Que antiga querela entre poesia e filosofia?

Abstract

In a celebrated passage of Plato’s Republic, Socrates speaks of “an ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy” (Rep. X, 607b-c). But did such a quarrel ever really exist in pre-Socratic Greek culture? Examination of the evidence of Greek poetry and 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 or poets attacking philosophers. The only poetic genre in which attacks upon philosophers were 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 as deriving from Old Comedy. The paper considers how we can understand the ensuing likelihood that the quarrel to which Socrates refers had no existence outside of Old Comedy on the one hand and Plato’s philosophy on the other.