Edward O. Almazan Jr.

Analysis on Platos The Republic (Book 10)

"...all poetical imitations are ruinous to the understanding of the hearers, and that the
knowledge of their true nature is the only antidote to them."--Plato
The above statement only shows that Plato rejects imitative
poetry and that poets should be banished, though he greatly admires
Homer, one of the greatest Greek poets. Why did he come up with
this idea?
According to him, God is the original maker of all the things
and all the ideas in this world: by the natural process of
creation, He is the author of those and of all other things.
His purport was made clear through his explanation of how
God created the idea of bed and which cannot be duplicated and
that all the things which have a resemblance to that idea are all but
imitations or the first level imitation. There is also this second level
imitation which according to him is thrice removed from the truth,
the third descent from nature, an imitation of an imitation. The latter is what the imitative tribe
like the poets, painters, and other artists belong to.
God, whether from choice or from necessity, made one bed in nature and one only; two or more
such ideal beds neither ever have been nor will be made by God
Plato also insists that poets and all other artist creates semblance of the truth which
deceives the visual perceptive of humans who are not aware or who do not have enough
understanding of whats true and whats not. This is true in the following lines of Socrates:
Then the imitator, I said, is a long way off the truth, and can do all things because he lightly
touches on a small part of them, and that part an image. For example: A painter will paint a
cobbler, carpenter, or any other artist, though he knows nothing of their arts; and, if he is a good
artist, he may deceive children or simple persons, when he shows them his picture of a carpenter
from a distance, and they will fancy that they are looking at a real carpenter.
Persons talking about how good the tragedians and Homer are, and even the poets at their
craft were only blinded by their ignorance; they know nothing about the truth.
And so, when we hear persons saying that the tragedians, and Homer, who is at their head,
know all the arts and all things human, virtue as well as vice, and divine things too, for that the

good poet cannot compose well unless he knows his subject, and that he who has not this
knowledge can never be a poet, we ought to consider whether here also there may not be a
similar illusion. Perhaps they may have come across imitators and been deceived by them; they
may not have remembered when they saw their works that these were but imitations thrice
removed from the truth, and could easily be made without any knowledge of the truth, because
they are appearances only and not realities?"
Furthermore, he also stated that the imitators or makers of the image know nothing of
true existence; they know appearances only and they can easily make images without knowledge
of the truth. In his statement, the imitative art is an inferior who marries an inferior, and has
inferior offspring, one can infer that poets belong to the lowest level of the society.
Plato also concludes that they shall be right in refusing to admit the poets into a wellordered State, because they awaken and nourish and strengthen the feelings and impair the
reason. This means that feelings are not good for the soul while reason, on the other hand, is the
exact opposite of it.
As in a city when the evil are permitted to have authority and the good are put out of the
way, so in the soul of man, as we maintain, the imitative poet implants an evil constitution, for he
indulges the irrational nature which has no discernment of greater and less, but thinks the same
thing at one time great and at another small-he is a manufacturer of images and is very far
removed from the truth.
Indeed, in Platos ideal society, everyone should be near to the truth.

Edward O. Almazan Jr.

Analysis on Aristotles Poetics

As human beings are filled with powerful emotions,

trapped in the tangled labyrinth of life -captured by its
melodramatic inconsistencies, people try to resort to poetry
as a form of escape and a pill for sanity. According to
Aristotle, before a man could ever start writing, he has to
observe and analyze his subject and the factors that are
interconnected to his topic i.e, his surroundings, because
only then could a man put into writing his bottled ideas and
thoughts. Moreover, since literature mirrors life and known
to be the expression of mans best thoughts, feelings, and
emotions, one does not necessarily need to follow the
conventionalized rules and standards set in writing a poem
instead, one must follow the spontaneity of feelings and emotions letting it dictate the stroke of
the pen in writing. However, he emphasizes that in one way or another, writers imitate ideas,
style and concepts from their immediate surroundings. Since people are motivated and inspired
by events that happen in real life, he considers this as a form imitation. Furthermore, he stresses
the importance of plot as a sine quanon in writing not only for sequencing purposes but for a
more constricted relationship of events that would transpire in the story. Also, he argues that the
plot is the soul of every story since tragedy and comedy are fused by elements of equal
importance. Just like Homer, Aeschylus and Euripides, the goal of poetry is to learn to give the
liveliest pleasure therein.