Plato's Greatest Accusation against Poetry

Abstract

In Republic X.605c-607a, Plato makes what he says is the greatest accusation against imitative poetry: ‘We have not yet made the greatest accusation against it [sc. mimetikē ]. For the fact that it is able to harm reasonable people, except for a very few, is surely most terrible’ (605c6-8). What follows is a subtle theory of audience psychology. Plato accuses the poet of creating special circumstances in which knowledge of what constitutes moral virtue is not an adequate protection against wrong-doing. The poet does not merely give us false beliefs, as a sophist does, he attacks the very order of the soul.This new charge depends on those preceding it, in which the poet was said to make things ‘third from the truth’ and to deceive the ignorant in a way analogous to that in which the painter makes children and fools think that a painted carpenter is a real carpenter, if they see it from afar (598c). We must begin by examining this important analogy.