 Hi, I'm Peter Adamson and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of King's College London and the Leverhulme Trust, online at www.historyofphilosophy.net. Today's episode, Last Judgments, Plato, Poetry, and Myth. In this series of podcasts I've dealt at least in passing with three bodies of ancient Greek literature. Obviously there is the philosophical and scientific literature, which has been the main focus. Then there is history, as written by Xenophon, Thucydides, and others, figures I've had cause to mention a few times. And then there is poetry. Way back in episode 2, I discussed how Xenophanes attacked the poets Homer and Hesiod for their inadequately reverential treatment of the gods. We also saw that other pre-Socratics like the great Parmenides wrote their philosophy in poetic form, and that the comic poet Aristophanes is an important source for the historical Socrates. But the poets, whether epic, tragic, or comic, haven't come up much since I reached Plato. Some of you may have been thinking that this was something of an omission, even, dare I say, a gap. After all, Plato is famous for attacking the poets in his greatest work, the Republic. Like Xenophanes, he criticized the way that the gods are represented in Homer and Hesiod. But Plato's diatribe against the poets goes far beyond anything we find in the fragments of Xenophanes. He proposes a program of censorship for his ideal republic, mentioning specific verses which should be banned. Later in the Republic, he attacks the poets of ancient tragedy and comedy, and warns that, unless the poets, or their adherents, can show us that poetry is beneficial to society, they too will be excluded. Plato's notoriously hostile attitude towards the poets is puzzling, when you think about it. No Greek author could write without being in the shadow of the poets, and Plato was far from an exception to this rule. Throughout his dialogues, including the Republic, he frequently alludes to both Homer and Hesiod, he quotes other poets too like Simonides and Pindar, and that's only the explicit quotations, there are plenty of other more implicit references that Plato's readers would certainly have noticed given the immense importance of poetry in aristocratic Greek society. Indeed, a whole book was recently published studying Plato's use of Hesiod. Plato's use of this material was, like everything with Plato, complicated, sometimes disapproving, more often appropriating poetic remarks for his own purposes. Then too there is the fact that Plato was himself producing great literature in the Republic and his other dialogues. Of course, the dialogues aren't poems, but as we'll see, some of his objections against poetry would seem equally applicable to his own dialogues. But perhaps the most striking puzzle is this, Plato's objections to the mythic, epic poetry of Homer and Hesiod did not stop him from composing some epic myths of his own. Several of the dialogues I've discussed include long myths of Plato's own invention. The Thedo, the Gorgias, and the Republic all include such a myth at or near their conclusion. In the Republic, the myth of Ur comes close on the heels of Plato's attack on imitative poetry in the tenth and final book. We've seen myths or mythic elements in other dialogues too, like the story of the winged horses and chariot from the Phaedrus, or the cosmic story of the Timaeus, which is designated by Plato several times as a mythos. The word mythos is the origin of our word myth, and though it can mean something like a story or tale, the Timaeus has more than a little in common with the myths we find in other dialogues. So what was Plato up to here? Was he trying to have his cake and eat it too, excoriating the myths of others, even as he devised replacement myths? In fact, was this some kind of cynical gamesmanship on his part? Was he trying to eliminate the competition, rubbishing other literary artists to make space for a new Platonic philosophical artistry? There may be some truth in that. Just think of the way he handles Aristophanes as a character in the symposium, putting a brilliantly funny speech into his mouth to show that anything Aristophanes can do, Plato can do too. He does something similar with the Sophists, by writing highly rhetorical speeches voiced by characters like Protagoras. But there's more going on here than just artistic competition. To see why, we need to consider Plato's objections to the poets, and then look at what he tries to achieve in his own myths. Plato criticizes the poets twice in the Republic, first in books 2 and 3, where his complaints are mostly about the epic poets Homer and Hesiod, then again in book 10, where he takes aim at the tragedy and comedy of the Greek theatre. From our point of view, these two bodies of literature don't seem to have much in common apart from the fact that they were written in verse, and you might worry that I'm playing fast and loose by treating the two things together. But I'm in good company. Plato does the same thing, going freely from a discussion of epic poetry to mention theatre, and vice versa. He