The Parody Of Socrates Allegory In Book X Of The Republic

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Book X of The Republic can be viewed as a parody because Socrates is critical towards poets for creating images but he is guilty of doing the same. He bans the poets from the city for their ability to create images, but he too is guilty of creating images with his depictions of healthy cities, feverish cities, the myth of metals, his allegory of the cave, and countless other examples he uses to support his argument of what justice is. The reason Socrates dislikes poets is that they have no knowledge and are just observers who imitate images (Plato 285) and when they do imitate, they imitate the worse parts of the soul and are corruptive (289). Socrates is much more receptive towards philosophers like himself because they possess knowledge and