The Collapse Of The Community

Both Plato and Rousseau criticized literature and art from the standpoint of community.Rousseau’s inheritance of Plato’s classical political ideal made their thoughts inextricably linked.This paper attempts to discuss the main contents of their literary criticism from the two aspects of "truth" and "goodness" of literature and art,and to compare and analyze the similarities and differences of their literary and art thoughts in combination with their political ideals,and to think about the relationship between literature and art and politics,individual and community.The first part mainly discusses the contents of Plato’s poetry criticism from two aspects: poetry is far away from truth and poetry is against morality.It includes "truth" and "good" into the city-state politics with the core of reason style,and analyzes the internal relations between his literary criticism and the city-state political system and the philosophy of reason style.And from the two aspects of poetry education and philosophy poetry,this paper discusses the change of Plato’s poetics view from the Republic to the legal chapter,and analyzes the reasons of this change with the specific text.The second part is about Rousseau’s critical thought of literature and art from the standpoint of civilization criticism.First of all,it discusses freedom and equality in the natural state,and natural goodness composed of self-preservation and compassion.Second,it analyzes the alienation of human nature and the deterioration of interest in the civilized society,as well as the loss of freedom and equality brought by them.Finally,it discusses the sincerity of literature and art,and analyzes the relationship between sincere personality and social morality.The third part is about the comparison and reflection of Rousseau’s and Plato’s literary thoughts.This paper first discusses the similarities between the two literary thoughts from the inheritance of the ideal of the city-state and the moral criticism of the literature and art,and then discusses the essential differences between the two literary thoughts in the two aspects of "truth" and "good" from the differences of the political system of the city-state.Finally,through the limitations of their literary and art thoughts,this paper reflects on the relationship between literature and art and politics,between individual and city-state,and on the existing significance of modern literature and art,the autonomy of literature,the responsibility of intellectuals and other issues.