Censorship In Plato's Republic

Plato’s republic is based, largely, on order and responsibility. The only morality in this society deals with the relative functions of the members of said society. For example: A man kills another man. Why is this a bad thing? In most societies, this would be considered bad or wrong because the societal morals dictate that one’s life is sacred and one’s body is one’s own etc etc etc. In Plato’s republic, the only reason people (namely, Plato) would be against a murder, is because, once a man has lost his life, he will no longer be able to function according to the provenance of the governing bodies. Despite the fundamental difference in moral purpose, however, morals do indeed play a prominent role in the republic. Consider the republic as

One person’s opinion of a given work will differ greatly from the next. The point in question here, is not whether art is good. The point that needs to be dealt with, at least as far as Plato is concerned, is whether or not art has a negative (or enticing) effect on the general population. Given the fact that the effect of art differs so drastically from one person to the next, censorship of a given work will be next to useless. Also, because only certain works are censored, censorship becomes even more useless. The fact of the matter is, it is not the art that is perverse, it is the humans. Saying this, it becomes clear that censorship of art in any form is a fairly moot

These concepts and measures he was thinking of taking - ie the censorship of art, the demand for productivity over morality, the concept of everyone having a place in society, the notion that everyone should do what they need to do, the precept that people should have no possessions of their own but should be forced to work for them and eat and share in public with their community – would not result in the society he was dreaming of but would, in fact, result in a horrendous cascade of logic leading to a degeneration of order and morality and eventually ending with a tragic loss of humanity. The reasons for this are simple. Firstly, the censorship of art is nothing more than the censorship of ideas that are both spontaneous AND inherent to the people themselves. Thus, censorship is useless. Secondly, the censorship of art removes means of expression and release and will result in the occurrence of these negative acts on a more regular basis. Thirdly, and most importantly, the children, with no foil to the good in their lives, will not know bad and thus will not have any proclivity to follow a given moral code. To them, there will be no morality, only good. Thus, the censorship of art, unto itself, will cause the negative effects mentioned above. This is why the censorship of art will ruin the