Plato

1
Platos (427-347 BC) View of Aesthetics from the
Republic.

• Plato is considered to be the father of
  fiercest critic of aesthetics.
• He is mainly concerned with the application of
  aesthetics, not offering a systematic
  understanding of it in a well-ordered society.
• Like Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Socrates, in
  Platos earliest dialogues
• He distrusts art, poetry, and theatre
• Yet Plato a strong fascination with it, esp.
  poetry because of its power to arouse emotions.

2
Platos View of Aesthetics from the Republic

• If poets are not able to clearly justify
  inspiration, not knowing how or what they
  create, they are to be suspect because poetry
  evokes powerful emotions (cf. Lysias 214a1-2).
• Yet, when it comes to the pleasure of art, Plato
  is able to allow for internal aesthetic
  principles, such as those of form, organization,
  and coherence (Phaedrus 268-9 Republic
  4.420c-d),esp. if it will contribute to a
  well-ordered society.

3
Platos View of Aesthetics from the Republic

• A turning point occurs in Cratylus whereby he
  focuses his questions about are on the concept of
  mimesis (whose Greek senses include imitation,
  representation, and dramatic enactment).
• In essence, poetry, visual arts, music can be
  treated as analogous in their representational
  relation to the world. This finds further
  discussion in the Republic, books 2-3, and 10.

4
Books 2-4

• Books 2-4 presents a critique of false harmful
  views which poets, especially Homer and other
  tragedians express, then invites an insidious act
  of psychological identification on the part of
  actor, hearer, or reader, esp. in view of
  education of the young.
• But in doing so he constructed an aesthetic
  scheme and challenge which judges art by a 3-fold
  criteria
• Truthfulness (he does not exclude fiction)
• Ethical quality of content
• Psychological benefit.
• The point the underlying justification of art
  in life, both individually and collectively as a
  (and for) well-ordered society or city-state.

5
Books 2-4

• Plato refuses to allow the pursuit of art to be
  self-sufficient because of its power to enter
  the soul and its ability to influence culture
  the risk is too great to the city-state.
• Consider the following quotes

6
Books 2-4

• Moreover, these stories Greek myths heroes,
  demons, Hades are harmful to people who hear
  them, for everyone will be ready to excuse
  himself when hes bad
• For that reason, we must put a stop to such
  stories, lest they produce in the youth a strong
  inclination to do bad things. 3.391-392.

7
Books 2-4

• Then whats left is how to deal with stories
  about human beings, isnt it?...
• Because I think well say that what poets and
  prose-writers tell us about the most important
  matters concerning human beings is bad. They say
  that many unjust people are happy and many just
  ones are wretched, that injustice is profitable
  if it escapes detection, and that justice is
  anothers good but ones own loss. I think well
  prohibit these stories and order the poets to
  compose the opposite kind of poetry and tell the
  opposite kind of tales. Dont you think so?...

8
Books 2-4

• Then well agree about what stories should be
  told about human beings only when weve
  discovered what sort of thing justice is and how
  by nature it profits the one who has it, whether
  he is believed to be just or not.
• We should now, I think, investigate their
  style, for well then have fully investigated
  both what should be said and how it should be
  said.
• 3.392a-c.

9
Books 2-4

• Above all, they must guard as carefully as they
  can against any innovation in music and poetry or
  in physical training that is counter to the
  established order. And they should dread to hear
  anyone say
• People care most for the song
• That is newest from the singers lips.
• Someone might praise such a saying, thinking
  that the poet meant not new songs but new ways of
  singing. Such a thing shouldnt be praised, and
  the poet shouldnt be taken to have meant it, for
  the guardians must beware of changing to a new
  form of music, since it threatens the whole
  system. As Damon says, and I am convinced, the
  musical modes are never changed without change in
  the most important of a citys laws. 4.424b-c.

10
Books 2-4

• Arent these the reasons, Glaucon, that
  education in music and poetry is most is most
  important? First, because rhythm and harmony
  permeates the inner part of the soul more than
  anything else, affecting it most strongly and
  bringing it grace, so that if someone is properly
  educated in music and poetry, it makes him
  graceful, but if not, then the opposite. Second,
  because anyone who has been properly educated in
  music and poetry will sense it acutely when
  something has been omitted from a thing and when
  it hasnt it been finely crafted or finely made
  by nature. And since has the right distastes,
  hell praise fine things, be pleased by them,
  receive them into his soul, and being nurtured by
  them, become fine and good. Hell rightly object
  to what is shameful, hating it while hes still
  young and unable to grasp the reason, but, having
  been educated in this way, he will welcome reason
  when it comes and recognize it easily because of
  the its kinship with himself. 3.401-402.

