study questions

Some Questions for Plato

(adapted from A. J. Drake's Teaching Resources)

Below are some study questions that might be helpful in your reading of the two selections from Plato.

For Republic, Book X

1. About three-quarters of the way through our excerpt from book X, Socrates says: “But we have not yet brought forward the heaviest count in our accusation.” What is this “heaviest count”?
2. Socrates argues that "if anyone were to say that the work of the maker of the bed . . . has real existence, he could hardly be supposed to be speaking the truth." What does Socrates mean? How does this argument depend upon Socrates' assumption about the nature of the "real object" denoted by the word bed? What, indeed, is that "real object"?
3. What does Socrates mean when he says that beds "are of three kinds" and that there are "three artists who superintend them"?
4. What does Socrates mean when he says that the imitative poet is like the painter "in being the associate of an inferior part of the soul"? Summarize the arguments in support of this conclusion.
5. What are the only kinds of poetry that Socrates would permit in his state? What would have to be demonstrated before Socrates would permit all kinds of poetry in his state?

For Ion

1. What analogy dominates Socrates' discussion of the relationship between the poet, the rhapsode (or interpreter of the poet), and the audience? What conclusion does this analogy illustrate about the true source of poetic inspiration and power?
2. Why does Socrates say that poets "do not speak . . . by any rules of art"?
3. Why does Socrates call the poets "interpreters" and the rhapsodists the "interpreters of interpreters?"
4. What must be lost, according to Socrates, that a poem might be composed?
5. Socrates never seems to tire of imagining ways in which literature can morally corrupt people, especially the young. Does Socrates ever strike you as naïve in his conception of the relationship between the literary work and its audience? How is Socrates' ethical suspicion of literature derived from his psychological assumptions? Are those psychological assumptions very different from many of today's psychological assumptions?
6. Has Socrates mentioned all the ways in which literature, or the imaginative arts in general, might be regarded as morally corrupting? Does this question offend you?
7. Suppose that Socrates abandoned the idea of literature as imitation and instead embraced the modern notion of poetry as the expression of powerful feeling. Would Socrates therefore change any of his ideas about the place of poetry in his ideal state?