Mímesis e enthousiasmós: a poesia entre a República e o Íon

Abstract

The purpose of this Thesis is to analyze Plato's Ion and passages of the Republic, taking into account their specific dramatic contexts and aiming at understanding the strategies used by Plato to criticize Homeric poetry and to show that one is justified in bringing these two dialogues together, in the sense that their conceptual assumptions are analogous. We show that both dialogues verify the same problem: poets intend not only to speak about all things, but also to teach them; the argument used is an evaluation of whether they resort to a tekhne, in order to make it clear that, in fact, poets do not actually have the knowledge of the things they talk about and, therefore, should not teach them. Thus it is established that Homeric poetry cannot be the fundament of citizens' paideia. We conclude that Plato's criticism of poets, in these dialogues, is both epistemic and pedagogical (ethical and political).