Topic > Censorship in Plato's Republic - 2401

These concepts and measures he was thinking of adopting - namely the censorship of art, the demand for productivity over morality, the concept that everyone has a place in society, the idea that everyone should do what they have to do, the precept that people should have no possessions of their own but should be forced to work for them, to eat and share in public with their community – would not lead to the society he dreamed of but, in fact, , result in a horrific cascade of logic that leads to a degeneration of order and morality and ultimately ends in a tragic loss of humanity. The reasons for this are simple. First, the censorship of art is nothing more than the censorship of ideas that are both spontaneous and inherent in the people themselves. So censorship is useless. Secondly, censorship of art removes the means of expression and liberation and will result in these negative acts occurring on a more regular basis. Third, and most importantly, children, without any opposition to good in their lives, will not know evil and therefore will have no propensity to follow a certain moral code. For them there will be no morality, only good. Therefore, censorship of art, in itself, will cause the negative effects mentioned above. This is why art censorship will ruin art