La significación ética de la <i>mímesis</i> poética en la <i>República</i> de Platón y su influencia en la estética de Gadamer y Badiou

Abstract

In The Republic –books II, III and X– Plato demands that traditional poets justify their right to educate from several perspectives (religious, ethical-political, ontological-epistemological and psychological). In spite of the clear differences found among these perspectives from which Plato criticises traditional poetry, we find a keyword running through them: the concept of mímesis, whose focus varies depending on the book analysed. Against the backdrop of the conception of poets as moral teachers of young souls, we examine, in the first place, Platonic criticism of poetry in the light of the ethical meaning of mímesis that appears in book III. This is done in order to sustain that philosophical supervision of the poetic tradition ultimately rests on this meaning. Secondly, we analyse the influence that the ethical significance of mímesis and the Platonic gesture of exclusion have had on Hans-Georg Gadamer and Alain Badiou, two important representatives of contemporary philosophy that, taking the problem of the philosophical legitimization of art initiated by Plato in The Republic as their axis, are concerned with the relation between ethics and aesthetics.