Poetry and Unreality is Plato's famous attack on poetry and by extension, all forms of art which are aimed at inducing pleasure. Plato claims that poetry is two stages removed from the truth. Artists have no contribution to a society and their creations are merely representations of the reality. Hence, Plato says that artists understand little of what they are representing. Plato has three main objections to poetry – ethical, philosophical and pragmatic. The arguments made by Plato through the voice of Socrates are on the basis of critical thinking and do not consider the intrinsic values and purposes of the arts themselves, due to which his arguments are flawed in a fundamental manner.
In the text, Plato represents his arguments as a conversation between Socrates and Glaucon. Socrates starts his denunciation of poets by comparing them to artists. He states that of any object, the absolute truth is the very concept of the object. He takes the example of a bed and asserts that the type of bed is the only truth. This truth could have been created only by the divine being. The joiner who creates the bed is producing reality. And the artist who draws it is making a representation. This representation is not true to reality as different views yield different representations. In the view of Socrates, this is exactly what a poet does. Socrates maintains that if poets were truly knowledgeable about what they wrote, great empires would consult them and they would have a horde of followers spreading their teachings.
Plato believes that poetry is not pragmatic as its sole purpose is to entertain the baser emotions of the mind. It does not teach or educate and hence offers no benefits to a well governed society. There is a very basic flaw in his premise. He judges poetry by the standards of philosophy, ethics and education but neglects to judge it by the standards of poetry itself. It is not the aim of a poet or an artist to teach people.
