and urban populations, as well as communities and colleges. This division stretches back to Plato's Academy. When Plato threw the poets out of the Republic, he banished practices such as poetry, music, and dance from the realm of true, epistemic knowledge, which he opposed to doxa or common knowledge. Centuries later, this opposition would shape European colonialism's approach to indigenous life worlds, whose "primitive" rituals, myths, and fetishes would confront the "civilized" methods, histories, and objects of Western knowledge. These same oppositions structure ideological critiques of popular culture. However, the emergence of lecture performances, theory rap, and info comics within twenty-first century research universities suggests that traditional knowledge production is under stress inside and outside the academy. Emerging is a transmedia knowledge that engages different audiences by mixing episteme and doxa. At stake here: the role of aesthetics in post-disciplinary societies of control and in resistant modes of collective thought-action. Across both the arts and sciences, scholars worldwide are turning to transmedia knowledge not simply for communication but also for co-creation of research. Here transmedia knowledge can function as civic discourse and as a conduit of a generalized aesthetics.

scholarly journals The Role of Descartes’s Dream in the Meditations and in the Historical Ontology of Ourselves

2018 ◽  
pp. 84
Author(s):  
Edward McGushin
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Historical Ontology ◽  
Negative Power ◽  
The Arts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relations Of Power ◽  
Positive Source ◽  
The Way

This paper situates the dream-hypothesis in Descartes’s First Meditation within the historical ontology of ourselves. It looks at the way in which the dream enters into and transforms Descartes’ relation to his “system of actuality.” In order to get free from his confinement within his system of actuality – an actuality defined by relations of power-knowledge, government, veridiction, and subjectivity – Descartes draws on the disruptive, negative capacity of the dream. But, while Descartes draws on the dream to get himself free and to establish a way of thinking and living differently, he also disqualifies the dream as a positive source of knowledge, truth, or subjectivity. Excavating this ambivalent place of the dream in the genealogy of our present, we aim to recover the dream not only in its negative power but also to open up the possibility of re-imagining its positivity as a form of counter-conduct, problematization, and element in the care of the self. This paper represents one piece of a larger genealogical study that examines the history of relationships between the arts of dreaming and the problematization of power-truth-subjectivity.

Comrades and Campfires

2021 ◽  
pp. 17-54
Author(s):  
Phoebe S.K. Young
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Union Army ◽  
National Belonging ◽  
Army Soldiers ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Ideal

During and after the Civil War, Union army soldiers and veterans attempted to make sense of their military camping experiences, which could exemplify generational camaraderie, political organization, and national belonging. This chapter follows the career of John Mead Gould, a soldier from Portland, Maine who kept an extensive diary and published a camping manual in 1877. It also discusses the role of the Grand Army of the Republic, a veterans’ organization that organized reunions in the form of annual encampments as part of a campaign to lobby the government for veterans’ pensions. Its form of camping put forward the veteran as a new exemplar of the ideal citizen for a modern commercial age. Veterans claimed a meaningful place in a world where the nation’s social and economic underpinnings were in flux and understandings of citizenship, manhood, work, and success were shifting under their feet.

The Epistemic Role of Consciousness from a Practical Point of View

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 242-262
Author(s):  
Sean M. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Propositional Knowledge ◽  
Practical Point ◽  
Plausible Account ◽  
The World ◽  
Epistemic Role ◽  
The Way

Abstract This paper concerns the way that phenomenal consciousness helps us to know things about the world. Most discussions of how consciousness contributes to our store of knowledge focus on propositional knowledge. In this paper, I recast the problem in terms of practical knowledge by reconstructing some neglected strands of argument in William James’s analyses of bodily affect and habitual action in The Principles of Psychology (1890/1950). I will argue that my reading of James’s view provides a plausible account of how phenomenally conscious states feed practical knowledge. I will also show that my reconstruction of James view harmonizes well with recent empirical findings.

