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So, I'm going to start,

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I'm actually going to talk about
censorship in the arts,

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censorship in Utopia,
looking at the experiences

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of the ancient and modern world.

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But I want to begin
with one of my favourite poems

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by the American poet Wallace Stevens,
and this is

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'The Man with the Blue Guitar' --
some of you may know it.

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I won't give you any introduction to it,
just see what you think,

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this is a few stanzas.

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The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts.

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The day was green.

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They said, 'You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are.'

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The man replied, 'Things as they are 
Are changed upon the blue guitar.'

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And they said then, 'But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,

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A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are.'

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I cannot bring a world quite round,
Although I patch it as I can.

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I sing a hero's head, large eye
And bearded bronze, but not a man,

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Although I patch him as I can
And reach through him almost to man.

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If to serenade almost to man
Is to miss, by that, things as they are,

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Say that it is the serenade 
Of a man that plays a blue guitar."

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We'll come back to another stanza of that
at the end of this talk.

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Now one of the many interesting things
about Wallace Stevens's poem

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is that Stevens was fascinated by
the philosophy of the Ancient Greek

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philosopher Plato writing
about the 370's, 380's BC.

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He's intrigued by Plato's
philosophy of ideas,

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which we will come on to you later.

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And it seems to me that these lines are
almost certainly a meditation

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on the attack on art and artists
made by the character of Socrates

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in Plato's dialogue 'The Republic'.

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As you know, and this is also
a point we'll come back to,

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Plato never writes in his own voice,
but always through various characters

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in his dramatic dialogues,
Socrates often being the main one.

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It's important, we'll find out,
that they are not the same person.

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Now, those who live in this green world
that Wallace Stevens describes

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are angry with the man
who has the temerity

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to break up this monochrome greenness
and play a blue guitar.

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The people who are angry
in Stevens's poems

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are those who are voicing
the attacks on artists

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which Socrates puts forward,

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the man with the blue guitar
is, of course, the artist.

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Now, what I propose to do today

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is to very briefly run through,
the speed of light,

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some of the main arguments

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made against art and artists
in the dialogue 'The Republic',

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in which Socrates sets up
an ideally just state, or so he claims.

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And I want to see
if any of the charges made

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have anything to tell us today,
whether we can learn anything from them,

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even if we want to reject
the metaphysical basis

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on which they're grounded,
as I imagine many of us will,

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I doubt if many people here are believers
in Plato's theory of Forms.

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I once had a student who began an essay,

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'Last night when I saw
the Form of the Good',

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which I felt was cheating somewhat.

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But I think we have a lot to learn,

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and I'm going to say that,
including myself, even those of us

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who are wary about the notion
of censorship in the arts,

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I think we can still find a lot to gain
from why Socrates is so nervous

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about the arts and why he thinks
they are so dangerous.

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Now incidentally,
for the sake of brevity,

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I'm just going to call the character
of Socrates in 'The Republic' Socrates,

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but by that I don't mean
the historical figure of Socrates,

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I'm just using that as shorthand.

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So, in Books II and III of this dialogue
called 'The Republic',

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in which Socrates outlines
the basic foundations for an ideal state,

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also called The Republic,

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his first attack comes in the context
of a discussion of the education

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of the young guardians,
by which he means

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both the future rulers of this state

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and also the future military force
in this state,

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the two guardian classes.

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And in Books II and III Socrates
advocates extreme censorship

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of Homer and Greek tragedians such as
Sophocles and Aeschylus.

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Firstly, he thinks that they,
the poets, then the dramatists,

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misrepresent the nature of the divine,

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interesting attack,
given recent controversies

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about Danish cartoons and the like.

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And he says that these artists repeat
the old myths and legends

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about Zeus and Aphrodite and Dionysus,
in which, of course, as you know,

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the gods behave absolutely appallingly.

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They lie, they cheat,
they steal, they get drunk,

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they lust after other people's wives,
they kill family members,

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and they sleep, of course, with
anyone and anything that moves.

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God, says Socrates, is good
and is the cause only of good;

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Homer and the others
have got god wrong.

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That's his first claim,
he wants to excise all those passages

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from Homer and the dramatists
which get god wrong.

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Secondly, art needs to be censured,

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because it represents,
appeals to and nurtures

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dangerous emotions such as lust and greed
and anger and aggression,

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which should be left, says Socrates,
to wither and die on the vine,

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not fed and nurtured.

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There's an interesting contrast here
with Aristotle, of course,

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writing a generation after Plato,

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with Aristotle's view,
who thinks that by watching

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and acting out the darker aspects
of the human psyche,

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we can purge ourselves
of such murky desires,

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his famous notion of catharsis;

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artistic representation is catharsis
or cleansing, purging.

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This is a debate we may want to come
back to in the discussion,

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and it's interesting
that these two polar views

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appear in the ancient world.

