Monday, March 26, 2007

Censoring Hesiod

Why do you think Plato (or anyone else) would want to censor Hesiod?

If Plato was against women having the greater power on earth than he might want to censor Hesiod because Hesiod's whole story shows that the titans Gaia and Rhia are setting up the entire plot. Mother Earth created everything and men just help to give birth. It might also be true that Plato didn't believe in Greek mythology. He might have believed in something else. Or he might have not been a very good friend of Hesiod. He also might have been jealous that Hesiod wrote up the story and then had so much power over the people. Plato's philosophy might not have had that much power.

What are Homer and Hesiod guilty of?
Homer and Hesiod are guilty of writing what they think the gods have said when they don't really know who the gods are. Did the gods actually come to them and tell them all these things? We don't know.

What are the two main characteristics of “god” and what are the laws/principles of story telling based on those characteristics?

The two main characteristics are 1) phenomenal living being that is believed to exist through faith, not by fact and 2) each god is unique, supernatural and has special powers. The laws of story telling based on those characteristics are gods may be written about in any way since they are not easy to describe based on their charactertistics. As long as you follow the laws of their base characteristics, you can write a story about them. Take the Iliad for example. Achilles, Agamenon, Ajax, etc. were all real people who fought in the Trojan War, but it is not proven that gods helped them; but they put them in the story to try to explain about things they didn't really know about.


Compare what you wrote in your personal reflection above with what Plato wrote. How close were you to what Plato wrote?

My personal reflection was only right on one part. He questioned whether the gods were real. He also questioned the behavior of how the stories were written because there were conflicts between families and that is not always the best kind of reading for all ages. He also pointed out that were a lot of really bad lessons in Hesiod's writing.

No comments: