Daniel J. Sundahl
Plato argues that music is a moral law that gives soul to the universe and wings to the mind. And that music gives flight to the imagination, charm to sadness, gaiety to life and is the essence of order and leads to all that is good and just and beautiful. Is Plato right that musical innovation alters the fundamental laws of the State?

It is not everyday that the world arranges itself into a poem.
       —Wallace Stevens, from the Adagia
And so I think we should say that the fig wood is more appropriate than the golden unless you have an alternative suggestion…. Which of the two ladles is appropriate to the soup and to the pot? Or is it likely to make the soup smell nicer, and at the same time, my friend, it would not shatter our pot, spill the soup, put out the fire, and deprive the impending diners of their noble meal, while the golden one would do all that.
       —Plato, Hippias Major
So we shall have to enlarge the city further… filling it with numerous things which go beyond the strict necessity… for example, the practitioners of mimesis: the many who use shapes and colors, the many who use musical forms, the poets and their assistants (rhapsodes, actors, dancers, theatrical impresarios) and the makers of multiple products, including women’s cosmetics.
       —Plato, The Republic
Musical innovation is full of danger to the State, for when modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the State always change with them.
       —Plato, The Republic
By Way Of An Introduction
I have an affection for Wallace Stevens, his poems and especially his prose piece The Necessary Angel. It seems to me a consummate of philosophy this lengthy essay on reality and the imagination. His further point? How poetry can breath life into a dull world repossessing reality through the imagination which manifests itself in its domination of words.  » Read More
https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2024/12/plato-banished-artists-republic-daniel-j-sundahl.html