The ideal Platonic State prospers and flourishes with citizenry who are nourished from wellsprings of reason and intellect, but only if its citizens are aware of and thirst for the wellspring. Since the soul is of two parts, one which considers a thing with logic and one which considers a thing with emotion, the beverage of choice is dependent upon the part which is the hardier. But if a part is hardier from deception and not from discipline, then when the self is called upon to contribute to the benefit of the State and humanity, the benefit will more be like a siphon because the contribution will be of little substance. If there exists within the State a means by which deception is the didactic, then the State will fail in its ideal.

Plato believed that artists’ imitations encouraged neither opinion nor knowledge about an ideal but merely provided an invitation for interpretive exercise and execution. Painting and sculpture made little impression upon the individual and thereby were harmless and ultimately useless. However, Plato did not view poets as harmless.

Plato believed that the primary danger of poetry lay in the Sophist philosophy that truth and virtue could be attained through the art of language. If language is of itself an art, then this art would be quite capable of distorting and manipulating truths. This conflicting philosophy may also serve as metaphor for the soul of two parts whereby the art of language would purport to be logic, while the content of language emotion or deception.

Within the realm of Plato’s theory of Forms, poetry is furthest removed from the idealized truth. Consider first the occurrence of an event such as a violent and colorful battle of which there can be no formal ideal simply because a battle is a formless thing although it may be comprised of many true forms. Next, impressions and descriptions of the battle along with factual information of death and maiming are delivered to the people back home. The people then in turn interpret the colors with the degree of horror or pride as to the extent that their reason, emotion and vocabulary allow. Then poets such as Homer, using the art of language, cloak the events with meter, rhythm and eloquence and purport to speak of truths to the extent that their emotion and vocabulary will allow, although they have not themselves ever experienced the event.

Attracted to these poets are those whose own weaknesses are indulged and fortified by the poets’ display. Without embarrassment or shame the poets’ rhapsodes performed their rhetoric to yet other audiences fortifying and indulging their emotional weaknesses. All this for a fee fattened by the degree of the audience’s debilitating spectacle their senselessness could conjure. Indeed, Ion, at Socrates’ prodding, unknowingly acknowledged that his great skill lay in the impersonation of divinity, art and knowledge.

Where is the truth and virtue of these performances and presentations, asked Plato. If poets and their rhapsodes are permitted to appease and nurture the part of the soul that by nature is irrational and self-serving, then the ideal State of law and reason risks abandonment to self interest. Hence Plato proposed to censor poets who would not limit their prosody to the regaling of the gods.

But this ideal, and the prescribed recipe for its attainment is Plato’s. And the ingredients of argument for censorship are subjective to the tastes and thirsts of the people whom the government serves.