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But, it is also a key feature of the Republic which we will
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be reading in a week, where Socrates offers
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an elaborate proposal for the censorship and control of poetry,
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if it is to be made compatible with the demands of political justice.
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In fact, in a way you cannot understand the Republic
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unless you understand the poetic backdrop to it
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and Socrates' long standing engagement with the poetic tradition
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and this back and forth between himself
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and the man he calls this comic poet.
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The core of this quarrel between the philosopher and the poet,
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between Socrates and Aristophanes is not just an aesthetic judgment
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or it is not simply an aesthetic quarrel it is,