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Of course, it's impossible to prove,

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it's hard enough to ever make a case
that a particular act of violence

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is directly caused by, say,
a particular film,

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even if the perpetrator of the act
of violence is going around dressed

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as the anti-hero of the film.

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Of course, it's even harder,
it's impossible

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to know how many crimes
have been prevented,

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because somebody, through watching
or acting out a certain work of art,

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was able to purge themselves

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of certain very dangerous desires
that they had.

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Now, we may feel
when we are reading Books II and III

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that the censorship rules
are too Draconian, of course we may,

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but we may still also feel, well,
Socrates has a point.

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We're talking about the education
of very young children

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with plastic, imitative minds;

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he wants to give them
good positive role models,

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before their reason has developed
and can start to question and assess

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the material they're presented with.

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So, we may feel in principle it's not
so terrible to censor the arts,

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even if he takes it too far,

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given the context, given the age group.

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Now, by the time we get
to the next attack on art,

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in the final book of 'The Republic',
Book X,

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we're into much more disturbing territory,

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because here Socrates advocates
not just censoring art,

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but banning, almost all art,

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just getting rid of art from
the ideal state in almost its entirety.

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And it's not just children that are being
considered here, but adults.

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And, of course, a charge often made

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is that Socrates is treating
adults as children.

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Now, the reason for the strengthening
of this attack

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is the psychology and metaphysics
that's gone on

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in 'The Republic'
in the intervening books, in IV to IX.

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And, again, to skip politely through

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some of the most important chapters
in philosophy ever written,

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very, very briefly in Book IV,

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we are told that the human psyche
is composed of three separate parts:

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The appetitive part which desires food,
drink, sex, material goods,

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the money needed to acquire them;

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a spirited part which desires
worldly honours and success and victory;

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and a rational part which desires
truth and reality.

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Interesting that the rational part has
its own desires;

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the distinction is not between
reason and the emotions,

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but between rational
and non-rational desires,

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and that's important.

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And our virtue, but also our flourishing
and our happiness,

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consist in the proper balance between
these three parts of our psyche,

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in what Plato calls interior harmony
or mental health,

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the phrase that Socrates uses.

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And this will only occur if our reason

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and its desires for truth and reality
are in control.

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And then in Books V to VII
we learn a lot more

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about the nature
of this truth and reality

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that the rational part seeks,
namely the so-called Forms of the Good

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and the Beautiful and the Just;
abstract, unchanging, eternal entities

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which are both the cause
and the explanation

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of all the things on this Earth.

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And everything on this Earth, in this
sensible phenomenal world around us,

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are merely copies of the Forms --
'Only semi-real', says Socrates.

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Now, this provides the basis
for the major attack on art in Book X,

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because works of art are now
said to be both untrue,

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in the sense that they are merely
copies of copies --

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an idea that we could come back to --

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and also hugely damaging to the harmony
and health and happiness

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of the individual psyche,

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in that they represent,
appeal to and nurture

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not just dangerous, aggressive emotions

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but non-rational emotions
and desires in general.

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And that will upset the balance
of the psyche in which reason

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and rational desires should rule.

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So, by now almost all artists are going
to be escorted politely, but firmly,

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to the borders of the state
and sent on their way.

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We're left, apparently, we can have
hymns to the gods

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and paeans to good men,
it sounds absolutely dire.

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Now it's true that Socrates
isn't comfortable about this.

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He says that it really pains him
to remove Homer,

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and what he calls
the poetry of pleasure

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that Homer
and the other dramatists provide,

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because, says Socrates,
he has loved and revered Homer

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since he was a boy.

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And he issues us a challenge.

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He says that if anyone can show that this
kind of poetry is not only pleasurable

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but also useful and beneficial,
really interesting use of language,

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he would gladly welcome it back.

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Now, when I first came across this attack
on the arts, when I was about 19,

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I was very shocked and disturbed
for two reasons.

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One, I had a very romanticized vision

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of the artist as an almost holy figure
outside the confines

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of normal, moral conventions
and expectations.

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I wanted my artists
to live like Baudelaire or whatever.

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And in common with this, 
this romanticized ideal,

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I think, was part
of a more general ethical framework

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in which I wanted to defend art
on the basis of freedom of expression,

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and I thought that freedom of expression
was so important

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because of a basic human right
to freedom of expression.

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So my whole language, though
I wasn't really aware of it at the time,

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was couched in the notion
of an ethics of rights.

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Now, both those visions, and both
those arguments in defence of art,

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would not have been available
to an Ancient Greek.

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Firstly, at the time Plato's writing,

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there was no conception
of fine art as such,

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as distinct from cobbling
or weaving or what...,

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well, weaving, of course,
we would say can be art,

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but there was no distinction
between an art and a craft.

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00:13:28,396 --> 00:13:32,061
The same word 'techne' is applied to both.

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00:13:32,061 --> 00:13:34,845
In terms of the technology,
I hope this fulfils

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the first of the TED acronyms.

