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Critical

Theory

As It Is In Defense of a Classical Education

Carlos Aureus

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Critical Theory As It Is

In Defense of a Classical Education Carlos Aureus

Contents

I. Preface II. Introduction: What is Critical Theory? .. III. The Classical Background: Mimesis

A. Plato: Introduction . B. Plato: Republic (Books II, III, and X) .. C. Aristotle: Introduction D. Aristotle: Poetics .. E. Horace: Ars Poetica . F. Longinus: On the Sublime

IV. The Medieval Worldview. A. Plotinus: On the Intellectual Beauty B. St. Augustine: Semiotics .. C. Manlius Severinus Boethius: Consolation of Philosophy . D. St. Thomas Aquinas: Aesthetics and Hermeneutics

V. The Neoclassical Tradition: Decorum A. Sir Philip Sidney: An Apology for Poetry . B. John Dryden: An Essay of Dramatic Poesy C. Alexander Pope: An Essay on Criticism ..

VI. Epistemological Bases of Romanticism A. Edmund Burke: A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the

Sublime and Beautiful B. Immanuel Kant: Introduction . C. Immanuel Kant: Critique of Judgment . D. Friedrich von Schiller: Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man. E. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Introduction F. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: The Philosophy of Fine Art

VII. The Romantic Imagination . A. William Wordsworth: Introduction . B. William Wordsworth: Preface to the Second Edition of Lyrical Ballads C. Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Biographia Literaria .. D. John Keats: On Negative Capability and the Egotistical Sublime E. Percy Bysshe Shelley: A Defense of Poetry .

VIII. The Poetics of W. B. Yeats: A Vision IX. Epilogue X. Appendix A: The Euclidean Poetry of Alexander Pope .. XI. Appendix B: Course Syllabus

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XII. Biographical Notes XIII. Glossary XIV. Bibliography . XV. Index

Preface

The title of this book is Critical Theory As It Is. It is not critical theory as viewed through the contracted lens of postcolonialism or postmodernismor any other ism for that matter. It is critical theory Ding an sich. In a word: Critical Theory With No Hidden Agendas.

Not that the above isms are objectionable. They are notper se. These ideologies have a purpose and a function in their own right, in their own time, in their own place and in their own state of affairs.1

But this book is not about ideologies; it is about theories. As teacher of critical theory, I cannot help interacting with factionstheir name

is legionwhere eschewing the classics as obsolete has become part of the current social gestalt.2

As a result, classical education as an intellectual thoroughfare today is strewn with many roadblocks. For some, the teacher of the classics seems, at best, a generalist who wanders too widely, who simply follows the election returns. For others s/he is a narrow particularist, one who speaks only to an elite group.

Admittedly, these common censures of classical education have some empirical truth in them, especially when one considers how lackadaisical reflection can hide beneath theories taught under the rubric tradition, or how ultra-conservative agendas have provided motivation for some infantile claims. And yet, on the whole, the above charges are unjust and damaging to the true value of classical education and to the wider culture which needs the particular form of public meaning that only genuine classical education could provide.

This book will argue that classical education is a must-have.

1 This study, moreover, does not reject different perspectives. On the contrary, we firmly believe that

different perspectives invigorate and enrich any discipline or study. (This recognition and appreciation of various perspectives will be amplified below) What we object to is the my view is the only true view stance. 2 From time to time, a cry has gone up that all critical theory before a certain date is now mercifully

obsolete, that one may safely ignore it. Hazard Adams, Introduction, Critical Theory Since Plato, p. 1. Note: unless otherwise indicated, Critical Theory Since Plato refers to the Revised 1992 edition.

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It is regrettable, to say the least,3 that students taking courses in the Humanities enter classrooms with very little or no exposure to the classics. Consequently, they never even hear of it, even in courses taken as electives. Even for the three groupsEuropean Languages majors, English majors, and students who, on their own conviction, have been convinced of the cultural and practical value of even a little exposure to the classicsdisenfranchisement has become a fact of life. Into the lives of such mature students, it is a pity and a lost opportunity to put teachers who in pace and in thought are haters of the classics.

As a result, Critical Theory of the classical tradition is no longer part of the intellectual equipment of our students, even students of the best colleges and universities. True it is that a majority of intelligent students read and discuss the works of Foucault, Ren Girard, Derrida, Edward Said, et al.; or display knee-jerk excitement over anti- and/or post-colonial discourse/s, whether they be hybridized, nationalized, or nativized.

But Critical Theory of the classical tradition remains a closed book. Whatever the reasons, most well-educated students are familiar with the names of Plato and Aristotle, Horace and Longinus, Aquinas and Augustine, but they do not know what or where exactly their eminence rests on. Why these names have become bywords for more than two millennia after their deaths remains a mystery to them. To unravel that mystery is the intent of this book.

I have no quarrel with Philippine folk and regional literature, popular culture, feminist literature, translation studies, regional postcolonial writings, nativism, unhomeliness, protest literature, englishes, and all that. I myself do write in my native vernacular (Bicol) because I feel most comfortable in the tongue of my native town.

What I find ghastly inappropriate is the way we think that young people can understand and appreciate everything, including critical theory itself, only if we make it trendy and forcing us all to see everything through the jaundiced eyes of postcolonialism. It seems that we are not confident enough to let the works speak for themselves and as themselves. It also seems to me that teachers who deliver their message by means of the stunts and tricks characteristic of the faddists are not being honest. By sugar coating the primary sources and presenting them through biased bromides, teachers are actually teaching counter-productively, in that they are defeating their own purpose of winning new converts, so to speak. I know for a fact that young students of today are interested in critical theory and are much more readily engaged by exposure toand unadulterated presentations oforiginal primary texts. It is the What Is that really grabs them. No gimmicks, no hidden agendas. There's no need for me to amplify this further to the passionate few dedicated to having our students appreciate literary theory and criticism. To these teachers I say, hold aloft the torch of liberal education. Do not be bamboozled by the faddists. We owe the students the best and only the best of the best, and we are doing precisely that by presenting critical theory as it is, Ding an sich, and nothing short of it.

3 Disastrous is a more precise word.

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I disagree with the so-called postcolonial ideologues and their award-conscious cronies who, armed with Maslows hammer,4 bamboozle the intelligent public with inanities. Instead of creating for us responsible work informed by profound thought and honest-to-goodness research, instead of concerning themselves with the more serious ethical, social, and spiritual concerns, the majority of these creatures are too busy admiring each other, congratulating each other, awarding each other, anthologizing each other, promoting each other, titillating each other, masturbating each other. Few have been brave enough to articulate ways and means that will lead us out of the labyrinth.

Academicians have not fared well either. Until now, the majority of my colleagues are oblivious of the limits of academic jargon. Indeed, academic writing these days has become unreadable even to the educated. The writing is full of conceit (passing for so-called intellectual labor) yet so lacking in substance. We have not been responsible. True, new social and critical theories have proliferated as rapidly as the problems have appeared, yet very few of these have reached out to address basic mainstream problems. This is even worse than what Karl Popper calls the Myth of the Framework, where we move and act like prisoners trapped in the framework of our own theories so that communication with others of different frameworks has become virtually impossible.5

Today, academicians have become addicted to their own frameworks and expect others to become addicted too.

Pseudo nationalism is worse. The day the jingoists and pseudo-nationalists brought their ungrammatical tagalog into the classrooms, that day marked the beginning of my countrys cultural and literary backwardness, our period of cultural and economic decline and disruption, and without extending its pejorative use but expanding its scope, although they were surrounded by darkness and dense gloom"6 that day marked the beginning of our new dark ages, no deliberate melodrama intended.

The moral, intellectual, and spiritual bankruptcy of our time is visible most plainly in the cancerous state of contemporary academia. The postmodern, postcolonial cultural establishment is philosophically empty and esthetically distorted. Yet no one is brave enough to explain this distortion or give satisfying answers to the question of the proper role of liberal education in our society. For to do so would be to invite the superior smiles of the people in the know, the august, albeit brainless, members of the mutual admiration societies. But the meaning and warrants for my claim can be argued, and in this book I shall thus examine the social reality of a classical education.

