Episode 2: Gabriel Richardson Lear discusses Plato's philosophy of poetry
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What did ancient Greeks mean by “musicae” and how does it differ from modern poetry?
Hello and welcome to Elucidations, a philosophy podcast recorded at the University of Chicago. I'm Matt Teichman. And I'm Mark Hopwood. With us today is Gabriel Richardson-Lear, professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago, and she's here to talk to us about Plato's philosophy of poetry. Gabriel Richardson-Lear, welcome.
Thank you for having me.
So I thought we might begin with some background before getting to Plato's actual argument about poetry. One thing we might begin by talking about is what poetry meant in the ancient Greek world. Did poetry mean the same thing for the ancient Greeks that it means to us today?
Well, actually, the classification that Plato talks about is called Musicae, and that includes not just what we would think of as poetry, but also the music that went with it. So Musicae includes both the verbal component as well as what we would think of as the musical component. And that's really what Plato addresses. So it includes the Iliad and other epic poems. It also includes choral lyric poems, what we think of when we think of poetry. But I'd say probably the biggest difference between the Greek experience of poetry and ours is that for them it was usually a performative context for poetry, whereas for us we often think of poetry as something you read privately by yourself.
So it might be natural for us when we're reading about poetry to think of relaxing in a comfortable armchair with a small volume of T.S. Eliot. But really what Plato has in mind is something very different. This is a public activity, one that the general population would enjoy and be involved in, and one that might involve all kinds of aspects other than those that we would normally associate with poetry.
That's right. Yes. So various genres of what we would include in poetry, lyric poems, epic poems. And also, I forgot to mention tragedies and comedies.
Plato seemed to think that he had discovered some original distinctions with regard to poetry and his theory of poetry. In particular, he talks about a distinction between style and content, which he seems to view as really his innovation. So maybe you could talk a little bit about that. How does Plato think about the distinction between style and content in poetry?
The contrast between content and style first is the issue of distinguishing the story, that's the content, versus the way in which the poet tells the story. Is he going to narrate as himself, Plato says, so that it's sort of what we would think of as just telling the story, or is he going to tell the story through direct dialogue, speaking in the voices of the different characters? Then once he has that distinction in place between direct dialogue and plain narration, he then talks about different styles of combining those different styles of narrating.
How does Plato distinguish between style (mimetic vs. narrative) and content in poetry?
So either you can have a purely plain style in which the poet tells a story from beginning to end in his own voice, Or you can have a purely mimetic style in which you're always, everything is in direct dialogue. That would be drama. Or you can have a mixture of these two modes of narration in which sometimes the poet narrates directly and sometimes he speaks in dialogue. And that would be typical of epic poetry.
Plato thought apparently that this difference between two kinds of narration, direct dialogue versus plain narration, had some ethical consequences. So in order to get to that, maybe it'd be worthwhile to talk a bit about Plato's belief in ethics that one's life has to be lived in a unified way, that one's aims in life should be unified. What was his view roughly about that?
Well, this is really how I got into this topic of Plato's poetics and aesthetics. Plato and Aristotle after him both thought that a good human life was highly unified. It had a single goal so that you could say what the life was about. Was it about political honor? Was it about pleasure? Or, as they both thought it should be, was it about contemplation of the eternal truths of the cosmos? They thought that a good life is one in which you figure out what is the best human good and then aim your whole life at that target.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What did ancient Greeks mean by “musicae” and how does it differ from modern poetry?
0:13–3:14
2
How does Plato distinguish between style (mimetic vs. narrative) and content in poetry?
3:14–6:33
3
Why does Plato think a unified life is essential and how does poetry threaten that unity?
6:33–9:58
4
What is the ethical problem Plato sees in poets creating multiple identities for their audience?
9:58–12:28
5
How does Plato link poetic pleasure to false perception and why is it considered misleading?
12:28–14:58
6
In what way does Plato compare the poet’s activity to a cobbler’s single‑purpose craft?
14:58–17:53
7
How does Plato’s critique of poetry relate to modern concerns about advertising and fleeting pleasures?
17:53–21:04
8
What alternative view does Gabriel offer about the role of play in poetry and its potential benefits?
21:04–26:52
Speakers
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