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Plato Produces a Play



Description: Odysseus is tied to the mast of his boat, on stage in a play.

Odysseus: "They sang these words most musically, and as i longed to hear them further i made by frowning to my men that they should set me free; but they quickened their stroke"
Plato, in the audience: "Booooo!"

Odysseus: "Immediately after we had got past the island i saw a great wave from which spray was rising, and i heard a loud roaring sound."
Plato: "Boooo! Fake! This is all fake!"

Plato, getting on stage and picking up a prop wave: "This isn't even a real wave!"
Homer: "Plato, get off the stage!"
Plato: "Look, it is just wood with paint, the poets are deceiving you!"

Plato: "Not only that, but they are making you admire wicked characters, you should only admire men of moral virtue!"

Homer: "I'd like to see you make a better play, Plato!"
Plato: "I will, Homer! And i will do so by teaching truth and virtue, not lies and immoral teachings!"

Homer: "Fine, go ahead and try!"
Plate: "Fine, i will! And it will be way better than your stupid plays!"
Later, Plato on stage: "Act One: geometry."

Plato: "How to construct an equilateral triangle on a given finite straight-line."

Plato, pointing to a geometry diagram: "Let AB be the given finite straight line. Let the circle BCD with center A and radius AB have been drawn"

Person in audience: "Hey, this isn't a play, it is a lecture!"
Plato: "Thank you, but i actually consider it more of a dialogue where we work together towards the truth, so questions are encouraged."

Person in audience: "Okay, i have a question, why would anyone pay to see this?"
Plato: "What is better than learning the truth?"
Person, as the audience is leaving: "Let's get out of here."

Plato, looking at a long line for Homer's play, and no line for his: "Dang, Homer is killing me in popularity, why does no one want to see my play?"

Plato: "Hmm, it might be time for a 'noble lie' to get people to watch..."

Plato, standing in front of a poster with an attractive man and woman doting on him, which reads: "learn Plato's philosophical secrets to make both men and women find you irresistible. He knows his platonic forms, do you?"

Plato: "I'm calling it 'advertising'."
"In the ideal city there would be no poets. Why? Because if people won't go to my show than they won't get to go to anyone's! I'm the philosopher king and I make the rules."

In The Republic, Plato described the ideal city, and said that the Poets would be cast out of the city, along with the rhetoricians. It can be sort of hard to understand why he hated the poets so much, or thought they were so dangerous as to be exiled entirely, which seems a little extreme to us today. He seemed to think that, like the rhetoricians, because poetry doesn't make its aim to understand the truth, it was a dangerous way to spread ideas. It worked by inciting grand feelings or emotions, rather than engaging in a sort of ration, platonic dialogue. This sort of thing he held up as being fundamentally opposed to philosophy, which is what he believed should be governing the city, and governing our lives.

You can read more about Plato's views on Poetry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

In The Republic, Plato described the ideal city, and said that the Poets would be cast out of the city, along with the rhetoricians. It can be sort of hard to understand why he hated the poets so much, or thought they were so dangerous as to be exiled entirely, which seems a little extreme to us today. He seemed to think that, like the rhetoricians, because poetry doesn't make its aim to understand the truth, it was a dangerous way to spread ideas. It worked by inciting grand feelings or emotions, rather than engaging in a sort of ration, platonic dialogue. This sort of thing he held up as being fundamentally opposed to philosophy, which is what he believed should be governing the city, and governing our lives.

You can read more about Plato's views on Poetry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Philosophers in this comic: Plato
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