4 Maslow's hammer: "When the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it

were a nail. Abraham H. Maslow (1966). The Psychology of Science: A Reconnaissance. Maurice Basset Publishing, 1966, p. 15. 5 Karl Popper, The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Ed. Ted Honderich. New York: Oxford University

Press, 1995. 702-3. 6 Francesco Petrarch (1367). Apologia cuiusdam anonymi Galli calumnias (Defence against the calumnies of an

anonymous Frenchman), in Petrarch, Opera Omnia, Basel, 1554, p. 1195. This quotation comes from the English translation of Mommsen's article, where the source is given in a footnote.

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Critical Theory As It Is is meant to be a manifesto for a new vision of culture that is both classical and radical.

Why radical? Because liberal education can never be politically correct, whether that correctness

comes from the Right or from the Left. Liberal education sets out on a deeper trajectory from that of than politicseven as the former includes it. Arnold Bennetts passionate few understood this, but their successors have forgotten. The bankrupt tribe of mediocrities, who now infest the academe, citing their naive rejection of civility, their ignorant denial of tradition, and their lazy dismissal of the classics, is a case in point. On the other side of the fence, conservatives who call for a return to conventional values seek a socially "safe" vision of art that has never existed and never can. Critical Theory As It Is takes the middle way even as it aims to take us past the wreckage of postmodernism and postcolonialism to recover the values of classical tradition in the humanities.

Yes, Virginia, the recovery of classical values in the arts, such as beauty, order, harmony, meaning, and right reason is imperative even if it means unlearning more than fifty years of nonsense to re-absorb their lessons.

So, am I a traditionalist? You can bet your bottom peso I am: an unbowed traditionalist of the classical variety at that. But I am not a traditionalist of the conservative kind. The difference between the unthinking traditionalist of the conservative kind and a genuine traditionalist of the classical kind is as day/night dissimilar as the difference between a Pat Robertson or a Mike Velarde and the profound respect for tradition as shown in the theology of a Paul Tillich, a Bernard Lonergan, a Horacio de la Costa, or a Hans Urs von Balthasar.

I am a traditionalist because: I hate to witness old buttresses built to last hundreds of years torn down and

replaced with cement posts. I hate to witness old sacristies renovated and transformed into multi-purpose halls. I have seen old manuscripts burned because they took up space. I have seen chandeliers removed from ceilings and replaced with fluorescent lamps. I have seen ivory statuettes replaced with paint-coated statues made of plastic, paper mach, and plaster of paris.

I am a traditionalist because I do not agree how we have replaced the baroque with the generic. And with parish priests behaving as if everything were their property, I wonder if there will be anything left to Catholicism to distinguish it from other Christian churches: no incense, no votive candles, no stained glass windows, no solemn music, no mystery, no awe.

And no respect for privacy. Post-conciliar Catholic Christians would not leave you alone. You have to clap your hands, reach out, greet each other, feel sociable. Attending church services these days is no different from attending a meeting of the Kiwanis clubor a political rally.

We need our literary counterparts of Caravaggio who can weave grand religious themes from the everyday world of peasants, ugly old men, baskets full of fruits, and calesas without appearing obviously religious. Or literary Berninis who will write of

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fiestas and evening processions with passion without having to chant Amen or Halleluiah after every sentence.

Hop in and join in. You do not need to belong to academia to enjoy my book. In fact, you do not need to attend my classes at university at all to be my friend.7

And what matter if our voices are as yet unheard and crying in the wilderness.

One has only to look up at the night sky to see from a larger perspective how this postcolonial schlock, like all ideologies that preceded it, will turn out to be a transition at best to a still different ideology. If you look up at the night sky, you will see many stars and heavenly bodies that follow the natural laws. You may also see a meteor or two. Meteors are very bright stray fragments that break away from the natural orbit. They choose wild courses of their own. After some time, however, they are drawn into the natural orbit of some law abiding planet and are dissipated.

Ours is a small band of law abiding citizens of the universe who know enough, and therefore care enough. We will not be intimidated any longer by meteors. To quote that oft-repeated passage from Edmund Burke: All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing,8 this book is my modest way of saying that I am doing something.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the University of the Philippines for granting me a

sabbatical to write this book. I would also like to thank my students in Classical Latin for urging me to finish this book. In particular, I would like to thank my students, graduate and undergraduate, for having done me the honor of recording many of my lectures livea gesture that has obligated me (in a very pleasant way) to scrupulously weigh and consider every word I released in these classroom lectures.9 The keen interest they have

7 The Poet Himself did not attend university. In his Groats-Worth of Wit (1592), Robert Greene, surveying the literary scene in London, mocks an upstart Crow who, with his Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse and is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrey. Greene here parodies a line taken from Shakespeares very early play Henry VI, part 3; it is clear from his remarks that Master Shake-scene was already quite well known, both as an actor and as a dramatist. What galled Greene was the fact that this yokel, this bumpkin from the province was not a member of Greenes exclusive university wits. I am digressing, but what matter. This is Shakespeare.

8 Edmund Burke Irish orator, philosopher, & politician (1729 - 1797). One chapter is devoted to him in a

separate chapter of this book. The above quote is often attributed to Burke, but it is inaccurate. Burke

never put it this way. According to Daniel Ritchie in his book Edmund Burke: Appraisals and Applications

(NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1990, p. xiii), the exact quote is "when bad men combine, the good must

associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle. Professor

Ritchie took it from Burkes Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770).

9 All the lectures in this book (vide Appendix B: Course Syllabus) have been recorded live and may be

downloaded at http://criticaltheory.weebly.com/index.html

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shown me in their eagerness to learn the classics in general and critical theory in particular has not only inspired me to walk on but also greatly contributed to the enhancement, organization, and substance of this book. They are my co-authors.

The mistakes, however, are my responsibility. Many manuscripts submitted for publication often drag along with them a heavy

freight of bibliographic cross references, content footnotes, reference footnotes, and annotated bibliographies to impress upon the reader the amount of research done and the meticulousness of documentation that have been dug out. I must confess that I too have been guilty of this tendency. For this book, however, I have decided to curb the spur, so to speak, and provide the reader instead with as few sources as possible for one reason: In an on-line age such as ours, the absence of direct references to authorities in the text can no longer indicate a lack of indebtedness. My purpose is to preclude the tendency to overwhelm the reader with a long list of sources one can easily locate by accessing on any on-line bibliographic database. I want to give the reader a minimum of overt scholarly apparatus by including only those that have direct bearing on the main topics discussed.

Most of the insights you will find here have been derived from lectures and writings by who I regard to be some of the best teachers in the world. These are the passionate few that Arnold Bennett writes about,10 the few who have devoted their lives honing areas I have barely grazed over. Students here will hear echoes of my first teacher in critical theory Dr. Edilberto K. Tiempo of Silliman University (who introduced me to the Smith and Parks book), the echoes of my mentor and adviser Dr. Elmer Ordoez of the University of the Philippines (who introduced me to the Hazard Adams book). I am also extremely honored to be granted permission by two of the finest professors in the world, Dr. Louis Markos (Professor of English at Houston Baptist University) and Dr. Judith V. Grabiner (the Flora Sanborn Pitzer Professor of Mathematics at Pitzer College) to draw from, adapt, and make use of their lectures in my classes. At the same time, I want to acknowledge the following Dr. Elizabeth Vandiver of Whitman College for drawing from her insights in my chapters on Plato, Horace, and Augustine; Dr. David Roochnik of Boston University from whom I have drawn many insights in my chapters on Books II, III, and X of Platos Republic; Dr. John M. Bowers of the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, for lessons learned (and hopefully assimilated) from his insights on Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Boethius; Dr. Philip Cary of Eastern College in St. Davids, Pennsylvania, most especially, for his deep insights on Plotinus, Augustine (especially on the subject of Signs and Sacraments,) and Hegel; Dr. Darren M. Staloff of the City College of New York for Hegel; Dr. Michael Sugrue of Ave Maria University in Florida, for Plato and Poetry; Dr. Stephen Erickson of Pomona College, Claremont, California, for Kant and Hegel; Dr. Willard Spiegelman of Southern Methodist University, for Wortdsworth; Dr. John Sutherland of the University College London, for Lyrical Ballads.

These are the masters from whom I have brazenly, liberally, and sedulously borrowed, and on whose works, if the reader may have come to be familiar with them,

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Arnold Bennett, Why a Classic is a Classic, A Textbook in Freshman English, pp. 352-4.

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my thoughts are heavily vectored. I have stolen their insights because I felt that they could not be said better, let alone by myself.

