29 - Plato's Republic 12: Poetic Sweet Tooth
Update: 2021-07-05
Description
Socrates thinks that poetry is like candy: delicious but bad for us. If we consume too much, it’ll rot our souls. That’s because the poets just pander to our passions with no concern with or knowledge of the truth.
But pandering poets aren’t the problem. It’s us. Socrates thinks that humans have a poetic sweet tooth that makes certain kinds of stories irresistible to us. We let ourselves get carried away by them and start to believe that they’re true. Following our natural taste for art undermines reason and makes us into worse people. So how do we live if we can’t trust our taste?
Glaucon: Zachary Amzallag
Ancient music: Michael Levy
Intro theme: Clayton Tapp
Outro theme: David Zikovitz
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