Hi Chris,
It's very hard to argue over Plato here -- we'd need a lot more than a paragraph on each side. In any case, I'm not sure how far I disagree with what you say in your last post or how far I have to disagree.
What seems central to our disagreement is this:
"I think there's one Truth which neither knows language nor how to converse, that it's like the sea, and that writing poetry is like making shapes from foam, and that its purpose is to make consciousness bearable."
You seemed to cite Plato to support this, yet I don't really see that Plato thinks the truth can't be spoken. On your view, The Philosopher Kings themselves couldn't talk to each other about the nature of Justice or the Good, because language would somehow get in the way. I don't see any such implication in Plato.
But, whatever Plato thinks, I wonder how you would defend the view that the truth is really unsayable.
That's a tall order though.
Perhaps you could tell me how poetry and other literary productions are supposed to make consciousness bearable.
One possibility is that it provides a pleasant distraction from life -- an escape. This is the most obvious explanation of how it could make consciousness bearable. But I suspect it isn't one you would want to accept. What is your alternate account?
On my view, I would say that great art does try to reconcile us to the hard realities of life -- to give us a way to deal with unalterable realities, like death. (The things we "need to believe" on my view are quite often true -- and we need to believe them because they are true.) This too would be a part of practical wisdom, on my view -- coming to terms with what is unalterable.
But this requires art to be faithful to the reality beyond itself -- not to diminish suffering or death in order to reconcile us to it too easily. But I don't see so much room for faithfulness to reality in your account. If you deny art the ability to tell the truth (or show reality), aren't you left with a view of art as escape?
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