QUE ANTIGA QUERELA ENTRE POESIA E FILOSOFIA?

Abstract

In a celebrated passage of Plato’s Republic, Socrates speaks of “an ancientquarrel between poetry and philosophy” (Rep. X, 607b-c). But did such a quarrel everreally exist in pre-Socratic Greek culture? Examination of the evidence of Greek poetryand philosophy from the centuries preceding Socrates reveals, with a single exception,little or no trace of any such quarrel in either direction, philosophers attacking poets orpoets attacking philosophers. The only poetic genre in which attacks upon philosopherswere frequent was Old Comedy; Socrates himself was notoriously a prominent target.And all four passages that Socrates cites in support of his claim are best interpreted asderiving from Old Comedy. The paper considers how we can understand the ensuinglikelihood that the quarrel to which Socrates refers had no existence outside of OldComedy on the one hand and Plato’s philosophy on the other.