ABSTRACT
Philosophy has almost always had a troubled relationship with art, and especially with those artworks aimed to entertain the masses. Plato's Republic, written in the age of ancient Greece, describes an (even then) ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry, where “poetry” was understood to encompass storytelling, theater, and other popular arts. At the same time – and this may account for the conflict's endurance – there are remarkable affinities between philosophy and art. Even in its most popular genres art engages with our deepest values and highest aspirations. The arts explore ideals in sensuous and concrete form. Ancient theater and poetry, for example, depict characters whose struggles resonate with their audience, because what they strive for is what we all strive for to some degree or other: love, a better life, honor, beauty, dignity, revenge, freedom, justice, an enduring legacy, truth. Philosophy, in its own way, approaches just these issues: what is love, what is the best kind of life, what is honor, what is justice, what is freedom, what is beauty, what is truth and how do we attain it? It is ironic, perhaps, but no accident that Plato himself, whose writings posed what is perhaps the most serious and still relevant challenge to poetry and popular art, nevertheless wrote down his own philosophy in the form of dramatic dialogues, depicting characters whose struggles were for understanding, who grappled with ideas. In spite of their heady themes, when read with care his dialogues can be quite entertaining, and exhibit the marks of a master of dramatic craft. There is a careful attention to setting. There is subtlety in the subtexts. There is comedy in the human foibles of his characters who struggle not to seem ridiculous, there is pathos in the realization that what matters most to them may not be worth having, there is tragedy in the discovery that the human condition may render ideals unattainable.