even calls Homer a tragidian at one point. And his most fundamental complaint applies to both genres. The complaint is that the poets are engaging in mimesis, or imitation. For instance, in the Iliad, Homer not only speaks in his own voice when narrating events, but also in the voices of his many characters, from Agamemnon to Achilles, from Helen to Priam. There are a couple of reasons why he doesn't like this imitative dimension of poetry. For one thing, the poet is able to slip insidious teachings into the minds of his listeners. He can have Achilles insult the gods, as Homer does, and describe the gods themselves acting and saying things that are unworthy of divinity. Many of the banned verses mentioned in the Republic are banned because they instill false beliefs about the gods. Xenophanes would be proud. Plato is particularly emphatic on this point because he's describing the educational arrangements in the ideal city. He has Socrates argue that such teachings about the gods are especially dangerous for the young, since they are impressionable and will be corrupted easily. Hence, the censorship, one of the points which has led some modern readers to detect totalitarian tendencies in the Republic. And it isn't only false beliefs about the gods that need to be expurgated. It's also passages where the poets depict heroes as being overly emotional or dishonest. Our young citizens are going to admire these characters, so they must never be shown being anything other than completely noble. When people nowadays complain about athletes failing to set a good example for young fans, they have something like this in mind. Plato extends his censorship program to music, and for good reason. Greek epic poetry and theatre were performed with music, so that Plato thinks of poetry and music as two sides of a single phenomenon. He eliminates certain musical modes, rhythms, and even instruments from the ideal city, because they induce emotions that are corruptive for society, for instance sorrow or uncontrolled passion. One of the banned instruments, by the way, is the double flute or aulos. This is the instrument you hear at the beginning and end of this podcast. Sorry about that, Plato. It's not just epic poetry and flutes that incite the wrong emotions in us. In Book 10 Plato has Socrates criticise Greek theatre for giving its audiences license to express emotions in a way they would normally find shameful. It was common for audiences at a Greek tragedy to wail and weep at the sight of the pitiable events on the stage. Plato finds this repugnant, and no less so the uncouth laughter provoked by Aristophanes and the other comic poets. To these complaints about the educational effects of poetry, Plato adds another objection. We saw in earlier episodes that he accuses the sophists of inducing persuasion without knowledge. Gorgias can convince someone to take their medicine better than a doctor could, but Gorgias doesn't know which medicine it would be good to take. Similarly, the poets are aiming at pleasure and not knowledge. Their expertise is solely in imitation, and an expert in imitation is precisely someone who can reproduce the appearance of something without needing to understand its true nature. He compares this to painting. A painter can paint a convincing picture of a table, but to build one you need to go to the man who actually knows what he's doing, namely a carpenter. As Plato points out, images and imitations are easy to have. Just carry around a mirror and you can make reproductions of anything you want. But the mirror images will be mere imitations, like those we find in painting and poetry. Now I know what you're thinking. Isn't Plato himself liable to all these accusations he's laying at the door of the poets? After all, Plato never writes in anything other than imitation. Even Homer, as Plato points out himself, sometimes gives us straight narration, but Plato doesn't even do that. If there is narration in the dialogues, it's because a character is narrating, and hence imitating, a previous conversation. Indeed, Socrates narrates the whole republic in just this way. In dialogue after dialogue, Plato imitates specific, historical people by making them characters, and he certainly shows us people behaving badly. Just think of Calicles in the Gorgias, or Thrasymachus in the Republic itself. Why isn't he practicing what he preaches? This is a difficult question, but here are two thoughts. First, remember that Plato isn't writing literature for an audience in the ideal society, or for children. He's aiming his dialogues at readers who are intimately familiar with the poetry that he is attacking. Preserving these readers from the insidious influence of the poets is no longer an option. Rather, Plato must try to counteract that influence, and he is not above fighting fire with fire. Thus, he imitates vicious characters as well as good ones, giving voice to Calicles as well as Socrates. A second, related point is this. Because we are not children, Plato wants and expects us to reflect on what we are reading. We are not just going to imitate any