The Republic by Plato - 3 - Censoring Everything
Book Four
Quote
"So our first job, apparently, is to oversee the work of the story-writers..."
Notes
Socrates moves to the education of the guardians. He's wary that they're taking a very long road towards answering the original question about morality, but still they agree to continue pursuing the course they're on.
Education consists of both "exercise for the body and cultural studies for the mind." It's also crucially important to inculcate the right values when students are young and in their formative years. That being the case, a huge portion of education, as Socrates describes it, is to limit and censor the stories children are allowed to hear and being careful to only allow them to hear things that will support their moral improvement.
Any stories that depict the gods fighting with each other shall not be allowed. The reason is that is not how the gods truly are. "Isn't God good, in fact," he says, "and shouldn't he be described as such?" God is only responsible for good things, not bad things. Stories that portray gods doing bad things cannot be allowed, unless they're punishing bad people.
He goes on with more stipulations about how God must and must not be depicted. God cannot be shown taking on human form because God is eternal and unchanging. He cannot be shown deceiving anyone, since God can never lie. This means a lot of the Greek stories and mythology will have to be heavily censored, including their most famous poets, Hesiod and Homer.
Any unfavourable displays of emotion, ie grieving when someone they love has died, will be censored as well. "They'd better not be prone to laughter either," Socrates says. So humour should be discouraged, too.
Stories should encourage honesty for ordinary people, but it should be okay for the rulers/guardians to lie when necessary: "If it's anyone's job, then, it's the job of the rulers of our community: they can lie for the good of the community, when either an external or an internal threat makes it necessary."
Socrates goes on to describe two styles of storytelling: narrative and representation. Whereas narrative is description, representation is when the storyteller takes on the voice of the character (in dialogue, for example). Socrates says that even though representation is more entertaining, it should be restricted since it supports the idea that one person can do many things, and the community they are creating is all about everyone staying in their lane and only doing their one job well. Representation is also bad because it allows the depiction of bad men. If it's to be allowed at all, it should only be limited to depicting good and admirable men.
All other areas of society are to be censored using the same principles described when it comes to stories, including music and other art forms. Essentially every craft and area of society should be designed in such a way to instill and inspire the qualities they desire in the community.
Sex for pleasure will be restricted as well. Though it seems they only touch on sex and authentic love between a man and his boyfriend. They don't have anything to say about sex between husband and wife.
When it comes to medicine, they also stipulate that treatment will be restricted to only those who are otherwise healthy. Anyone who is constitutionally sick or "incapable of living a normal life", treatment should not be wasted on them, since "such a person does neither himself nor his community any good."
Key Takeaways
Plato's Republic is sounding a bit like a totalitarian nightmare. The amount of censorship and control that would be required here is frightening. It is reasonable to want to promote positive qualities and characteristics in your society, especially children. And maybe limiting negative content is reasonable, too, to a degree. Similar to a parent controlling what kind of shows their kids are allowed to watch. But the degree of censorship that Plato is describing things here feels way too extreme and actually totalitarian. And the promotion of something veering on eugenics in medicine only makes it worse.
It doesn't look like freedom of expression was at all an important part of this republic. Quite the opposite, in fact.