Contemporary French Philosopher, Jacques Ellul, wrote a book entitled “Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes.” It is an interesting writing with an interesting point of view about his position developed from his WWII work with the French Resistance about how propaganda develops. The main point to focus on is that Ellul does not study propaganda in moral terms of being good or bad, but, instead, he wants to know what propaganda is devoid of a moral definition. Ellul focuses on the rise of propaganda through education, and he claims that reading/education can be bad for a person. Socrates and Plato are somewhat the opposite: the unexamined life is not worth living, according to them, Education and reading would be important, and yet, both Socrates and Plato approved of the censorship of art by the state, hence, they supported propaganda when viewed within moral terms. Look up some of these ideas in Ellul’s book and argue whose study of propaganda would be right, Socrates/Plato’s or Ellul’s. Here is a link to the book:
And here is a link for a website about basic ideas for Plato and censorship: https://www.stephenhicks.org/2012/01/21/plato-on-censoring-artists-a-summary/
To write this paper, you would have to not just argue who is right or wrong, but think about their arguments in context. What about a particular issue such as how we are educated today? For example, even the Nazis set up their own schools for the Hitler youth. Or, how sensitive is art? The Nazis had a well-known eye for art and Hitler was a failed artist. These are just ideas to consider.
Instructions: The paper should be 7 pages, no title page is needed or footnotes, just citations would go on page 8. 1″ margins all around, double-spaced, 12″ Arial font. No GoogleDocs or Zip files.
