"Music" by Plato

PHILOSOPHY & CREATIVITY

Plato's Vision of 
Music in Life

WAS MUSIC IMPORTANT TO PLATO?

"Music gives a soul to the universe" perfectly describes Plato's vision of music and its relevance in our life, which is to convey in his various writings. Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.

 

   








 Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.

Plato

Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul

• Socrates, Plato, Aristotle (1967). “Wit and Wisdom of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle: Being a Treasury of Thousands of Glorious, Inspiring and Imperishable Thoughts, Views and Observations of the Three Great Greek Philosophers, Classified Under about Four Hundred Subjects for Comparative Study”

Music is a more potent instrument than any other for education.
Plato

 PLATO'S VISION OF MUSIC IN LIFE

Philosophy is the highest music.
Plato

• Plato (2016). “Apology Of Socrates And Crito”, p.55, Read Books Ltd

Rhythm and harmony enter most powerfully into the inner most part of the soul and lay forcible hands upon it, bearing grace with them, so making graceful him who is rightly trained.
Plato

• Plato, D. J. Allan (1957). “Republic: ...”

Music is a defining element of character.



For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.
PlatoMusical innovation is full of danger to the State, for when modes of music change, the laws of the State always change with them.

The affairs of music ought, somehow, to terminate in the love of the beautiful.
Plato

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• Plato, Thomas Taylor, Floyer Sydenham (1984). “The Works of Plato”, Facsimiles-Garl
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What a poor appearance the tales of poets make when stripped of the colours which music puts upon them, and recited in simple prose.
Plato

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• Plato (2016). “The Republic”, p.485, Xist Publishing

 Let us describe the education of our men. What then is the education to be? Perhaps we could hardly find a better than that which the experience of the past has already discovered, which consists, I believe, in gymnastic, for the body, and music for the mind.
Plato

• Plato, John Llewelyn DAVIES, David James VAUGHAN (1866). “The Republic of Plato, translated into English, with an introduction, analysis, and notes. By J. Ll. Davies and D. J. Vaughan”, p.64