In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

MLN 115.5 (2000) 1019-1051



[Access article in PDF]

Platonic Theater:
Rigor and Play in the Republic

Max Statkiewicz


Was it not Plato himself who pointed out the direction for the reversal of Platonism?

Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense

I suppose, he said, you are asking whether tragedy and comedy shall be admitted into our State?

Yes, I said; but there may be more than this in question . . .

Socrates in Plato's Republic

I

Is not the phrase "Platonic theater" paradoxical? Hardly anyone sees Plato otherwise than as a pitiless censor of theater, of art, and of literature. The phrase has actually been coined to characterize the epic theater of Brecht. Could it apply to Plato's own dialogues? This is what I would like to investigate. Today, when the so-called "dramatic" interpretation of Plato is becoming more and more widely accepted, 1 and when even a reading of the dialogues simply "as drama" has been proposed, 2 one might ask why it is classical theater and its Aristotelian rules that are invoked in such interpretations: why the general concept of mimesis, the structure of drama, the separation of genres, the emphasis on catharsis as the telos of tragedy, on the plot as its principle, and on the dramatic author as a "creator of plots" are read back into the dialogues. 3 Apparently the procedure is legitimated by [End Page 1019] Aristotle's explicit mention of the "Socratic dialogues" (Sokratikoi logoi; Poetics, 1447b11) 4 among other mimetic genres to which the principles of tragedy could mutatis mutandis apply, as well as by his association of tragedy with philosophy (Poetics, 1451b5-7). But is it legitimate to interpret a text by using the hermeneutic system of an adversary? And the author of the Poetics is usually seen as such. F. L. Lucas, 5 Jacqueline de Romilly, 6 Stephen Halliwell, 7 would certainly agree with Martha C. Nussbaum in calling the Poetics a "consciously anti-Platonic text." 8 A specific passage of Plato is often designated as a challenge to which Aristotle's Poetics will have been an answer:

- Shall I propose, then, that she [poetry] be allowed to return from exile, but upon this condition only: that she makes a defense of herself in lyrical or some other meter?

- Certainly.

- And we may further grant to those of her defenders who are lovers of poetry and yet not poets the permission to speak in prose on her behalf: let them show not only that she is pleasant (hedeia) but also useful (ophelime) 9 to states and to human life, and we will listen in kindly spirit; for if this can be proved we shall surely be gainers--I mean, if there is a use in poetry as well as delight. (Plato, Republic, 607d-e; Jowett's translation) 10

An allusion to the prosaic style of Aristotle's writings has been spotted behind the expression "non-poetical lovers of poetry," and his Poetics, especially the theory of catharsis, has been taken as a fulfillment of the right to apologia granted by Plato to all defenders of art. Gerald Else was even able to argue (considering the late date of the composition of the tenth book of the Republic) for the possibility of an actual dialogue between the two philosophers and theoreticians of literature. Plato would have been aware of Aristotle's theory of drama and countered it with his theory of mimesis in the tenth book of the Republic. 11

It is this apparent paradox, introduced by Else, that I would like, paradoxically, to moderate and to radicalize at the same time: what if, instead of reading the Poetics as a "consciously anti-Platonic text," we somewhat anachronically read the dialogues as an "un-consciously" anti-Aristotelian text? It would be anti-Aristotelian in the sense of questioning the possibility of integrating theater, art, and literature into the ideologically neutral system of separate domains of knowledge, organized by philosophy and its rigorous logical mechanism or tool (organon). It was Aristotle who formulated this possibility in the terms we are familiar with, but it certainly predates his...

pdf

Share