Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2001 08:49:08 -0400
Subject: RE: Ethics of Aesthetics?




> 
> But who is the tribunal to make this justification? For Plato, it was
> the Overlords. All other classes in his Republic would live as slaves,
> functioning only according the dictates of reason. That is 
> why the poets
> were banned.

"The Bookburning" (Die Bücherverbrennung)

"When the regime ordered
Books with dangerous knowledge
To be burned in public and everywhere
Oxen were forced to pull, carts with books
to the bonfires, one of the persecuted poets
discovered one of the best
studying the list of the burned
disconcerted, that his books were forgotten.
He rushed to his desk, flying on wings of rage
and wrote a letter to the authorities.
Burn me! he wrote with a quick stroke
Burn me! don't do this to me! Do not spare me!
Have I not always reported the truth in my books?
Yet now you treat me as were I a liar!
I command you: Burn me!"
 
 Bertolt Brecht