Plato's pronouncements on the arts in Book X have engaged a spirited scholarly debate that continues to the present day. Many societies have from time to time adopted Plato's ideas in order to advocate and practice censorship of the arts on the grounds that they manifest themes that are morally corruptive, that they "send the wrong message" to citizens whose reasoning power is weak at best. A totally opposite point of view is adopted by artists, scholars, and various schools of criticism who maintain that art is apolitical and essentially amoral, and that it should not be placed under the purview of any censorship whatever.
Of course a frequent criticism of Plato's pronouncements herein is that Plato presumes to advance aesthetic criticism, that he is arguing generalities, and that Plato seems to be revealed as a curmudgeon who would prefer to strip away any form of entertainment from the state. But it should be plain to us that Plato is not advancing aesthetic judgments here; he is objecting to the claim, popular in his day and in ours, that poets are good moral teachers. Given Plato's system of thought and practically everything else he has written, we can see why he would be adamantly opposed to such a claim for the poets.
