so that poetry belongs to the lower realm of eikasia (usually translated as ‘illusion’) in
which shadows and reflections are mistaken for reality by the ignorant prisoners in
the darkness of the cave. Poetry must yield to the higher reality of philosophy. Hence
the famous judgement which shows Plato deeply at variance with traditional Greek
culture:
when you meet people who admire Homer as the educator of Greece, and who
say that in the administration of human affairs and education we should study him
and model our whole lives on his poetry, you must feel kindly towards them as
good men within their limits, and you may agree with them that Homer is the best
of poets and first of tragedians. But you will know that the only poetry that should
be allowed in a state is hymns to the gods and poems in praise of good men; once
you go beyond that and admit the sweet lyric or epic muse, pleasure and pain
become your rulers instead of law and the rational principles commonly accepted
as best.
(Republic, 606e, 607a)Aristotle (384–322)
Aristotle was born in 384 at Stagira in the Chersonese, in the north east of Greece.
His father had been court physician to the Macedonian king, Amyntas III. He was
sent to the Athenian Academy of Plato in 367, where he studied until Plato’s death
in 347. He then left Athens to direct his philosophical studies abroad. In 343/2 he was
invited by King Philip to the Macedonian capital Pella to tutor his 13-year-old son
Alexander. Anecdotes report that the philosopher prepared a special edition of
Homer for the edification of his illustrious pupil. He returned to Athens in 335 where
he opened a new school to rival the Academy in the Lyceum, a gymnasium in the
temple of Apollo Lyceus, located in a grove just outside the city. From his habit of
providing instruction in the peripetos, or covered walkway, of the gymnasium, the
school has often been called Peripatetic. With the death of Alexander in 323 and the
Greek revolt against his subordinates, Aristotle, with his well-known Macedonian
connections, withdrew from Athens to avoid prosecution. He died in Chalcis in
Euboea in the following year.
While the extant corpus of Plato’s writings are polished literary works for public
consumption and none of his Academy lectures survives, Aristotle’s polished writing
in dialogue form has been lost and what survives is mostly in the form of lecture
material apparently used in giving courses at the Lyceum. The surviving esoteric
treatises may in some cases be notes taken by pupils, and have all been assembled
and edited by later Aristotelians. For example, his Metaphysics is regarded as a series
PHILOSOPHY 203