Comparison Of Confucian And Plato's Functional Poetics

What is the usefulness and value of literature and art? This is the old and developing issue of poetics. Confucius in the Pre-Qin Times of China and Plato of ancient Greece had their sparking thinking on this issue. This paper compares the Functional Poetics of Confucian with Plato's on the perspective of the system of literature's and art's value and analyzes the social function and individual function of their poetics. This paper will not only be a doctrinal research but also have some illumination on practical problems such as literary extinction theory, and literary useless theory, which are advocated by some scholars. This paper is divided into following three parts.Part I, This paper believe that Confucian deleting of the Book of Poetry and Plato's expulsion of poets are the best supporting of their opinions on the Functional Poetics or literature and art. Although there were differences of their ways of thinking, for example, Confucius paid much attention to the practicing of his theory while Plato emphasized on critical and abstractive deduction, both of them had thorough understanding of the poetics'function.Part II, By analyzing and comparing Confucius idea"Shi Wu Yin Zhi (poetry should with mind)"with Plato's Mimesis, this paper holds that there are aesthetic and understanding of Individual Functional Poetics in their poetics views besides focuses on the social functions. By analyzing the duality of usefulness of poetics in the "Qing(feeling)" and "Zhi(mind)" which implied in Confucian idea"Shi Wu Yin Zhi (poetry should with mind)", and by re-interpreting Plato's Mimesis and its aesthetic factors, this paper holds that on the pursuit of aesthetics Confucius focused on the beauty of"zhonghe( balance )"which with the"benevolence"as its core, and the ethical concept of"shan(goodness)"while Plato preferred to the conceptual beauty of"reconciliation"beautify and the mythical"truth".Part III, we try to probe into the deep cultural causes of Confucian and Plato's usefulness of poetics, and go to the conclusion that both the ethical and religious culture have a profound influence on Confucius and Plato's social pragmatic value orientation of Functional Poetics. However, the practicability of the Functional Poetics is also worthy of serious reflection.