Vdovichenko Andrei

Plato on the harm of poetry to the soul. To the discursive interpretation of the poetic form

Abstract

The paper examines Plato's idea about the harm of poetry to the soul arising from the fact that poets address not to the reasonable, but to the sensual («furious») part of a soul. Discursive interpretation of verbal communication as an action in the imaginable communicative space allows to understand the philosophical attitude to the poetry, but also to remove the sharpness of Plato’s charge. Whereas, according to Plato, a poet represents an illusory reality and by that harms to a soul, awakening its unreasonable forces, according to the communicative views, a poet just acts in the communicative space as a normal communicant, striving for singularity («strangeness») of the organized communicative act. As the most common, but not exclusive, formal means of communicative «stranging» one should point out rhyme, rhythm and meter. Communication remains appreciably uniform both in poetic, and in any other text: during the communicative act objects and communications are appointed, verbal cliches are chosen and organized, operations with consciousness of the addressee are made, etc.. Subject criteria participate generations and interpretations (understanding and an assessment) of any verbal action.

Keywords

Plato, unreasonable part of soul, ethical and esthetic aspects of poetry, poetic text as communicative act, discourse.

References

1. Tul'chinskij G. L. 1980 “K uporjadocheniju mezhdisciplinarnoj terminologii” (To Regulating of Interdiscipline Terminology), in Psihologija processov hudozhestvennogo tvorchestva, Leningrad, 1980.
5. Shklovskij V. B. Tetiva: O neshodstve shodnogo (Bow-String: about Dissimilarity of Similar), Moscow, 1970.

Information about the author

Vdovichenko Andrei