Rites of the God-King

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marko Geslani
Keyword(s):  
Alternative Account ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Hindu Tradition ◽  
Royal Power ◽  
History Of ◽  
Multiple Lives ◽  
The Ideal ◽  
The Way

Most accounts of Hinduism posit a radical difference between the aniconic fire sacrifice (yajña) and temple-based image worship (pūjā). The historical distinction between ancient Vedism and medieval Hinduism is often premised on this basic ritual opposition. Through an exacting study of ritual manuals, Rites of the God-King offers an alternative account of the formation of mainstream Hindu ritual through the history of śānti, or “appeasement,” a form of aspersion or bathing, developed in order to counteract inauspicious omens. This ritual, which originated at the nexus of the fourth and somewhat marginal Veda (Atharvaveda) and the emergent tradition of astronomy-astrology (Jyotiḥśāstra), would come to have far-reaching consequences on the ideal ritual life of the king in early medieval Brahmanical society—and on the ideal ritual life of images. The mantric substitutions involved in this history helped to produce a politicized ritual culture that could encompass both traditional Vedic and newer Hindu practices and performers. From astrological appeasement to gifting, coronation, and image worship, the author chronicles the multiple lives and afterlives of a single ritual mode, disclosing the always inventive work of priesthood to imagine and enrich royal power. Along the way, he reveals the surprising role of astrologers in Hindu history, elaborates concepts of sin and misfortune, and forges new connections between medieval texts and modern practice. Detailing forms of ritual that were dispersed widely across Asia, he concludes with a reflection on the nature of orthopraxy, ritual change, and the problem of presence in the Hindu tradition.

The Battles of God and King Richard

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Staunton
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
The Ideal ◽  
The Way

This chapter looks at the representation of King Richard in war, particularly in the Holy Land and on the way there. English historians’ accounts of King Richard’s wars have usually been examined for the information they provide of military engagements, or for how they illustrate his image as the ideal knight-king. Here the emphasis is instead on the role of the divine. References to God’s role in battle are so obvious in medieval histories that they may easily be ignored, but, as shown here, there is much complexity in the presentation of such a role by these twelfth-century historians of Angevin England.

Practical patriots

2018 ◽  
pp. 27-59
Author(s):  
Carole Holohan
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Economic Change ◽  
The Political ◽  
Societal Change ◽  
Limited Impact ◽  
Future Analysis ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Economic Future ◽  
The Way

Chapter one examines the way in which the political classes envisioned the role of youth and identifies how youth featured in broader discourses of societal change. The commemoration of the 1916 Rising on its 50th anniversary provided an opportunity for national stocktaking, and an analysis of how young people featured in commemorative narratives and activities demonstrates the centrality of youth in the idea of an improved economic future. Analysis of the role of youth in the politics of both party and protest reveals the extent to which an international challenge to establishment forces from young people featured in the Republic of Ireland, and demonstrates the limited impact of young people on mainstream politics, despite their significance for economic change.

And who shaves God? Nature and role of paradoxes in science and religion communications: A case of foolish virgins

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-201
Author(s):  
Markus Ekkehard Locker
Keyword(s):  
Science And Religion ◽  
Experience Of God ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Meta Level ◽  
Language And Communication ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
Self Reference ◽  
The Way

Speaking of truth inescapably confronts us with paradoxes, i.e., correct deductive propositions like a Cretan claiming that all Cretans lie which (due to negative systemic self-reference) end up as circular contradictions, indeterminable questions, or dilemmas. Faced with the numerous paradoxical statements (apparently 82) found in the Bible, the German Protestant reformer Sebastian Franck (14991542), for example, conceded that any truth of God cannot be found in language but only in the immediate silent experience of God. Likewise, believers in an uncompromising search for true facts about this world would certainly agree with (though arguably misappropriate) Wittgenstein in claiming that Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. Paradoxes this article claims must neither be feared, nor avoided, nor become subject to hopeless attempts in searching for logic solutions. Paradoxes lead the way to truth in demonstrating that questions of truth, or truth claims, cannot be adequately addressed within the same system of communication (ortho-system) in which they are raised. The encounter with paradoxes (e.g., a God who creates but is uncreated) elevates language and communication onto a meta-level (or system) of communication in which new means (like for instance Gdel's numbering) are needed to speak of what is real but apparently cannot be true. These means, however, will turn out to be likewise paradoxes that furthermore call for new and creative ways of speaking of such truths that previously could not be communicated. The creative admission of paradoxes into communication philosophy will not solve age-old problems or dilemmas; however, it will playfully open up the conversation of science with religion to the creative means of the arts were truth is not argued but performed in paradoxes.

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