Plato’s musical censorship disciplined citizens rather than pursuing aesthetic utopia.

Evidence

Plato’s Republic is not the utopia it is called by the official history of philosophy. It disciplines its citizens in terms of its existence and will to exist even in music, where the distinction made between soft and strong modes was by Plato’s time already little more than a residue of the mustiest superstition. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 69

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• XREF: Parallels the immodesty-panics material (Lex Oppia, Seneca on silk): the state’s regulation of pleasure as discipline rather than morality.
• ADDENDUM: Plato’s music ban is a direct music-domain counterpart to the sumptuary panics in the reader’s ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ article.