Republic Assignment 3/27

1) Short Paragraph – Personal Reflection: Before reading the selection from Plato write at least one full paragraph on this question: Why do you think Plato (or anyone else) would want to censor Hesiod? Remember that Hesiod was the poet who wrote about the fight between the gods and the titans.

I think that people wanted to censor Hesiod and Homer because they wrote about things that could in theory encourage mutinous thoughts in society. This in turn would incite violence against the government or anything that holds up the working society. So in turn Plato or others would want to censor this disrupting text.

2) a. What are Homer and Hesiod guilty of?

misrepresenting the nature of the gods

b. What are the two main characteristics of “god” and what are the laws/principles of story telling based on those characteristics?

God is the cause of everything good in the world and if they decided to punish it was for a good reason.

3) Compare what you wrote in your personal reflection above (#1) with what Plato wrote. How close were you to what Plato wrote?

I think that I was close but still a little off on the details. I wrote that they censored to protect government and social structure, but they say the the censorship was for the protection of the gods reputations.