한
All works

Dialogue Book · Ancient Greek

Republic, Book X

Πολιτεία Ιʹ

OPEN THE BOOK WITH A QUESTION

Does an accurate likeness give knowledge, or merely look knowledgeable without teaching what is good?

Evidence-backed moments
2
Timeline events
1
Verified places
0

People who carry this work into the voyage

Read the argument as a story

Story 1Why does art matter, and what makes a work valuable?

Plato — When a likeness obscures truth and the soul

The question that opens it

Does an accurate likeness give knowledge, or merely look knowledgeable without teaching what is good?

What changes as you read the work
  1. 1

    Republic X joins an epistemic critique of imitation with a political and educational worry that painting and tragedy may address the soul's non-rational part.

    Check the evidence

    This is an evidence-linked editorial account, not a direct quotation.

    • Plato's Aesthetics

      Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

      Locator: §3.3 Republic 10: the copy-making arts and the soul

      Open source
  2. 2

    Reducing Plato's aesthetics to ‘all art is bad’ misses his other discussions of beauty, inspiration, and educational imitation.

    Check the evidence

    This is an evidence-linked editorial account, not a direct quotation.

    • Plato's Aesthetics

      Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

      Locator: Introduction; §1–§3, contrasts among beauty, inspiration, and imitation

      Open source
Try the full inquiry

How the work moved through time

  1. Around 380 BCE

    Republic X asks poetry and images to answer for their epistemic and political effects.

    PerspectiveOpen in question

Continue with the questions it unsettles