11
Consider this commentary on this section of
Platos Republic

• The modes and rhythms of music, and the
  guardians physical training, all aim at
  producing tough soldiers, experienced enough in
  intellectual culture not to treat the unarmed
  citizens savagely, but not so softened by sweet
  food and music as to become incapable of fighting
  the citys enemies. Education unites their
  aesthetic taste with their conscience.For Plato,
  education begins with the inculcation of good
  habitsHe may insist that drama corrupts the city
  by multiplying citizens tasks, but he seemed
  more moved by the claim that mimicry imitation
  establishes habits and nature in the mimic.

12
Consider this commentary on this section of
Platos Republic

• Platos reader must not neglect this side of the
  pedagogical theory, for it underwrites an
  important aspect of his moral psychology.
  Perfect virtue might work from the inside out,
  with intellectual understanding of the good
  coordinating ones actions in service to the
  good, but virtue also works from the outside in,
  which is to say that copying fine habits helps to
  produce fine natures.

13
Consider this commentary on this section of
Platos Republic

• Painting, furniture-making, architecture, and
  the other crafts can issue an either graceful or
  malformed productions (401a). The beautiful
  productions dispose a soul toward virtue-reason
  and the virtues themselves being beautiful-before
  that soul even has the capacity to follow.
• Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Plato and
  the Republic, 2nd edition by Nicholas Pappas
  (London Routledge, 1995), 72.

14
Book 10

• But then in Republic 10, Plato impugns aesthetics
  with the problem of mirror making or art qua
  mimesis, the creation of mere appearances that
  fall short of even sensible reality, thus twice
  removed from transcendent truth (the plane of
  the forms). Poetry, once again, has bewitching
  power to arouse emotions that are contrary to
  virtue. Therefore, aesthetics must be placed
  under political control.

15
Book 10

• Like a painter, he poet produces works that is
  inferior with respect to truth and that appeals
  to a part of the soul that is similarly inferior
  rather than to the best part. So we were right
  not to admit him into a city that is to be
  well-governed, for he arouses, nourishes, and
  strengthens this part of the soul and so destroys
  the rational one, in just the way that someone
  destroys the better sort of citizens when he
  strengthens the vicious ones and surrenders the
  city to them. Similarly, well say that an
  imitative poet puts a bad constitution in the
  soul of each individual by making images that are
  far removed from the truth and by gratifying the
  irrational part, which cannot distinguish the
  large and the small but believes that the same
  things are large at one time and small at another

16
Book 10

• However, we havent yet brought about the most
  serious charge against imitation, namely, that
  with a few rare exceptions it is able to corrupt
  even decent people, for thats surely an
  altogether terrible thing.
• An in the case of sex, anger, and all the
  desires, pleasures, and pains that we say
  accompany all our actions, poetic imitation has
  the very same effect on us. It nurtures and
  waters them and establishes them as rulers in us
  when they ought to wither and be ruled, for that
  way well become better and happier rather than
  worse and more wretched.

17
Book 10

• .If you admit the pleasure-giving Muse, whether
  in lyric or epic poetry, pleasure and pain will
  be kings in your city instead of law or the thing
  that everyone has always believed to be best,
  namely, reason.
• Nonetheless, if the poetry that aims at pleasure
  and imitation has any argument to bring forward
  that proves it ought to have a place in a
  well-governed city, we at least would be glad to
  admit it, for we are well aware of the charm it
  exercises.Therefore, isnt is just that such
  poetry should return from exile when it has
  successfully defended itself, whether in lyric or
  any other meter?
• Republic X 605-607.

18
Book 10

• After his discussion of injustice in the soul and
  the city he returns to his critique of poetry.
• Pappas commentary states that every issue in
  Book 10 reflects back on the Republics
  psychological theory in Book 4 and on the
  vindication of a life in which reason rules in
  Books 8-9. Therefore, given the fact that Plato
  defends the life of reason, it becomes clearer
  why he now returns to his discussion on
  aesthetics.

19
Book 10

• According to Pappas the general argument against
  poetry is evident
• Poetry imitates appearance (595b-602c)
• Poetry appeals to the worst parts of the soul
  (602c-606d).
• Poetry should be banned from the good city
  (606e-608b).

20
Book 10

• Pappas offers this insight into Book 10
• Despite his conclusion, Platos interest lies
  not in censorship but in the new discoveries he
  has made about poetic imitation. He gives no
  argument for the steps from 2 to (3),
  considering it obvious that if he can show poetry
  to yield deleterious effects, he will have made
  the case for its abolition. (Free speech for
  views known to be harmful has no value for Plato-
  if anything, it reminds him of the licentiousness
  of democracy.). The work consists in showing
  where those effects come from. So he will first
  argue that poetry is a phantom 1, then use 1
  to expose its psychological effects 2.