If I have also sedulously become the mouthpiece of the gods, like Shelleys Aeolian harp, it is because some things could not have been said better. I could not improve on them. So I have resorted to be their mouthpiece. Finally, I wish to express my gratitude to my student in Latin Sarah Jean Morato for all the various sorts of technical help that I have received while writing this book. Because I am a complete idiot in computer technology (I only want to write a book, dearie, I am not in this world to complicate my life!) this work would never have been finished without Sarahs technical expertise and infinite patience.

Recommendation To get the most out of this course, I recommend that you purchase a copy of Hazard Adamss Critical Theory Since Plato (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers). This is the one textbook I believe you should have as companion to this present book. I have been using Adamss book in teaching Critical Theory ever since the early 1970s and it is the one companion book I shall be using all throughout the course in pointing to all the primary sources in this study. In a word, if you have Adamss book, there is nothing else to buy. This is the one-stop-shop book I recommend to anyone interested in a comprehensive treatment of the subject of critical theory. If you cannot purchase the latest 3rd edition, the 1971 or the 1992 revised edition would do just fine. In fact, in this present study, I sometimes still make use of the 1971 first edition in excerpting favorite passages; for example, I have used the translation of Horaces Ars Poetica by E. C. Wickham instead of the 1992 translation by Walter Jackson Bate. Not that the former is better than the latter, but probably, as professor of Latin, I have gotten so used to the Wickham version over the decades to feel more comfortable with it. Or probably, it is age: I am too old to change.

If your funds permit, I would also highly recommend (in the same breath), James Harry Smiths The Great Critics: An Anthology of Literary Criticism (Third Edition, W.W. Norton & Co., 1951, Ed Winfield Parks, co-editor). My passion for literary theory actually began with exposure to this jewel of a book (we used to refer to it back then as the Smith and Parks) and the passionate manner in which it was taught by the late Arnoldian critic Dr. Edilberto K. Tiempo, a great critic in his own right, when I took this course under him at Silliman University way back in June 1970. After these two books, it would be helpful if one could warm up to the study by pre-reading what I believe are essential sources by way of preliminaries in getting the knack and feel of literary criticism:

Abrams, M. H. The Mirror and the Lamp.11 ____________. A Glossary of Literary Terms.

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The complete publication data of these five books and all other sources cited in this study are provided for in the bibliography found on the last pages of this book.

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Beardsley, Monroe C. Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism. Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (Ed. James T. Boulton). Tillyard, E. M. W. The Elizabethan World Picture.

A word about the books style of writing

Aristotles style of teachingwalking back and forth with his students while lecturinghas been called the Peripatetic style of teaching, from the Greek (walking about, itinerant, wandering, meandering). Aristotle taught in the groves and covered walks of the gymnasium in the Lyceum, which he founded. This habit of thinking while walking is a habit that my Philosophy professors imprinted in me while I was still in the seminary, and ever since it has become a habit of mine so that to this day I could think gravely if I would not pace the floor. The patio outside the study hall where we used to walk back and forth to discuss the Summa Theologica is no longer there, but this habit has remained with me, I am afraid, for the rest of my life. This book is written in that style, that is why it does not follow the usual paragraphing, but sometimes I make use of dots, sometimes of the outline, all to make the point as effective as possible, Aristotelian style.

About that style, it has often been said that the Aristotelian style is dry, concise, systematic, unliterary, while Platos is more engaging, literary. That may be true. But literariness is not a prerequisite, albeit not inappropriate, for theory. If the nature of the subject required a more Aristotelian (and later Aquinian) dry style, then that style is valid. After all, Aristotles (and Platos) works survive not because of their literariness or their lack of it but in spite of it. Both philosophers chose their style appropriate to their purposes. It was conscious and deliberate and it worked well in delivering the message.

In trying to achieve a similar task, I shall present a different approach. In our simulsense cyber environment where teachers have to compete with myriad distractions to the effect that the students classroom attention span has become virtually non existent, I shall use several presentations and employ what I think will engage the students today: the outline approach, the classroom-lecture style, and the audio-download approach.

The outline approach compresses in distilled language what may otherwise take a whole long-winded essay to explain. Even a cursory reading of the book will demonstrate how I have tried my best to make the outlines as curt, laconic, and to the point as possible. I have tried to choose every word with care. I have also left out irrelevant detail, and I concentrated only on the highlights. Too, I have applied Occams razor when appropriate, and amplified only when necessary. This is the reason why some outlines are constructed in the traditional outline form, others in bullet form, while still others in paragraph form. Whatever style was most effective, that I would

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use. The overall intent was to make the lessons highly interesting and exciting and I wanted to maintain that excitement all throughout.

Some chapters are long as some are short. I did not allow myself to be confined to the same number of pages for each chapter. Some deserved long chapters, while in others, once the point was argued, I felt that there was no need to elaborate further. To bend my chapters to conform to a uniform number of pages would be to torture the reader on the bed of Procrustes.

To really enjoy the course, therefore, I suggest that the you read first the primary sources to be found in Hazard Adamss Critical Theory Since Plato (for example, Book VII of Platos Republic). Then I suggest you read the outline or chapter I have provided in this book, while listening to the audio lecture. Better yet, underscore, write marginal notes, pencil in asterisks, etc. while listening to the lecture. The best yet is to listen to the lecture while writing on the primary source (Hazard Adamss book) PROVIDED IT IS YOUR OWN PERSONAL COPY, of course.

We guarantee that this format, if pursued, will stand any student in good stead in preparing for an examination, and will eliminate the burden of endless re-reading and re-viewing and sorting through endless information to find which material is or is not important.

My audio lectures are about half an hour long each. By listening to them even half an hour a day, I guarantee you can learn the course in a semester. By using this multi-sense approach to the ancient tradition of classroom teaching, I hope to be able to bring the excitement of learning critical theory into your home or car or jogging lane.

Why not skip half an hour of junk TV each evening and listen to the lectures instead. Or if you cannot find a nice movie to watch on a weekend, why not invest instead in REAL entertainment. I know this course competes with your leisure time, but by asking you to reach up rather than stoop down, its a savings account for the brain.

Allow me to have one last word about these audio lectures:

About the Audio CD/Download

The audio CD/download that goes along with this book is originally intended to provide my students with an audio version of my classroom lectures as soon as they had gotten home. I would usually upload them first thing upon arriving home myself. The students could then listen to them on the same day they were delivered. These classroom lectures have been recorded live in order to walk the student step-by-step through the course s/he is enrolled in. They are also meant to help supplement, focus, and organize the students efforts in reviewing for the final examination. Although these audio lectures are not meant to substitute for the classroom experience itself, which cannot be replaced even in an on-line age like ours, they are made available here to help maximize the students learning experience in an efficient, time-saving, and frequently effortless way.

I have tried my best to record these lectures in such a manner that while listening to the audio, the student would feel like Im right there with him in the study room.

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Apart from the extensive course guide, I am also providing both a PDF file and an MS Word file of this book, and the student may choose to download either or both. The PDF/MS Word files buttress the lessons with extensive added materials like glossaries, biographies, bibliographies, links to related websites, as well as suggestions for further study. This book is cross-referenced with Adamss book; it is your Cliffs Notes to his book.

The student may find it beneficial if she read the particular lesson while listening to the audio lecture at the same time. In this manner, two sensessight and hearingare maximized.

Among the benefits you may find in this strategy are the following: A better focus.

A more organized and time-saving review. The freedom to study anywhere and at any time. (You may choose, for example, to transfer the audio lectures into your mp3 player and play it while on the jogging lane, while travelling, while waiting your turn at an office, etc.)

When you open my site http://criticaltheory.weebly.com you will find the banner Critical Thinking instead of Critical Theory. A word about Critical Thinking, and why it is the streamer in my site: Critical thinking is not about criticizing other people. Nor is it about passing judgment on anybody. My premise is that we all make mistakes and we appreciate it when someone helps us to see them. We appreciate it if someone on the highway, for example, points out that our car has a flat tire. In that sense. Likewise, we appreciate it if someone tells us that our theory or claim is unfounded. Your friend will not be doing you a favor if s/he told you your theory is brilliant when in fact s/he thinks it is actually rotten. Critical thinking is about learning and understanding; it is about helping each other, not about winning or putting down somebody else and coming out on top.

