Problem
I. Explain the following Socratic passage from Plato's Phaedrus: Yes, because there's something odd about writing, Phaedrus, which makes it exactly like painting. The offspring of painting stand there as if alive, but if you ask them a question they maintain an aloof silence. It's the same with written words: you might think they were speaking as if they had some intelligence, but if you want an explanation of any of the things they're saying and you ask them about it, they just go on and on forever giving the same single piece of information. Once any account has been written down, you find it all over the place, hobnobbing with completely inappropriate people no less than with those who understand it, and completely failing to know who it should and shouldn't talk to. And faced with rudeness and unfair abuse it always needs its father to come to its assistance, since it is incapable of defending or helping itself.
First, simply explain the key steps in his argument; next, consider the implications of this argument for at least one other/broader element of Socrates' opinion of poetry. (Examples include, but not exclusively: that it does not require expertise; that it is false, dangerous, or incompatible with a well-ordered republic.)
II. Explain the context and larger argument of Socrates' statement towards the end of Book X of the Republic, especially the implication that the mind as possesses both rationality (logos) and emotion (pathos) but must treat those faculties differently. Try to consider the implication here, especially, that both of these things are part of us (naturally?) but must nevertheless not be nourished/encouraged equally: "Sex, anger, and all the desires, as well as all the pleasures and pains that make their presence felt in whatever we do - on all these poetry has the same effect. It makes them grow great instead of drying them up. It establishes them as our governors when instead they should be the ones governed if we are to become men who are better and happier instead of worse and more miserable".