Literature According to Plato

The regressive decline of literary works in contemporary times, the failure of specialists to differentiate between valuable and inferior literary works, and the increasing multitude of literary theories and approaches all indicate a kind of frustration regarding the possibility of fully understanding literature. This situation, while avoiding the question ‘What is literature?’, also emphasizes the importance of posing it. The science of rhetoric in the Islamic world and the art of oratory in ancient Greece and Rome, on one hand, and fields like linguistics, literary criticism, and even literary theory, on the other, have tended to address only specific parts of the whole of literature or have relied on rigid metaphysics. Especially in the post-metaphysical era, they fail to present or form the question. To pose this question, we must simultaneously turn away from dominant philosophical and literary trends of the contemporary century and search for the roots of philosophy and literature in the dawn of philosophy, that is, in ancient Greece, under the broad concepts of philosophia and poiesis. Returning to origins is the only way out of intellectual and philosophical deadlocks. The first step in this serious endeavor is to reread and analyze the dialogues of Plato, and the title ‘Literature According to Plato’ is chosen to introduce such a study.