Why do we make mistakes? Because we are human, and as humans we are prone to misjudgment, to oversight, to ignorance, and in my case, to stupidity. Its a safe bet that the majority of other human beings do not have a right view of things as they are. Failing to understand things as they are is no crime. The problem arises when people with un-theorized and mal-informed opinions poorly thought out; people full of dead theory sanctified by time and naturalized by indolence, people who are jaundiced, bigoted, biased and naive, ACT on those opinions.

College education addresses these problems and hopes to remedy them. College thinking IS critical thinking. In college, learning is reached through right reason and proper investigation, not through authority. We find out for ourselves whether or not a thing is true on the basis of evidence supported by right reason.

Morton Cronin in his essay What an Intellectual IsAnd is Not describes this more succinctly by citing the intellectuals important characteristic as the willingnessindeed, the eagernessto subject her views to critical discussion. According to Cronin:

If he [sic] is a good example of this type, he will glow with health and good humor in an argument. . . . Yet his object is not to score debating points. For him the pursuit of truth must be cooperative, as well as dialectic, and all the pleasure

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vanishes when that pursuit turns into a mere contest of wills with his interlocutor. It is easy for him to say I dont know, and he is impressed when his own questions evoke that reply.12 A diamond is a diamond and is not diminished by analysis. Although I have crafted this audio project to serve my students, first and

foremost, I have designed it in such a way that anybody may hop in and join the fun. Like Professor Louis Markos of Houston Baptist University, I believe that knowledge must not be walled up in the academy, but must be freely and enthusiastically disseminated to all those who have ears to hear. Learning is fun. We should not say I am going to study. Instead, we should say I am going to have fun!

So hop right in.

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Morton Cronin. What an Intellectual IsAnd is Not. In A Textbook in Freshman English, p. 336.

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Introduction13 What is Critical Theory?

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He star'd at the Pacific and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise Silent, upon a peak in Darien. John Keats (1795-1821) On First Looking into Chapmans Homer

Hello, my name is Carlos, and I will be your tourist guide in our course entitled

Critical Theory. First of all, thank you for enlisting in the course. I can assure you that you have

invested your time wisely. Critical theory is an exciting course, and my job is to show you why it is so.

So what is Critical Theory? Did I introduce myself as a tourist guide? You bet I did. If you love to travel and

visit strange lands, Critical Theory can be compared to the romance of voyaging through exciting lands.

What country excites you the most? Is it Spain? Where in Spain? Is it the North of Spain, in Barcelona, to stroll along the shaded walks of Las Ramblas? Or is it the South, in Andaluca, to dance the tabla (or flamenco) in the streets of Sevilla?

Or would you rather visit London itself, heart of the British Isles. London makes us glad to be alive. When a man is tired of London, said Samuel Johnson, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford. 14

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Apart from Keatss extended metaphor, I have borrowed the analogy of travel here from Steven Lynns Texts and Contexts, xvii ff. 14

The complete words are: "Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford." This conversation (with Boswell) happened on September 20, 1777, when Johnson, a man who hated to spend time alone, was always going out on a stroll and savoring everything London had to offer.

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Or would you prefer to visit Northern Ireland, with its mist-covered countryside and 19th century air.

How about Germany? Why dont we visit Konigsberg, where Immanuel Kant spent his entire life? Kant was a colossus in philosophical thoughtand a man of incredibly regular habits. His daily schedule was a regular as a regular verb to the effect that housewives at Konigsberg would set their watches as he went on his daily walk.

We would visit these placesand more. We will visit the past. We will go to ancient GreeceAthens in the classical

periodthe Golden Age that gave the ancient world its monuments in art, philosophy, and architecture.

We shall visit Platos Academy, where two of the greatest minds of antiquityPlato and Aristotlediscussed the Theory of Forms.

We shall visit ancient Rome, where Augustus Caesar, patron of Virgil, made possible, through Maecenas, the writing of Ars Poetica by Horace.

Later, we shall visit the Royal Library of Alexandria, founded by Aristotles pupil Alexander the Great and flourished under the Ptolemys, the dynasty that gave birth to the beauteous serpent of the Nile: Cleopatra.

Literary works, like John Keatss realms of gold, are like exotic places we love to visit.

Whether one travels alone or with a companion, there is always romance in voyaging through strange lands. To get the most out of the benefits of these journeys, however, it is a good idea to travel with an experienced tourist guide.

Let me be your literary tourist guide. What is a good tourist guide?

1. A good tourist guide will tell you what you should look for. 2. A good tourist guide will provide you a plan (i.e., a map, an itinerary).

Before the end of this chapter, I shall provide you with that map. 3. A good tourist guide will make sure you have a satisfying, rewarding trip. I

have crafted a semesters worth of lectures to ensure this promise. That is my guaranteeor, as a good salesman would say, your money back!

Literary theory and criticism is no different from the tourist trade in that it brings order and organization to our experience of the places we love to visit, and in our case, literary works. It does it in two ways:

1. It brings us to focus our attention on the relevant areas. In other words, only the highlights, because we have a time-limit.

2. It allows us to make sense of what we see. Our course is no different from the tourist trade in the sense that it brings order to

our experience of the places we love to visitand in our case, literary works. Likewise, Critical theories are like the different travel agencies through which the various tour guides generally work, and they are customized according to our intention and temperament. This means that different agencies feature different kinds of tours.

1. One agency specializes in cultural tours. 2. Another specializes in historical tours. 3. Others in cultural and artistic tours.

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4. Still some others in religious and spiritual tours.15 To be a good tourist guide, you need not only have spent some time with your

specialization but also to have some clear idea of the kinds of tours available. You must be able to combine and adapt. In the field of critical theory you must, therefore, have an understanding of

various critical theories and practices. Is there one correct interpretation of a literary work?

Just as there is no one best place to view the breath-taking Banaue Rice Terraces, so

The Eighth Wonder of the World, the Banaue Rice Terraces, Ifugao Province, Philippines. Photo courtesy of my student Sarah Jean Morato.

there is no one best reading of a literary work. Endorsing variety, however, doesnt mean that all opinions are equal. Just because we marvel at the rice terraces from the viewpoints, we need not

also agree that all vantage points are satisfying to all. Some vantage points are arguably better than others. But then: Better for what? Better for whom?

I personally prefer to be overwhelmed by the panoramic view of the terraces. You may want to be impressed by the skillfully devised irrigation system built thousands of years ago by the great Igorot race in the absence of modern machineries.

De gustibus non est disputandum.16 This book aims to address your preferences, attempting not only to explain how

to use various critical approaches, but also to consider what purposes different approaches are likely to serve (better for what), as well as what sort of audience is likely to be influenced by different critical strategies (better for whom).

By the very nature of theory, there can be no universal perspective. All perspectives are relative to different individuals and different communities.

15

At this writing, in the Philippines, spiritual tours mean guided tours to native healers and healing shrines. 16

In matters of taste, (let there be) no dispute.

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They are relative to different geographical areas and historical epochs. More important, this book aims to provide an introduction to the minds of the

great criticsthe spiral of development in consciousness and culture. The most telling reason why Critical Theory of the classical tradition remains a

closed book to many is because it is excessively difficult reading. Because of this, required courses in critical theory are being replaced by the more trendy creative writing courses. As a result, twenty-first century ad hoc education especially has become vulnerable to the charge that it no longer carries classical liberal arts education to a high enough level of importance.

The good critic cannot stop with studying poetry, he must also study poetics. If he thinks that he must puritanically abstain from all indulgence in the theory, the good critic may have to be a good little critic. . . . Theory, which is expectation, always determines criticism. John Crowe Ransom, The Worlds Body

In this book, I shall use the word Poetics both in its expansive sense,

, to denote the concept of critical theory itself, and in its contracted term, still , to signify the theory of poetry.

So why study theory? For the same reasons we read literature.

1. To broaden our horizons. 2. To alter our perspectives for the better. 3. To make us more perceptive, more observant, more alert. 4. To bring our keenness of perception into every department of

our lives. We hope that this course will provide you that habit of mind that will stand you in good stead in whatever profession or career you choose after college, be it in medicine, law, accounting, economics, politics, and science. Critical theory has been defined as the systematic study of the nature

of literature and of the methods for analyzing literature.17 I personally find this definition incomplete. I think it may better be approached not by a one sentence definition but by asking a series of questions:

1. Where is the ultimate starting place of poetry traced to? Is its source external or internal? Where does poetry come from? God? Nature? Ourselves?

