4 - Music, Poetry, and Politics in Averroes’sCommentary on Plato’s “Republic”

Summary

As our title announces, the current essay will explorethree subjects that, in Averroes's Commentary on Plato's“Republic,” lead from one into another,almost like a short series of stepping-stones. Thefirst part of the essay will consider the treatmentof music in the Commentary, arguing that Averroeseffectively reduces music to poetry. The second ofthe stepping-stones will show that the Commentary credits poetrywith educating the young especially and in that waytransforms poetry into a political art fordisciplining and educating citizens. The third willtake up the question of the Andalusian's extendedcriticism of poetry's common practice of offeringpleasurable prizes and rewards for virtue and showhow the Commentator applies this criticism of poetryto the very author on whom he is commenting. Inpursuing all three of these questions, we will focussquarely on Averroes's Commentary on Plato's “Republic,”attempting to understand that text on its own termsbut against its obvious background, the Republic of Plato.Nevertheless, in pursuing the teaching of The Commentary on Plato's“Republic,” we cannot neglect theimportant research that has been done in recentdecades on classical Islamic philosophy'sunderstanding of Aristotle's Organon generally and of the Poetics in particular. Wewill therefore turn to the reports of other scholarson these aspects of Averroes, at least to the extentthat such reports will be helpful in enabling us tounderstand better the Commentary on Plato's “Republic.”

In the Republic, Platoinitiates his analysis of the education of theguardians with a discussion of music in the latterportions of book 2; that discussion extends throughmuch of book 3. Averroes's corresponding treatmentof the education of the guardians through music isin the “First Treatise” of the Commentary, mostly in a relativelylengthy and isolable section that extends from 29.9through 36.5. During his treatment of music, Platodivides his subject into three parts: “melody iscomposed of three things—speech, harmonic mode, andrhythm.” Averroes seems to accept this division,although he inverts the order of the three elements:“A melody occurring in a narrative is composed ofthree things: rhythm, harmonic mode, and the speechto which the melody is set” (34.30–31).