Plato's Musical Imagination

Dissertation, State University of New York at Stony Brook (1982)
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Abstract

This work essays a new understanding of the Republic of Plato. In the Prologue, a Platonic "likely story" setting forth the epistemological circumstances of the birth of Plato's great work is given. In "Reading Plato," the first chapter of Part One, the problems surrounding past interpretations of the work are detailed, and the reasons for the misdirection in modern hermeneutical theory are given. The fundamental hypothesis that this thesis seeks to verify--culled from current hermeneutical work on Plato--is then presented: The Republic reproduces and replicates the basic structures of the science of Pythagorean tuning theory, and it cannot be understood except in this light. Chapter Two of the first Part, "The Musical Model," details this Pythagorean tuning theory, giving the Reader all the tools needed for an understanding of the Republic. Part Two takes up the work, Book by Book, demonstrating that every major and minor detail of Plato's city is inherently musical in nature, and that, consequently, a total understanding of the Republic is impossible in the absence of such musical reference. Justification for such a methodology is shown to be given by Plato himself in his Divided Line, i.e., the Republic carries with it its own criteria for being read. In the Conclusion, past approaches to the Republic are categorized and their inadequacies exposed in light of the Platonic divisions of knowing. Plato's political theory is found to be essentially oracular, in that its concern is solely with decision-making and its mechanism is noncognitive. Plato is found to be, not the grandfather of Western philosophy, but the last great philosopher of the East

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The Musical Scales of Plato's Republic.J. F. Mountford - 1923 - Classical Quarterly 17 (3-4):125-.
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