2. Does poetry bring us closer to or farther away from Truth? 3. Is the poet an artist, a craftsman or a person possessed?

17

Jonathan Cullers definition, in his book, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 1.

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4. Of what use is poetry to society? Does it have any useful function to society or is it useless?

5. Is the poem a self-enclosed artifact the meaning of which is timeless and transcendental or is it merely a product of material and social forces?

In this book, critical theory as it has diffused into considerations of intellectual history, moral philosophy, social prophecy, or other interdisciplinary themes which are of relevance to the way humans interpret meaning18 will not be our main concern.

Our approach will be narrower and more focused, and will consist in confining our study to critical appraisals of poetry, even if our discussions can be applied to literature (and the humanities) in general.

This is the traditional approach; indeed, until relatively recently, critical theory was basically synonymous with nothing other than the criticism of poetry.

By tradition, poetry has been privileged above prose and has been considered a distilled form of writing. The time-honored defenses of art and song have been defenses of poetry.

The Four Basic Critical Orientations

In The Mirror and the Lamp, M. H. Abrams of Cornell University classifies critical theories according to their critical orientation, locating the poem (1) in the nature it copies (mimetic), (2) in the audience (pragmatic or affective), (3) in the author (expressive), and (4) in its own verbal structure (objective).19

Mimetic theories consider the poem as an imitation, a representation, or a copy of the world, whether that imitation be natural or supernatural. Mimesis say that the best poem is that which comes closest to that which it seeks to imitate.

Pragmatic theories emphasize the readers relation to the work, or how it affects the audience (affective). These theories assess whether the poem teaches and/or pleases. They also lay down rules for judging both the skill of the poet and the taste of the reader, while exploring the impact the work has on its readers.

Expressive theories say that poetry is the reflection of internal, not external, realities. According to this orientation, Poetry has a personal (not social) and prophetic (not didactic) function.

Objective theories (not within the scope of this book) focus on the poem itself and its internal relationshipsthe poem as its own self-contained microcosm following its own inner laws.

We shall take up the first three orientations which will come up again and again in the course of our study.

18

Ibid. 19

Critical Theory Since Plato (First Edition). See General Introduction. Passim.

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Theory is excitingly difficult

Theory which may be defined as the deeper investigation into the nature of an activity is difficult because it makes us thinkand think with abstract ideas.

Theory undermines reading as an innocent activity. It forces us to examine our assumptions. It makes explicit what is implied.

In science this enterprise is called theory; in literature, it is called poetics. All human activity has a theory. Even the theory of basketball has been

thoroughly inquired into. In fact, no discourse about literature is theory-free. Even the simplest acts of literary response, such as This is boring, depend on a certain theoretical stance. This stance includes the assumption that the purpose of literature consists of entertaining the reader, and the critics job includes identifying works that fail this test.

So, whether you like it or not, you have a theory, or what I would prefer to call a theoretical stance. When you watch a movie, for example, and tell your friends this movie is boring, that is a theoretical stance. It assumes that, to you, a movie must entertain. As a movie critic your statement has just identified a specific movie that failed your test. In literature, it is the same. You have a theory in order to make sense of the work you are reading, listening to, or (if its a play or a movie) watching. You are guided by some elements, or principles, of literature, like theme and style. You know what to look for. When asked why the movie is boring, you do not merely shrug your shoulders and say ahh . . . I dunno . . . just because . . . basta . . . carry lang . . . SECRET . . . Or if you liked the movie, how many of us would be able to describe it other than to say it was nicean overused word you would describe almost anything under the sun: from the movie is nice, to the book is nice, the weather is nice, my boyfriend is nice . . . After this course we hope you would be able to define your statements and articulate the elements that make up a good movie, a good book, a good weather, a good boyfriend. In other words, theory eschews reading as an innocent activity.

Poetics means the general theory of literature. It is not interpretation, not a reaction paper, not a term paper. It is the science of literature, and it consists in having:

1. General laws. 2. Essences. 3. Universals.

A good critic, then, to repeat what John Crowe Ransom has said earlier, is known by his poetics.

The rationale behind studying these great critics from Plato to Yeats is to expose you to the way they think, and this is done for a very good reason:

First we ask: What do I think about poetry? And then, after starting with our own assumptions, we ask

What did Plato have to say about poetry? Or How did Aristotle handle the theory of poetry?

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Finally, we read what these great critics have to say about these questions. By doing so, it is hoped that you will soon find/discover/formulate your own

poetics. In order to make the most of our guided tour, rather than attempt an

exhaustive survey of Literary Theory and Criticism, we shall focus our sights by imposing upon ourselves four limitations: first, we shall confine ourselves to critical appraisals of poetry only; second, we shall limit the boundary of our study to enclose ourselves within the perimeters from Plato to Yeats only; third, we shall concentrate on four theoretical periods (the classical, the medieval, the neoclassical, and the romantic); and fourth, we shall confine ourselves to close readings of representative primary, not secondary, texts.

Earlier, I promised to provide you with a map, so to speak, of our critical itinerary. So heres your brochurewith a rundown of the main sections that will make up our study. We shall be visiting six major, interesting places, thus our brochure will be divided into six parts. Part One: The Classical Background. This section will take up the difference between Plato and Aristotle in the concept of mimesis. Whereas Plato saw poetry as twice removed from reality, Aristotle saw reality as a process by which the Form manifests itself through the concrete. The poets mimesis, therefore, is an analogue of this process. This module shall also examine why Plato banished the poets from his ideal republic, and why Aristotle refutes this by calling the poet not only an imitator but also a creator.

Although some critics may disagree with me, I am including Horaces Art of Poetry and Longinuss On the Sublime in this module, instead of locating them under the rubric neoclassicists, because although less theoretical than Aristotle and even less moral than Plato, Horaces practical instructions on the art of composing poetry are ancient Greek in mindset. Likewise, Longinuss treatment of the sublime balances and blends inspiration and rhetorical mastery in the tradition of ancient classical rhetoricians, hence his inclusion, too, in this section. Part Two: Medieval Aesthetics. This module will take up the Neo-Platonism of Plotinus (who puts poetry in a much higher position in his system than Plato had done), the semiotics of Augustine (whose science of sign systems paved the way for later theories of allegory), the hermeneutics of Aquinas (whose fourfold interpretive system opened up the possibility of discovering multiple meanings in poems later), and the Platonic distrust of poets by Boethius (who viewed poetry trivial by comparison to theological pursuits). It will be interesting to mention here that in medieval times, theology was described as the highest, the prince, of the sciences. The lowest of the sciences was poetry. Part Three: Renaissance and Neoclassical Criticism. Sir Philip Sidneys An Apology for Poetry defends poetry from traditional attacks: that it is a waste of time, that it is the mother of lies, and that it teaches sinful thingstraditional complaints that go all the way back to Plato. Sydney, along with Dryden and Pope, then lays down the rules upon

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which aspiring poets may achieve excellence, especially as they relate to decorum, or restraint, catchwords that go all the way back to Horace and Loginus. Part Four: German Epistemological Roots. This, I daresay, is the most difficult but rewarding of the modules. We shall take up the theories of Kant, Schiller, and Hegel, prefacing them with a general outline of the creeds of epistemology in Edmund Burkes An Inquiry into the Sublime and the Beautiful, a seminal work which set the tone for much of German aesthetics. In Kants Critique of Judgment we shall look into two kinds of aesthetic judgments, those of the beautiful and those of the sublime, and discuss how they differ from each other. In Schillers Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, we shall learn about two fundamental drives, the sensuous drive and the formal drive, and why these drives demand reconciliation in a higher drive which Schiller calls the play drive. In Hegels Philosophy of Fine Art, we shall follow the Idea, or the Geist, as it travels into concrete form through the symbolic, the classical, and the romantic forms of art in search of a perfect incarnation. Part Five: The Romantic Imagination. This module shifts the attention from the relationship between poem and reader (affective) to that between poet and poem (expressive). We shall take up the great Romantics Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keatspoets who speak intimately to the reader, speaking not of concepts but of intuitions of nature and of the self. This module presents the poet as a human being speaking of familiar things we often overlook, things whose very commonness renders them invisible. We shall analyze Wordsworths famous Preface, and explore how he redefines the nature of poetry and the poet as a man endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind. Needless to say, this is the easiest and the most agreeable of the modules. Part Six: William Butler Yeatss Poetics in A Vision. I have chosen, instead of discussing The Symbolism of Poetry that is found in the first edition of Hazard Adams book, to discuss A Vision because the work is in my opinion the best showcase of a poets poetics in the fullest display of his powers resulting in a grand synthesis of irony. Yeats turned his back on 19th century science because of its extreme emphasis on a rationalistic, determinist, reductionist, and materialist universe. But his excursion to the mystical furnished him with an architectural structure more comprehensive and sensible than the science of his day. To anyone who asks me what is meant by finding ones own poetics, I recommend a cursory glance at A Vision. Critical Theory is difficult. You will encounter terms which may or may not be too familiar. But nothing is difficult if you have an experienced tourist guide. To give an example: Take the word defamiliarization. Wordsworth said that too often we take for granted familiar people and things because their very commonness has rendered them invisible. But instead of writing of unfamiliar places and things, Wordsworth would take his subject matter from nature, from the common, everyday world of the countryside. He would deal with people and things familiar, the farmers,

