I. PLATO
Plato's standard position is clear enough: play is
intimately connected with
imitation: boys play at being
soldiers (Republic V,
466E ff.), and more generally,
children play at being their elders, the
bard imitates
in his narrative the speech and action of heroes and,
much less acceptably, the actor does this directly; the
poet imitates the
Muse who inspires him. Since the
force of imitation is construed in Plato's
educational
psychology as making the imitator resemble what is
imitated, the truth of the model is all-important. At
Republic 425A “... children in their earliest
play are
[to be] imbued with the spirit of law and order through
their
music” (mousike here refers to the arts
generally,
and not necessarily only to music); at 536E children
are to
be introduced to their studies by play and not
by compulsion.
From these observations follows much of the criti-
cism of poetry and the arts for which Plato is notorious;
but we
shall be concerned here only with those aspects
of the criticism that bear
on play and art. Certainly
a man will not want to imitate anything unworthy
of
him (Republic III, 395A ff.), “except
for the sake of
play (paidia)” (396E).
This last reservation finds an echo
in Laws (II,
667DE) where play is associated both with
art and pleasure. Play is here
defined as harmless
pleasure doing neither good nor harm. But doubts
are
at once raised by the Athenian whether the perform-
ance of a work of art, because it is primarily concerned
with
imitations and representations of real things, could
ever harmlessly
misrepresent those things (cf. 658E,
659E). Thus the argument returns to
the standard
position in which Plato's references to art and play are
subordinated to education and moral training within
the metaphysical
framework of his system.
Repeatedly, whenever the question of play, amuse-
ment, entertainment, pleasure, etc., is raised, whether
in
connection with art or not, Plato allows that these
involve a certain charm
if their pursuit is appropriate
to the age and mental development of the
players. But
judgment is not so easily disarmed and older and wiser
heads keep knowledgeable watch, since nothing that
is not true can be
beautiful, good, or even harmless.
Plato's views on art have been much attacked and,
taken superficially, they
may appear disappointing.
The overtones of censorship, regimentation, and
confi-
dent self-righteousness have
alienated many commen-
tators. But it is
always a mistake to read Plato as though
he were describing a feasible
reconstruction of the
world; he repeatedly distinguishes the ideally
desirable
from the actually attainable, and in so doing is playing
a
game of his own—a political game realized with
consummate art
within metaphysical rules asserted to
be self-evidently true for the sake
of the game. Seen
in this light he has been called ludimagister (Rahner
[1967], p. 12); Plato himself refers (Letter VI, 323D),
if genuine, to “the
jesting that is kin to earnest,” and
his own use of myth will
bear comparison with Socratic
irony as a playful device of art. The Republic, in par-
ticular, is the model of all subsequent positive Utopias—
the negative ones are grimmer and lack the imaginative
exploitation of
possibilities, even the wishful thinking,
that characterize the Republic and its successors—
qualities
shared, as we shall see, by play and art.
