Post by Aubrey Pedersen on Mar 5, 2006 22:48:19 GMT -5
For an English major, I'm not very comfortable in my writing. SO, I'm asking you guys to read over this and tell me any mistakes you find.
Prompt: You will recall that, in the Republic, Plato objected to certain kinds of poety- especilly poetic representations of the gods. Here is a passage from Ovid's Metamorphoses which came several years after Plato. Read the passage, and then formulate an argument asserting what you think Plato would likely have said about it (if he'd had the chance to read it).
Essay
Metamorphoses a Misrepresentation
It is “unthinkable that God’s goodness and excellence are anything less than perfect” (53). To be a god is to be a master of truth, of justice, and of self-discipline. It is, in short, everything that love is not. There is not a poet in the world that would tell you that the lover is the master of his own heart, nor that those involved in affairs of the heart are always truthful. Such behavior was truly abhorrent to Plato, particularly when attributed to the gods. Plato would never allow the selected passage from Ovid’s Metamorphoses into his republic on the grounds that it misrepresents Apollo as being subject to outside forces, lacking in self-mastery, and that if his hopes were unfounded they must necessarily be lies.
As a god, Phoebus Apollo is not subject to outside forces, but in fact controls them. According to Plato, “really good things are extremely unlikely to be altered or moved by an external agent” (53). According to Ovid, “Phoebus is lovestruck, having seen the girl”. Since the girl is not Phoebus, she must necessarily be an outside force who is exercising control over Apollo when he ‘longs to wed her”. Since God is the epitome of goodness and truth, it would be impossible for him to be moved by such a thing as a female in Plato’s view. It would undeify him, making Ovid’s poem a lie and therefore impermissible in Plato’s Republic.
“And aren’t the most important aspects of self discipline […] obedience to those in authority and establishing one’s authority over the pleasures of drink, sex, and food” (59)? In his lust for Daphne, Apollo has lost the divine gift of self-discipline. He has allowed the passion to consume his thoughts, and refuses to see that his love is not returned. This refusal means he has lost touch with reason, a must-have in Plato’s society, and allowed his passions to control him instead. Just as Plato objects to Zeus being “so overwhelmed by the sight of Hera that he doesn’t even want to go to their room, but wants to have sex with her there and then, on the ground” in The Iliad as a misrepresentation of a God because of his lack of control over his sexual passions, he would object to Apollo’s abandoning of reason for love-madness.
Ovid says, rather specifically, “though he [Phoebus] is the god of oracles, / He reads the future wrongly” to which Plato would reply “since Phoebus is a god and abounds in prophetic skill, I expect his words to be true” (55). Most of Plato’s argument against poetry that misrepresents God focuses around the fact that God cannot lie. To do so would make him a bad person, an obvious probably for a being who is supposed to be the ideal. If Phoebus has misread the future, he has been lying- if only to himself- which is an impossibility for a god.
Between Phoebus telling lies, abandoning reason, and subjugating himself to a female, Ovid has pretty much missed his mark as representing a God by Plato’s definition. This terrible distortion of the character of a God is completely unacceptable to Plato, and he would thoroughly of condemned Ovid for daring to write something as terribly blasphemous of that if he had ever had the chance.
Prompt: You will recall that, in the Republic, Plato objected to certain kinds of poety- especilly poetic representations of the gods. Here is a passage from Ovid's Metamorphoses which came several years after Plato. Read the passage, and then formulate an argument asserting what you think Plato would likely have said about it (if he'd had the chance to read it).
Essay
Metamorphoses a Misrepresentation
It is “unthinkable that God’s goodness and excellence are anything less than perfect” (53). To be a god is to be a master of truth, of justice, and of self-discipline. It is, in short, everything that love is not. There is not a poet in the world that would tell you that the lover is the master of his own heart, nor that those involved in affairs of the heart are always truthful. Such behavior was truly abhorrent to Plato, particularly when attributed to the gods. Plato would never allow the selected passage from Ovid’s Metamorphoses into his republic on the grounds that it misrepresents Apollo as being subject to outside forces, lacking in self-mastery, and that if his hopes were unfounded they must necessarily be lies.
As a god, Phoebus Apollo is not subject to outside forces, but in fact controls them. According to Plato, “really good things are extremely unlikely to be altered or moved by an external agent” (53). According to Ovid, “Phoebus is lovestruck, having seen the girl”. Since the girl is not Phoebus, she must necessarily be an outside force who is exercising control over Apollo when he ‘longs to wed her”. Since God is the epitome of goodness and truth, it would be impossible for him to be moved by such a thing as a female in Plato’s view. It would undeify him, making Ovid’s poem a lie and therefore impermissible in Plato’s Republic.
“And aren’t the most important aspects of self discipline […] obedience to those in authority and establishing one’s authority over the pleasures of drink, sex, and food” (59)? In his lust for Daphne, Apollo has lost the divine gift of self-discipline. He has allowed the passion to consume his thoughts, and refuses to see that his love is not returned. This refusal means he has lost touch with reason, a must-have in Plato’s society, and allowed his passions to control him instead. Just as Plato objects to Zeus being “so overwhelmed by the sight of Hera that he doesn’t even want to go to their room, but wants to have sex with her there and then, on the ground” in The Iliad as a misrepresentation of a God because of his lack of control over his sexual passions, he would object to Apollo’s abandoning of reason for love-madness.
Ovid says, rather specifically, “though he [Phoebus] is the god of oracles, / He reads the future wrongly” to which Plato would reply “since Phoebus is a god and abounds in prophetic skill, I expect his words to be true” (55). Most of Plato’s argument against poetry that misrepresents God focuses around the fact that God cannot lie. To do so would make him a bad person, an obvious probably for a being who is supposed to be the ideal. If Phoebus has misread the future, he has been lying- if only to himself- which is an impossibility for a god.
Between Phoebus telling lies, abandoning reason, and subjugating himself to a female, Ovid has pretty much missed his mark as representing a God by Plato’s definition. This terrible distortion of the character of a God is completely unacceptable to Plato, and he would thoroughly of condemned Ovid for daring to write something as terribly blasphemous of that if he had ever had the chance.