of these characters mindlessly, because the dialogues so obviously demand that we think about which characters are really worth emulating. Will we adopt the virtuous life recommended by Socrates, or the vicious one praised by Calicles? No one can read the Gorgias without being forced to reflect on this choice. In writing the dialogues then, Plato was in a sense writing literature that would have an effect opposite to that of Greek theatre, at least as he saw it. The dialogues demand active engagement rather than passivity, rational reflection rather than unleashed emotion. But if that's how we should explain Plato's use of imitation, how will we explain his use of myth? To decide, we'll obviously need to look at what he actually says in these myths. It's conspicuous that three of the most prominent, the myths in the Phaedo, Gorgias, and Republic, all have to do with our fate in the afterlife. In each case we are told that after the death of their bodies, souls are sorted out into two groups. One group is rewarded for virtue by going to a higher, more beautiful realm, while the other group is sent down into the depths, and experiences torment commensurate with their vice. Take the Phaedo first. Here Plato has Socrates spend his last minutes of life telling his friends that they are in fact living in a kind of hollow space, clustered around the Mediterranean Sea, like frogs around the edge of a pond. In fact, all humans in this life live in lower realms, below the blessed altitudes reached by those who are rewarded in the afterlife. That's where you want to wind up after you die. But it isn't the only possible destination. Below the quite literally depressed region where we live our bodily existence, there is an underworld which is described in some detail, full of underground rivers and lakes. This is where all but the most virtuous souls wind up. The run-of-the-mill wrongdoers are punished on the banks of a lake fed by the river Achiron, but the more evil souls are thrown into Tartarus, and some never escape. For a more detailed vision of the frightening prospects that await vicious souls in the afterlife we can turn to the closing myth of the Gorgias. As in the Phaedo, souls are dispatched to different fates depending on their behaviour in their earthly life. Each soul stands before a judge, and stands naked. More than naked, in fact, since the soul has been stripped even of its body. Socrates who relates the myth points out that in our earthly life people can mislead their judges with fine appearances, fancy clothes, and beautiful bodies. In the afterlife, though, the judges will see us as we really are, with our souls bearing the marks of every evil we have committed. As you might remember, this dialogue, the Gorgias, offers a sustained criticism of Gorgias and other sophists who used rhetoric in the law courts, and it seems clear that this is a final put-down being woven into the myth. In this myth, as in the Phaedo, there are two possibilities in the afterlife. Those of us who have lived well will be sent by their judges to a kind of paradise, the so-called Isles of the Blessed, while sinners are again dispatched to Tartarus to experience appropriate punishments. The myths of the Phaedo and the Gorgias are powerfully written and provide a climax for their respective dialogues. But some philosophically-minded readers, the ones who don't just skip the myths entirely, might find the myths disturbing. Not because of the message being delivered, which is the same message as Socrates' philosophical arguments that we should devote our lives to virtue. The disturbing thing is that the myths give us the wrong kind of reason to devote our lives to virtue. Should we really be virtuous just to avoid being tortured and Tartarus? In the Gorgias, Socrates has been arguing strenuously that virtue is its own reward, and vice its own punishment. He's shown us that it is bad for us to engage in vice, and that this is so without any prospect of punishment after we die. The tyrant is already the most miserable creature on this earth. Isn't it a failure of nerve on Plato's part to insist that this tyrant must be the most miserable creature in the afterlife as well? It's almost as if he doesn't have the courage of his convictions, or he expects us readers to fail in our courage. This problem appears again, and more explicitly, in the Republic. As you'll remember, this masterpiece of Plato is devoted to showing that justice is advantageous and hence choice-worthy. Justice is the harmony of the soul, thanks to its parts, working together as they should. So, like the Gorgias, the Republic contends that the virtuous man is happiest of all men, even if he lacks honour and pleasure, whereas the vicious tyrant is the unhappiest of all men, because his soul is dominated by lust for power and enjoyment. After nine books' worth of argument to this effect, Plato again produces a myth of the afterlife, the most detailed yet. It's called the Myth of Ur, because the main character in the myth is a man named Ur, that's spelled E-R. I guess his family were known for hesitating. Ur