Shelley Aristotle
Plato is the first major figure in the history of western
philosophy. He is an idealist, moralist and a rationalist. He locates reality
in what he calls ideas (gods) or forms rather than world of appearance that we
locate with our senses. Plato believes in the idea that is form which itself is
formless but it is fixed. Idea is archetype and always remains the same.
Reality can’t be found in the world of appearance but in the ideal world.
According to Plato, the world that we perceive around us is
the world of imitation or shadows of ideas or ideal world. When a post imitates
the world his creation obviously is twice removed from reality. Poets do not
use their own rationality; they are inspired by the divine inspiration, so they
are only forced to use their emotion. Furthermore, Plato stressed that the
poets possess the madness and are not in control of them when they write. They
cannot be good teachers. Poet’s creation caters to the emotion and passion
making people cowardice which ultimately will disrupt the order of the
republic.
However, Shelley differs from Plato in this view. He
considers poet as a moral teacher, a creator who gives ideas and pleasure to
the society by teaching indirectly. He creates social norms, rules and moral
lessons with the help of poetry.
Plato is against poetry and imagination, though he does not
totally dismiss the significance of poetry. According to him, separating form
and content of poetry emphasizes much on content or on the didactic and moral
purposes. His treatment towards the content of the poetry is like Aristotle,
when he says poetry should imitate the model virtue and noble action. Whereas,
Shelley lays stress on the reason and imagination which he considers as the
faculties of mind. For him, reason is principle of analysis and imagination is
principle of synthesis. He says that imagination has soothing power that
pacifies the mind and leads to creation of poetry.
Therefore, Shelley is quite different from Plato in his
defense of poetry. Plato lays stress on imitation whereas; Shelley lays that on
imagination. Plato believes that poetry will disturb the human mind. However,
Shelley believes that poetry strengthens the moral faculty and gives pleasure.
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