Around roughly 380 BC, Plato composed arguably his most influential political work, The Republic. This dialogue stands out among Plato’s many for several reasons. First, unlike the bulk of Plato’s dialogues, The Republic is more didactic than dialectic. In the dialogue, rather than deconstructing others’ ideas and assumptions, Socrates spends most of the dialogue putting forth his own ideas pertaining to justice and the state, which was highly uncharacteristic. Second, it is Plato’s most political dialogue, with Socrates, constructing what he believes to be the foundations for a successful city-state. Thirdly, and what is mostly overlooked by commentators, is that among Plato’s works, The Republic more resembles a work of fiction than of
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Fictional prose, unlike the blunt instruments of rhetoric and logos, allows the writer to bring the reader into another world, in which the reader is able to experience the writer’s ideas, rather than merely have them stipulated to them. By engaging the reader in a writer’s ideas through experience, the writer is able to employ pathos much more effectively, which, according to Aristotle, is the most effective–though not the most ethical–means of persuasion, and is the edifice of the entire poetic form. Pathos–the Greek word for “suffering” or “experience”–is often used contemporarily as to be more or less synonymous with “an appeal to emotions;” however, pathos in the Aristotelian sense, has a much broader function, and can be thought of more as an engagement with the reader’s sympathies and imagination. The aim of pathos is to bring the reader–or audience–into another world-view¬¬¬¬, through which they may sympathize with the writer’s intentions through imagination. Pathos and poetics are so closely aligned, they can almost be thought of as interchangeable; pathos being the fundamental aim of poetics, while poetics is the most effective application of Pathos. For More, using poetics and pathos in order to engage his readers’ sympathies and imagination gave his ideas more palpability, allowing for more visceral, rather than intellectual appeal. This, in effect, carries with it another offshoot derived from the use of fictional prose, namely, the ability to reach a broader audience (which, considering the plain style in which Utopia was written, seems to be one of his aims). This is because almost all individuals have the capacity to experience sympathy and imagination, while only a select few are able to comprehend sophistication argumentation–and this discrepancy would have
Fictional prose, unlike the blunt instruments of rhetoric and logos, allows the writer to bring the reader into another world, in which the reader is able to experience the writer’s ideas, rather than merely have them stipulated to them. By engaging the reader in a writer’s ideas through experience, the writer is able to employ pathos much more effectively, which, according to Aristotle, is the most effective–though not the most ethical–means of persuasion, and is the edifice of the entire poetic form. Pathos–the Greek word for “suffering” or “experience”–is often used contemporarily as to be more or less synonymous with “an appeal to emotions;” however, pathos in the Aristotelian sense, has a much broader function, and can be thought of more as an engagement with the reader’s sympathies and imagination. The aim of pathos is to bring the reader–or audience–into another world-view¬¬¬¬, through which they may sympathize with the writer’s intentions through imagination. Pathos and poetics are so closely aligned, they can almost be thought of as interchangeable; pathos being the fundamental aim of poetics, while poetics is the most effective application of Pathos. For More, using poetics and pathos in order to engage his readers’ sympathies and imagination gave his ideas more palpability, allowing for more visceral, rather than intellectual appeal. This, in effect, carries with it another offshoot derived from the use of fictional prose, namely, the ability to reach a broader audience (which, considering the plain style in which Utopia was written, seems to be one of his aims). This is because almost all individuals have the capacity to experience sympathy and imagination, while only a select few are able to comprehend sophistication argumentation–and this discrepancy would have