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00:13:39,242 --> 00:13:42,330
And, as such,
the whole notion of a poet,

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the word for poet, poetes,
it just means a maker in Ancient Greece.

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00:13:46,880 --> 00:13:52,016
And again, a poet is no more
or less a maker than a cobbler.

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Secondly, of course, there's no language,
as far as we can tell,

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00:13:55,948 --> 00:13:58,921
of human rights in Ancient Greece.

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00:13:58,921 --> 00:14:01,880
They don't phrase their ethics
in that way;

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00:14:01,880 --> 00:14:05,555
this is a post-Kantian move, in fact.

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00:14:05,560 --> 00:14:09,509
The closest any Ancient Greek gets
to a notion of a universal right

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00:14:09,509 --> 00:14:12,260
is Aristotle when he says that
he thinks humans

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00:14:12,260 --> 00:14:15,367
have a more or less
sort of universal right

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00:14:15,367 --> 00:14:17,568
to hunt animals for food.

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00:14:17,568 --> 00:14:20,490
And so in the context
of a modern debate on human rights,

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we might say that's rather
missing the point.

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00:14:23,211 --> 00:14:26,476
The point, you know, we wouldn't
want to say that our sole right

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was a right to kill animals for food.

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00:14:29,609 --> 00:14:32,052
The language they use,
you will have noticed,

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is that of usefulness and benefit.

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00:14:34,753 --> 00:14:39,414
Socrates says, poets, he would welcome
them back, he wants them to come back,

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00:14:39,414 --> 00:14:42,374
if it can be shown that poetry and art

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00:14:42,374 --> 00:14:46,156
is beneficial both to the soul
of the individual

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and to the community as a whole.

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And it's that that I think is the point
I want to pick up on today,

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00:14:52,375 --> 00:14:56,189
and ask you
whether you think it's worthwhile

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reinvigorating the debate in the arts

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and asking is this particular art form,
is this particular example of an art form,

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is it beneficial, is it going to increase
my quality of life,

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the quality of life of my community?

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Now, you might feel
that's an illegitimate question,

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you might want to be
as I used to be

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and think all artists
should be like Baudelaire,

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and not worry about such
sort of bourgeois,

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middle-aged kind of concerns.

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But my challenge is, I think it is
an interesting question;

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we're asking at the moment whether banking
ought to be socially useful,

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why can't we ask that
of the arts as well?

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And I want to conclude with two points;

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because I think that actually,
Plato wants us to have this debate,

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and I think
Plato might well eventually himself,

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Plato not Socrates,
come down on the side of the artist;

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because I said at the beginning I wanted
to distinguish the character of Socrates

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from Plato the artist.

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Plato is a very great artist himself.

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His dramatic dialogues
are fabulous to read,

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the characterization, the vivid imagery,

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the scene setting,

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the irony, the wit,
the forward shadowing,

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ironically of future events.
He uses every artistic trick in the book.

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They're wonderful to read
as a literature in their own right.

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And so I think Plato has set us
a deliberate irony.

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His work called 'The Republic'
would be banned

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from the ideal state set out
by the character of Socrates in that work;

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it does not meet the censorship rules
that we've been looking at.

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Now, Plato is intelligent enough
to be aware of that irony.

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So what I want to suggest here is
that Plato is deliberately giving us

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different ideas, provocative ideas,

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on the usefulness or uselessness of art
to get a debate going.

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He's not necessarily going to agree with
what the character of Socrates says.

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He might be more sympathetic to a view
later put forward by John Stuart Mill

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in the 19th century
in his famous work on liberty.

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Mill there argues
that truth is best served

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through the free and open exchange
of ideas and information,

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and that this is a process
that needs to be ongoing.

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Mill argues that even a true belief

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is liable to rigidify
into dead dogma over time

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if it's not challenged.

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And I think this is exactly
what Plato is trying to do.

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We don't have to go down the route

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of extreme censorship
or the banning of the arts

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to invigorate the debate on whether
a particular work of art is worthwhile.

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I want to conclude with another verse
of the Wallace Stevens poem.

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The attackers of art say:

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Do not speak to us
of the greatness of poetry,

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Of [the] torches wisping
in the underground,

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Of the structure of vaults
upon a point of light.

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There are no shadows in our sun,

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Day is desire and night is sleep.

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There are no shadows anywhere.

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The earth, for us, is flat and bare.

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There are no shadows.

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Now, Socrates with his picture
of the Form of the Good,

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which he likens to the sun, invites us
to consider a round without shadows in it.

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Plato, the artist, however,
paints us a picture

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throughout 'The Republic'
and all his works

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of a world full of light and shade,

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which is much more sympathetic to art

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providing it can be shown to be useful
and improve our quality of life.

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So what I'd like to say to you
is that I hope

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that you will all go away
and treat yourself to some Plato,

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if you haven't already done that
in your lives.

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But as you're doing this,
I hope you'll also continue defiantly

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to strum away on a blue guitar.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)