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for example, people we too often overlook because of their ordinariness, their commonness. And then he would throw over them a poetic insight that would make us see them in a new light, endowed with dignity. More, by lending these people and things a charm and novelty of their own, he would evoke in us a sense of childlike wonder and make us see them as if for the first time. How? Consider a sunflower. How many times in the summertime have we passed by sunflowers and never noticed. But if an artist like Vincent Van Gough painted a sunflower, suddenly you exclaim, By golly, I never looked at a sunflower like this before! Defamiliarization opens our eyes to the wonders of the world, whose mystery is lost due to familiarity. Before we leave this topic, why dont we pay Mr. Wordsworth a visit to his cottage in Northwestern England, the home where he wrote most of his immortal poems. Or better still, why dont we join him and his famous neighbor Samuel Taylor Coleridge in one of their regular walks along the beauteous Lake District, and experience the trees and the sky through the eyes of a child, experiencing the thrill of seeing, as if for the first time those daffodils over there, which inspired Wordsworth to write:

I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Welcome to the world of Critical Theory.

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Plato Introduction

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is

that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. Alfred North Whitehead

Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here. Sign on the door to Platos Academy in Ancient Athens

Abstract

A prefatory word about Plato, and why our study of poetics begins with him:

Although Aristotles Poetics is the earliest extant treatise of literary theory, all poetics in truth begin with Plato (even if Plato himself never used the word poetics). We start with Plato because he was the first critic to narrow his focus on poetry. Platos incisive investigation into the nature of poetry formally inaugurates the business of poetics. Plato, in fact, is the FIRST critic and the first CRITIC of poetry. Though himself a great literary talent, Plato, when fashioning his ideal Republic, decided it would be best if poets were banished from his Republic. To find out why, we shall present, in this chapter, an overview of Platos philosophy as it relates to our question. In the next chapter, we shall narrow our focus even more and examine Books II, III, and X, which examine why Plato banished the poets from his Republic. There is an anecdote, albeit apocryphal, about the first meeting of Plato and Socrates, which dramatizes why Plato disapproves of poetry. The story goes that Plato first made the acquaintance of Socrates after the former had written a cycle of tragedies. The young Plato wanted to enter these tragedies in the contest that the ancient Greeks held during the Dionysian festivals. He wanted to win a prize for tragedy. So Plato and Socrates met. The young Plato excitedly read aloud some of his tragic poems. Socrates listened and asked questions. Plato answered as best he could. Socrates asked more questions. At the end of their dialogue, Plato went home, burned his tragedies and never wrote tragedy again. What actually transpired in that initial dialogue between Socrates and Plato we can only surmise. What we do know is that Plato had become Socrates student, and after Socrates tragic death, founded the Academy in Athens, the first University in the Western world.20 Plato also paid his teacher the greatest of compliments by making Socrates the main speaker in everything that Plato wrote hereafter. Alas, the teachers negative impression of poetry and poets were passed on to the student.

20

The Academy lasted for some 900 years. Aristotle was Platos pupil here for nineteen years. The Academy was closed in the Middle Ages.

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Plato has a rather ambivalent attitude towards poetry. Poets are dangerous mis-educators of the youth. Socrates was condemned to death because his accusers say he corrupted the youth of Athens. Plato says no, thats not true: the real corrupters of youth are these poets who perhaps are divinely inspired but dont really understand what theyre doing. They have a kind of sacred madness which makes them write things that they themselves do not understand, and often the harm they do is irrevocable. To understand why Plato thought lowly of poets, we need to start looking father back into his theory of the divided line.

Archetypes, Mathematics, and Platos Metaphor of the Divided Line What are archetypes? Normally, we see cases of just men and just actions, so we come up with the idea of Justice. In other words, we know there is such a thing as justice because of the evidence of just men and just actions that we witness in the world. This is obvious, isnt it? No. Plato says the contrary is what is true. The Idea of Justice IS the reality. Whether or not men were just, Justice remains as a self-existent Reality, independent of whether or not men were just. We experience justice because Justice existed in the Ideal World. The point of view can be extended to any area of everyday experience. Take a rose, for example. There are many varieties of roses, but there is one archetypal Rose, the Idea of the Rose. Everything has an archetype behind it. Take the case of beauty. Why is your face beautiful? Or your hand, your foot, your legs beautiful? Because each is a window through which one glimpses the archetype. The nearer it is to the archetype, the more beautiful it is. The farther it is from the archetype, the less beautiful it is. The Idea of Beauty is the Form of Beauty. When we think of the Idea of Beauty, we no longer belong to the Ideal World of Form but to the Concept of Beauty. The beautiful girl, beautiful rose, beautiful vase that we see are individual beautiful entities. The painting of a beautiful girl, beautiful rose, and beautiful vase are images or shadows of the individual beautiful entities, and thus thrice removed from the truth. We shall return to this central concept in the next chapter when we discuss the reasons why Plato thought lowly of poets and poetry.

Plato's metaphor of the Divided Line is chiefly derived from the mathematical ideas of ancient Greek geometry. Plato uses this metaphor to stand for his teachings about reality, being, and knowledge. Whether or not the metaphor accurately describes reality remains a philosophical question.

As the name implies (divided line), it is a metaphor borrowed from mathematics.

By using the divided line, Plato tells us something about the relationship between the blurry statements we make about the world of sense experience and the exact statements we could make about eternal reality.

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To construct Plato's divided line, let us draw a line and divide it into 4 parts (from right to left): A, B, C, and D. Let the names under A and B pertain to the world of becoming, and the names under C and D pertain to the world of being.

Platos Divided Line21

World of Being World of Becoming

1. Side A represents images. 2. Side B represents objects of sense experience, like trees, tables, etc.,

including living things and objects made by art. 3. Side C represents the objects of mathematics. 4. Side D represents the forms or ideas or the purely intelligible.

In the divided line:

1. Side A can be called imagining. 2. Side B can be called belief. 3. Side C can be called thinking. 4. Side D can be called intelligence.

21

source: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/rhatch/HIS-SCI-STUDY-GUIDE/0019_platoDividedLine.html

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If we call the segments (starting from the right) A, B, C, and D, we have these

relationships: A < B < C < D, A/B = B/C = C/D, and (A + B)/(C + D) = A/B. The relationship between the segments A, B, C, and D corresponds to the differing degrees of reality on the part of the things the segments represent.

The relationship between C (the objects of mathematics) and B (physical objects) is the same as the relationship between B (physical objects) and A (images). This suggests that the sphere is more real than a basketball, because the latter is merely an image of the sphere, although the basketball is more real than its circular drawing/image. The objects of the world of sense are subject to continual change, and statements about them are fuzzy and (a modem person might say) only probable. But the objects of the world of thought are unchanging and eternal, and therefore statements about them are always true. There is, however, a difference between the objects on the third level, the objects of mathematics, and those on the fourth, like the idea or form of justice or of beauty.

The way we come to the truths of mathematics is hypothetical: They are true provided that the basic axioms are true. The truths on the fourth level are somehow reached by dialectic and require no hypotheses.

One ascends the divided line through education, and education is designed to draw the soul from the changing to the real, the Unchanging Reality. The soul is drawn from the changing to the real by the study of mathematics, where one may begin by looking at drawings or physical spheres but where one soon progresses to the actual objects of mathematics, which can be seen only with the eye of the intellect.

