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Socrates Decisions To Censorship In Plato's Republic

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In Plato’s “Republic” Socrates decides to censor stories that show people (especially men and the gods) acting improperly and immorally, anything that can be proven untrue, and most ridiculously he decides that the music that guardians in training listen to should also be censored. Socrates does this because he is worried that immoral actions in the stories will affect the citizen in a negative way. Socrates’ censoring of music is somewhat more complex and less blatant than his censoring of literature, he decides that since music has an effect on people that the guardians in training should only listen to “manly and ordered” (basically meaning empowering music).Unfortunately, censorship of all these things would create more problems than not …show more content…

P 198) is an erroneous one. Socrates also decides to censor stories containing figures and places (Cocytus and Styx are some of the more notable examples) that would inspire fear. (Great Dialogues of Plato, The Republic III. P 209). Socrates makes this decision because he fears that if exposed to such stories, the children will be molded by them and acting accordingly (Great Dialogues of Plato, The Republic II. P. 198). Unfortunately there are several visible problems with this decision. The main problem seen with this decision is that, people would benefit from hearing these stories so that they can learn from the mistakes that were made in the said stories. Most often people learn from the mistakes of the others and the past, so by censoring stories that have negative content Socrates is depriving them of the ability to learn from the mistakes made in those stories. Another problem is that the censorship of these types of stories makes them even more attractive. If someone tells you not to do something, it just generates more questions, such as “why can’t I do that?” or “what will happen if I do that?” It will often times also create a desire to perform action in question just to see its effects for ourselves (like in the myth of Pandora’s

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