was killed in a war and, when he was just about to be buried, he miraculously woke up, telling of the afterlife as he had just been able to see it. According to Socrates, Ur saw two sets of gates, each with an exit and an entrance. One set leads to the heavens, the others to the underworld. As in the other myths, those who are virtuous are allowed to go up into a kind of paradise, while the vicious are damned to many years of captivity below. The worst miscreants never return to this world but are tormented forever. But all other souls return back through the exits from heaven and the underworld. They then go on a journey and are granted a vision of the entire cosmos, a set of nested spheres rotating on an axis, like the spindle of a spinning wheel. The three divine fates are present and enforce a kind of lottery for choosing the souls' next lives on earth. Each soul is randomly assigned a lot, like the number you get while you're waiting for service at a store. This determines the order in which the souls will choose their next lives. And this choice is a momentous one. For instance, Ur sees the first soul eagerly snatch up the life of a powerful tyrant, only to discover that this tyrant will wind up eating his own children. He sees certain mythical figures choose more carefully. For instance, Odysseus, the hero of Homer's Odyssey, chooses last but is content with the life he finds available, a quiet life with no trouble. Some souls choose to return as animals, others as men. Perhaps disturbingly, it would seem that the broad outlines of your life, for instance, whether you will wind up eating your own kids, are already settled by this choice of lives. Thus, one reason to pursue philosophy in this present life is that we will choose wisely when the next opportunity comes. It's stressed that, since our fates stem from this original choice of lives, the gods are not to blame if our lives are poorly selected. As it says in the myth, virtue has no master, and the virtuous soul will make the right choice. So that's the myth of Ur, my favourite Platonic myth, actually. But it does potentially raise the same objection as the Gorgias myth. Why is Plato suddenly telling us to be good or else? Instead of telling us that we should be good, quite literally, for goodness sake, because it is better, more advantageous for us to be good than to be bad. Such worries were already expressed in the ancient world. An Epicurean philosopher named Colates accused Plato of hypocrisy on the basis that in the Republic, after having criticized the poets for their use of myths, Plato went on to offer his own myth for the sake of frightening the reader into adopting more virtuous ways. Can this objection be overcome? Well, remember that in all these dialogues, the myth comes at the end. In the Republic, Socrates explicitly says that virtue is its own reward, but that in addition to this, we should expect things to go well for the virtuous man, usually even in this life, and certainly in the next. So the myths add something even for someone convinced of Socrates' philosophical arguments. They reassure us that, even if virtue is its own reward, it's not the only reward the virtuous person can expect. The charge of hypocrisy can also be avoided if we remember that Plato attacks the poets not just for using myth, but for using myth as a vehicle for falsehood rather than truth. By writing his own myths which teach true beliefs about how to live and about the gods, Plato is in effect saying to Homer and Hesiod, this my friends is how you do it. I should hasten to add though that the various myths may have various purposes, just as Plato exploits the dialogue formed differently in different dialogues. For instance, some of the myths, like those of the Phaedo and the Republic, combine a vision of how the earth and cosmos are constructed, with a vision of how the gods have arranged things to encourage virtue. Here we should recall the Timaeus, which, as we saw, compares the rightly ordered city to the rightly ordered universe, described in the long speech of Timaeus, which is explicitly labeled as a myth. That may be a good note on which to leave Plato, as we see him at the height of his ambition. In the myth of Ur and the Timaeus, he combines an interest in justice and virtue with an interest in the cosmos and in science. He combines philosophical teaching and argument with the literary power of myth. In short, he does it all. It's not for nothing that Whitehead described the entire history of philosophy as a set of footnotes to Plato. After Plato, what else remained to be done? Well, according to at least one student of Plato's, there was still room for improvement. This student will turn out to be the one philosopher who can rival Plato's claim to be the greatest thinker of antiquity, if not of all time. His ideas will be not merely influential, but the basis of all philosophy and science for most of the next two millennia. So join me next week when we can say, let the footnotes begin, with the life and works of Aristotle, here on the History of Philosophy, without any gaps.