We now ask whether the divided line, as described, can actually be constructed geometrically. We prove that it cannot. It is clear that Plato knew more than enough mathematics to be aware of this.

We then ask what the philosophical meaning of this conclusion might be for Plato, and whether this is consistent with the views we have attributed to him. We can see from this why Plato placed mathematics at the heart of education.

By experiencing the objects of mathematics, like numbers or circles or triangles, we come to realize that there is a world of intelligibles, of things that can be grasped only by the intellect. So, as it is said, the door to Plato's Academy in Athens read, "Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here.

The Allegory of the Cave

Plato's view of knowing and being in his discussion of the divided line is elaborated further in his story of the cave. In one of his most famous passages, the human condition is likened to prisoners chained in a dark underground cave where all these prisoners can see are shadows on a wall. We will see how Plato uses the cave metaphor to further illuminate the nature of reality and knowledge. We will conclude this lecture by discussing how Plato uses the way we learn mathematics and formulate mathematical ideas as a model for his influential account of the relationship between everyday experience and reality.

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The most famous of Plato's metaphors is the story of the cave, where Plato likens the human condition to being able to perceive only shadows of reality. Here is Platos famous Allegory of the Cave from Part Seven, Book Seven of the Republic.22 The dialogue is between Socrates and Glaucon:

Imagine an underground chamber like a cave, with a long entrance open to the daylight and ahead of them and cannot turn their heads. Some way off, behind and higher up, a fire is burning, and between the fire and the prisoners and above them runs a road, in front of which a curtain-wall has been built, like a screen at puppet shows between the operators and their audience, above which they show their puppets. as wide as the cave. In this chamber are men who have been prisoners there since they were children, their legs and necks being so fastened that they can only look straight. I see. Imagine further that there are men carrying all sorts of gear along behind the curtain-wall, projecting above it and including figures of men and animals made of wood and stone and all sorts of other materials, and that some of these men, as you would expect, are talking and some not. And odd picture and an odd sort of prisoner. They are drawn from life, I replied. For, tell me, do you think our prisoners could see anything of themselves or their fellows except the shadows thrown by the fire on the wall of the cave opposite them? How could they see anything else if they were prevented from moving their heads all their lives? And would they see anything more of the objects carried along the road? Of course not. Then if they were able to talk to each other, would they not assume that the shadows they saw were the real things? Inevitably. And if the wall of their prison opposite them reflected sound, dont you think that they would suppose, whenever one of the passers-by on the road spoke, that the voice belonged to the shadow passing before them? They would be bound to think so. And so in every way they would believe that the shadows of the objects we mentioned were the whole truth. Yes, inevitably.

Whats going on here? Book 7 of the Republic describes prisoners chained in a cave, facing the wall all their lives. Behind them are a fire and a road, and between the fire and the prisoners, people walk and talk. The prisoners hear the echoes and see the shadows cast by the fire onto the wall, and mistake these for reality.

22

Translated by Desmond Lee in Plato: The Republic. London: Penguin: 1955, pp. 317ff. Revised 1974.

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Now heres the point. A prisoner is unchained and dragged out of the cave. At first he is temporarily blinded by the light. He prefers to return to the coziness of the cave, his comfort zone. But a friendly hand guides him towards the light.

Out at the mouth of the cave, he sees trees, rivers, mountains, and the sky. Eventually his eyes get used to the sight and he realizes this is what is real.

Out of compassion, he returns to the cave to save his fellow prisoners. At first he cannot see clearly in the relative darkness, and his fellow prisoners tell him: "See what happens when you try to get to higher things." In their eyes, he has become a weirdo, and if he tried to lead them out of the world of shadows, they would not believe him. They would not even hesitate to kill him for teaching dangerous things.

In this vein, maybe it is far safer to enter a room filled with gunpowder with a lighted match than to teach the Thing As It is, because it goes against the grain of the nescient, unthinking majority.

Or to extend the moral a bit further: When a person does a useless thing, nobody bothers to educate him; when a person does an evil thing, few seek to restrain him; but when a person teaches us the way out of our prison caves, the whole world will condemn him and destroy him. Such is the fate of the worlds great teachers.

The metaphor of the cave enriches our understanding of the process of moving up the divided line from the changing to the real. The form of the good renders things intelligible on the top half of the divided line, as the Sun renders things visible on the bottom half. The process by which we go from shadows to real objects is like the process by which we go from real objects to the objects of mathematics, and so this part of the ascent of the divided line draws the soul from the changing to the real.

Education, then, is not stuffing people's minds with information, but turning the soul in the direction of greater certainty and reality (we moderns might say, like moving from the study of the probable to the study of the certain). The soul is best drawn from the changing to the real by studying examples of that which does not change.

Plato here strongly, and influentially, prescribes the study of mathematics for the philosophers who are to rule his ideal society-and for all of Western education. Indeed, Plato's curriculum starts with arithmetic, then plane and solid geometry, then astronomy, then music. This is rather like 1 dimension for arithmetic; then 2 for plane and 3 for solid geometry; then astronomy, understood not as the study of physical stars and planets but as the pure mathematical motion of geometrically perfect solids; and then the harmony that governs it all.

This, through the work of Boethius in the 6th century, became the Quadrivium of medieval education: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music or harmony. (The Trivium was Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic.) So the process by which we move from seeing the orange, the basketball, and the Moon to understanding the sphere involves turning the soul more toward the real.

Plato calls the analogous process, which takes us from the hypothetical treatment of mathematics to grasping the nonhypothetical first principles of knowledge of the forms, dialectic.

In the dialogue, Plato has Socrates say that he cannot explain exactly how this works, and that Glaucon, to whom Socrates is speaking, would not be able to follow

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such an explanation anyway. So, the metaphorsand the central role mathematics plays in themwill have to do.

Plato Republic (Books II and III)

The Republic might rightly be called one of the greatest books on politics, on education, and on justice ever written. If the Middle Ages produced a Divine Comedy, and the Augustan Age produced an Aeneid, it would be fitting to say that Classical Greece produced the Republic. Heres a brief background. Athens at the time of Socrates had no printed books, no newspapers, no mass media stuff. When people wanted the news, they went to the Agora, a central place, a market place, where open air parliaments were held. Here lawsuits were tried and here sentences were meted out by a jury elected by the people. The Agora was also the venue of kapihan23 groups where congregated the more outspoken, discussing everything from politics to metaphysics. The Hellenistic race was interested in everything, from the origin of things, to the nature of man and the universe. Into this world entered the sophists, travelling university professors who were not from Athens but converged in the Agora to instruct and edify anyonefor a fee (we call them donations today). The sophists were considered smart. Sophs means wise and sophists is one who makes a business out of wisdom. They commanded a very high fee. Unlike the Athenians, they were not interested in the big questions, but in the mechanics of things. In other words, disagreements could not be decided by appeal to Truth, but by rhetoric. The phrase sophistic reasoning, or sophistry, connotes specious argumentation used for deceiving someone. Their bitterest opponent was Socrates, a poor mason and carver who taught but charged no fee. He wrote nothing and naturally had no publication. In an academic setting, he would not qualify for tenure. His wife would nag him daily for neglect of family. Athenians would refer to him as the proprietor of a thinking shop. His aim, he said, was not to instruct but to bring to birth, to stimulate, through critical thinking, the thing as it is, the Ding an sich. He was a gadfly. Through question and answer, he would give the sophists enough rope to hang themselves. Athens sentenced him to death because he corrupted the young. He was offered pardon if only he would stop talking. He said he could not stop talking because the unexamined life is not worth living. The executioner asked him to stop talking because his incessant talking was preventing the poison to take effect immediately. Socrates continued lecturing. Your job, he said to the executioner, is to administer the poison; my job is to talk until the end. He died as a symbol of free speech, and his martyrdom caused one favorite student to change his life-goal from politics to philosophy. The students name is Plato.

23

This is akin to a late night talk show, or an informal round table discussion over cups of coffee.

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Plato, unlike his teacher, was of aristocratic birth.24 After Socrates death, Plato set up the Academy and taught and wrote voluminouslytwenty extant volumes of dialogueswith Socrates as main character, teacher, and speaker. One of the more famous of the dialogues is the Republic. The Republic is a work that deals with (1) the examination of the Good Life, because, says Plato, the perfect life can be led only under ideal conditions, and (2) the education of the philosopher kings. The dialogue occurs in the house of the aging Cephalus on the occasion of the feast of the goddess Bendis. Plato saw to it that the characters in this dramawere subordinate to the ideas and arguments of the work.

