The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banished the Artists (review)

Abstract

Book Reviews Iris Murdoch. The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banished the Artists. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977. Pp. 89. $5.95. Other reviewers will no doubt want to discuss Miss Murdoch's views on aesthetics, her strong defense of the mission of the artist and the place it deserves to occupy in the cultural affairs of humanity. Attractive though the theme itself may be, our purpose is not so much to try to extract from this brilliant monograph the special thesis which pervades it, but rather to review the thesis in conjunction with her approach to Plato, the philosopher , who seems to appear on every page as both her main mentor and adversary. Murdoch writes on Plato with remarkable ease but primarily to convince the reader---or is it herself?.--about her defense of a view that Plato held in abeyance against his better judgment. In a way, Murdoch is lecturing on what she thinks and what she believes Plato should not have recommended to the generations that followed him. Were it possible for Plato to have grasped the essence of her conclusion, he would have had second thoughts about banishing the artist, or at least reconsidered the artist's place in society at the time he finished writing his dialogues. According to Murdoch, Plato never gave a definitive argument for the position he took. This explains why her interpretation of Plato is neither objective nor wholly unsympathetic. The published version of her 1976 Romanes Lecture is a difficult and complicated text to read. One suspects that the material she presented in her public address is now the last part of the essay and added later what is now the bulk of the first part of the essay. The expanded version serves the purpose of providing the reader with the background to appreciate her personal debate with Plato. Not only would she not under any circumstances banish the artist, but she would be perfectly willing to ignore the artist who falls by the wayside. The stakes are too high and the risks are justified since "a free art is an essential aspect of a free society . . ." (p. 85). Murdoch has done more than just give us another statement in the long series of commentaries on Plato's approach to art. A distinguished thinker and an accomplished novelist in her own right, she neither conceals her commitments nor softens her attacks as these emerge in the course of her discussion. They often do more to irritate than stimulate the scholar, particularly when she hastens to enlist support from Kant, Tolstoy, Freud and others, whose reflections on art she can orchestrate with impressive virtuosity. Lightening the ambivalences she finds in Plato's works is not her real objective. Her own involvement and investment are reflected, albeit somewhat ambiguously, in the subtitle of the essay: "Why Plato Banished the Artist." It reads better as a plaintive cry rather than a problem to which the essay will provide the answer. Plato's own is clearly given in the dialogues. Understandably enough, her restatement of Plato's answer is mere background to the answer she has worked out to a complex problem which in modern times took on an unexpected turn and was given manifestly anti-Platonic solutions. Thus Plato and Murdoch appear to state the problem in unison only to diverge sharply after a great deal of conceptual criss-crossing. [239] 240 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY As the intensive search unfolds its course with the aid of Plato's teachings we are brought back to one of Plato's deepest concenrns: how to view mankind in a world that cannot be fully understood unless art is understood as receiving its authority and meaning from what the world is, namely, a cosmos as the work of a divine mind. Given this perspective, it is no surprise to see Murdoch dwelling more on the cosmic context than probing into problems of aesthetics. Thus we move upward from the subtitle to the title: The Fire and the Sun, and the corresponding mythical symbols begin to engage our attention. Since the intention is to offer illumination rather than scholarly commentary, she uses an expositional manner which permits her...