I think Plato would censor Homer because there was a lot of violence in the battle scenes. The battle scenes are gory and disturbing. For example, one time Ajax is charging at a soldier. The soldier throws a spear at him that he dodges and then Ajax picks up the spear and throws the spear straight through the soldier's head and then he stabs him. Also, if we were led by a warrior who is only good at fighting and is not in any agreement with politics or who doesn't help his own king, then Plato might want to censor Homer because he doesn't agree with him.
According to Plato, what are some aspects of poetry that should be banned and why? In other words, how can poetry undermine the education of a Guardian?
What should poetry “teach” and why?
Poetry should teach about every day things and not about sex and violence. Plato thought that poetry should teach about morals.
If you were talking to Plato what would you say to him? Do you agree with his ideas? Do you think poetry, or literature in general, should be put to the purposes that he says it should?
If I were talking to Plato, I would tell him that I think people should choose what they want to read. Each person should be entitled to do what they want to do as long as they stand within the law. However, some books might not be the best for someone to read, like little kids wanting to read some sexual content. A scholar might want to read a book like Tom Sawyer. People should be able to read what they want.
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No, I jest. I jest. What I REALLY came here for was to tell you I mentioned one of your comments in today's essay. Take a gander at what I wrote:
Going backwards in chronological order, Austin Jones' comment on my entry "3/22 prep for Socratic Seminar" is the first to be reviewed:
"Your reading is true in many ways in my opinion. It is right that if there was no right or wrong, there would be chaos. It's just that some people don't seem to see it as clearly as some other people do. For example, on the day of the Socratic seminar when you were talking to me about my sample about how ants are not that different than humans. If you kill an ant and you say it's like a human, most people will say it's just an ant. Think about it harder. Think about it from our view, consider that the ants are a society (which they are). I'd like to talk about this more with you."
I do suppose that to understand this, one needs a bit of context. In the Socratic Seminar we had, Mr. Jones here made a rather interesting comment about murder. He stated how it was rather obvious that killing a human is murder, but what about other species? We may kill some animals to eat, but what about insects, like ants? We're not killing them for any particular reason. Is that murder?
This really got me thinking, and helped me to better understand human nature.
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