Books II and III deal with censorship. Book X, the last book of the Republic, is written by way of an appendix, apparently in anticipation of reactions to Platos ideas on censorship taken up in Books II and III. Let us take up Books II and III. Education is the second most important constituent in Platos Republic. There are two components to education: gymnastics and music. These are misleading terms in English because each of them connotes a narrow meaning. For Plato, they carry a broader meaning. Gymnastics includes the education and care of the body; music includes all forms of literature, cultural activity in general. The more contemporary connotation of music is what we think of as the media. It is ubiquitous. Plato discusses music first. This is because music is fundamental in shaping young minds which are impressionable. Thus it is imperative for the rulers of the Republic to establish a censorship of the writers of fiction.25 The music (in the Platonic sense) that the young are exposed to must be politically correct, i.e., beneficial to the Republic. For example, Hesiods story of the fight between Cronus and Uranus must not be told in the Republic. Such a story legitimizes rebellion against authority. Books II and III are therefore engaged in a massive program of censorship, a word thats uncomfortable to most of us. Cronos was one of the early gods. Uranos (Sky) was his father. Cronos was the son of Gaia (Earth). Uranus married Gaia and had children by her. But Uranus hated these children of his and pushed them into Tartarus.

However, Gaia, grieved at the damage of her gifted children, planned the destruction of

her own husband and his rule as a way to set them and herself free. So Cronos, armed

with a scythe, cut off his father's genitals, throwing them into the sea. From the foam

which gathered round the severed genitals, Venus was born. Plato says this is a weird and disturbing story. This story must be censored. It is dangerous to young people who might be encouraged to question, challenge, or even attack authorityand that can have devastating consequences in the Republic. Homer tells stories about gods warring against each other. Perhaps the most famous are the quarrels between Zeus and his jealous wife Hera. Once, as result of their quarrels, Zeus throws one of his own sons, Hephaestus, from the great height of Mount Olympus, and as a result the son is crippled. This is a clear case of child abuse and 24

The story goes that Socrates traced his ancestry back to Daedalus, but the claim is precarious to lock it in alongside other urban legends. 25

Adams, 21.

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marital strife. This can never be included in the curriculum of the education of the young. If the father of the gods can treat his own son like this, then that opens the gate to all illicit behavior on the part of those of us here on earth who hear these stories. Another objection: Homer depicts the gods as not always doing good. In Platos version of poetry, the gods must be depicted as good and as always doing good. And the heroes must be shown as always brave, never weeping or wailing, rolling in the dirt, calling each man loudly by his name.26 That is the stuff of weaklings. Let us put an end to such tales, he says, lest they engender laxity of morals among the young.27 Now we may ask: Isnt this a one-sided kind of education? Plato says yes and he makes no bones about it. The purpose of education in the Republic is the character formation of the future philosopher-kings. No child should be exposed to evil until her character was formed. Only then would she be in a position to act rationally. On last thing: Death must never be depicted as something negative, terrible, to be feared. Again, Plato scowls at how Homer depicts death. In the Odyssey, Odysseus goes to Hades and finds it an absolutely awful place. The dead are miserable with no significant existence. They are mere shades of their former existences. The most famous statement I would rather be a plowman or a yeoman in the land of the living than rule over all the dead who have come to naught28 is one obnoxious passage Plato would want to obliterate.

Republic (Book X)

Supplementary to the reasons given above, Plato has a metaphysical reason behind his distrust of poets and poetry. Book X is an overtly strapping rationale behind Platos aversion of art. Here, he not only belabors his issue with poetry by censorship, regulation, and restriction, but also makes haste to banish the poets altogether from his Republic.

The metaphysical critique of poetry is grounded on Platos Theory of Forms. Let us elaborate on this, the first of his two arguments against poetry, found in Book X.

We have been accustomed to assume that there is one single idea corresponding to each group of particulars; and to these we give the same name (as we give the idea). I do. Let us take, for our present purpose, any instance of such a group; there are beds and tables in the worldmany of each, are there not? Yes. But there are only two ideas or forms of such furnitureone the idea of a bed, the other of a table.

26

The passage refers to Priam in the Iliad, XXII. 414. 27

Adams, 27. 28

Odyssey. XI. 489.

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The Theory of Forms takes its bearing from language. Take the word table. This word has a very general meaning. It refers to all the particular tables that exist in the world. Every single one of them is different from another, but they are united in being a table. God produced the Idea,29 in our case the Idea of a table. A carpenter who imitates the idea of the table builds a particular table. A painter imitates the table that the carpenter built. The keyword here is imitationor any form of artistic representation. Imitation, therefore, is twice removed from Truth. Because of that, Platos concept of mimesis branded poetry as an unreliable source of truth.

Again, for Plato, there are two kinds of worlds, the World of Being and the World of Becoming. Our physical world of Becoming is but a shadowy reflection (mimesis) of the ideal World of Being. Everything in our world, from objects to ideas, is but a pale copy of the perfect, unchanging originals of the world of Forms. When a poet describes a table, he is not imitating the Form (tableness) of the table, but presenting us with an imitation of the ideal Table. Poetry, therefore, because it imitates what is already an imitation (the carpenters table), is twice removed from reality (the Forms); and as such, it is an unreliable source of truth.

Poetry appeals to the irrational side of our psyche. Unlike mathematics or philosophy, which we apprehend by way of our rational (Apollonian) powers, poetry engages that part of our psyche that is both illogical and irrational (Dionysiac). This irrational part of the soul is not only unreliable in matters of truth but also dangerous. The poet, therefore is possessed by a madness and not in control of himself when he writes.

In Socrates time there was a rhapsode by the name of Ion of Ephesus. A rhapsode is a song-stitcher, a reciter of songs. He made a living by giving public recitations of epic poems. The good rhapsodes could hold their audiences spellbound and move them to laughter or to tears.

Ion was such a one. He was a specialist in Homer. But Ion also lectured, and Socrates disapproved of this. Socrates suggested to Ion that his skill was due to divine madness, and therefore his claim to teach rules of conduct from Homer was absurd. He spoke not by art or skill, but by possession, which is an inappropriate method.

Socrates/Plato, however, eschewed poets and poetry not because they were ineffectual but because they were effective! With some misgivings, Socrates concludes that only songs offering innocuous praises to the gods and the state will be allowed. The rest would be banned.

Conclusion: The Philosophical Hero

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The idea of a God producing the idea is problematic because it actually contradicts the idea of forms, because one important feature of the forms is that they have always existed. They do not come into being.

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. The Platonic dialogue, albeit written in excellent dramatic style, is in actuality a

moving beyond the form of epic and tragedy, two techniques characteristic of the high culture of Periclean Athens. Plato was such a profound and gifted poet. He was able to contrive/invent a new kind of poetic mode or poetic genre called the Socratic Dialectic, a style which is loaded with profound teachings. But the Platonic dialogue is meant to move into a new art form which tries to remedy some of the defects which Plato himself points out in tragedy as a whole.

For all his dramatic talents, why would he want to do this? Because what Plato wants is not a tragic hero. A tragic hero has a tragic flaw, a weakness in character which leads to his downfall even as it incites in us pity and fear. Plato disapproves of this. Instead, in the Platonic dialogue, we have a new kind of hero: not a tragic hero but a philosophical hero, a man of reason and logic, one whoinstead of killing people, being a man of passion and violence the way a Homeric hero isimproves men rather than worsens them, one who benefits the world rather than destroys it, one who takes upon himself the obligation to raise the standards of the world rather than gratify its passions. Any candidates?

Questions for discussion:

1. I have often been asked: Why were most ancient and medieval philosophers men? Thales of Miletus (everything is made of water), Anaximander (everything arose from water), Pythagoras (the famous theorem), Heraclitus (you cannot step into the same river twice), the Atomists Democritus and Parmenides (basic elementary principles), et al.

2. Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky ) (24 May 1940 28 January 1996) an anti-Plato Soviet-Russian-American poet said that Platos subordinating aesthetics to the ethics was wrong, because aesthetics is the mother of ethics, not the other way around. Good ethics, he said, does not create the masterpiece. In a given society, which ought to be given priority, ethics or aesthetics?