21
Book 10

• Book 10 contributes the following (595a-602c)
• Artistic imitation is an imitation of appearance
• Poetry imitates humans but in the ideal city it
  will imitate only the best, the most virtuous of
  them.
• Painting, the imitation of an appearance, is a
  duplication of an object as opposed to the
  objects true nature.
• Poetry and Paintings reveal the ignorance of
  their makers because they imitate humans or
  objects because the imitate appearance only.
• The imitator lacks both knowledge and justified
  belief.

22
Book 10.602-607a The Arousal of Unreason

• Book 10 contributes the following regarding the
  arousal of unreason, Pappas offers the following
  outline (pg. 183 cf. 602c-603b)
• 1. Art imitates appearance and not reality.
• 2. Reality is the object of knowledge, perceived
  by the rational part of the soul.
• 3. From premise 2, appearance without reality
  appeals to a non-rational part of the soul.
• 4. From premise 1 and premise 3, art appeals
  to the irrational in human beings.

23
Book 10

• Poets have a tendency to imitate the souls worse
  impulses instead of its better ones (603c-605c).
• Poetic imitation appeals to and encourages the
  irrational impulses in the soul as witnessed in
  the dramatic depictions of passions instead of
  the sobering calculating agency of reason that
  reins in those passions (604e-605a).

24
Book 10.602-607a The Arousal of Unreason

• Imitative arts produce objects of low
  metaphysical status.
• Aesthetic imitations are a concern for Plato
  because they seduce people away from using their
  powers of calculation unlike other objects.
  Something about the artistic image keep people
  from asking rational questions.
• Products of artistic imitation lure the audience
  with its intoxicating enchantment. For example,
  the charm of poetry is its rhythm, meter, and
  harmony.

25
Book 10.605c-607a

• Poetry leads it audience to privilege those parts
  of the souls that ought to be kept in a
  subservient position (605c-607a). Why?
• Desires lack awareness of their own
  insignificance
• Impulses that dont flow from reason will always
  make mistakes.
• Subject desires to scrutiny, weighing each
  non-rational motivation against a philosophical
  evaluation of its worth and meaning.
• Playwrights and actors shy away from perfect
  characters they thrive on imperfection (pg. 185).

26
Book 10

• Pappas states
• In his final argument, Socrates convicts the
  audience of poetry of the same perverse
  preference (605-60a) of desiring to arouse the
  emotions against the idealized character of the
  just. For whatever reason, we let ourselves
  enjoy actions, passions, jokes., and drives in a
  dramatic or fictional work that we would never
  tolerate in our private lives. Such enjoyment
  amounts to privileging non-reason over reason,
  because every appeal to the emotions is a
  seduction away from the use of reason. Emotions
  by themselves are not bad not can something like
  grief e suppressed entirely. But preferring an
  emotional response to a rational one is like
  asking the army what its leaders ought to order
  it to do. And just as too many calls for votes
  in an army would weaken its officers power, so
  too every indulgence of an irrational impulse
  leaves it stronger (606b-d cf 444c, 589c-d).
  The enjoyment of poetry leads to injustice in the
  soul (pg. 186).

27
Concluding Observations

• At the beginning of our study poetry that is
  mimetic is to be excluded but by Book 10 all
  poetry is indeed mimetic only hymns to the gods
  and eulogies to good people Republic, 607a) are
  retained. So, except for above, he banishes
  poetry from his ideal society.
• If poetry can satisfy philosophy by producing an
  argument that is beneficial to the community to
  the well-ordered society, then it can reclaim its
  place.

28
Concluding Observations

• Mimetic poetry has its greatest force on the
  human psyche, appealing to the non-rational
  aspect of people. Even the individual who
  attains the Platonic ideal and is governed by the
  noble, rational, good-seeking part of the soul,
  is powerfully affective by the experience of
  myths and stories (Republic 605c).
• We begin to value responses that appeal to our
  feelings and this will no doubt corrode our quest
  for the good in real life.
• Mimetic art falsely pretends to be knowledge but
  is detrimental to the human mind it enchantment
  to arouse the non-rational is a huge concern
  because it displaces reason.

29
Concluding Observations

• We begin to value responses that appeal to our
  feelings and this will no doubt corrode our quest
  for the good in real life.
• Mimetic art falsely pretends to be knowledge but
  is detrimental to the human mind.
• Therefore, except for hymns to the gods and
  eulogies, poetry is to be banished.

30
Appendix What is beauty?

• Platos concept of beauty finds its greatest
  expression in the Symposium.
• Platonic metaphysical distinction between the
  beauty of things and properties as they occur in
  the sensible world and BEAUTY ITSELF-the eternal,
  unchanging, and divine FORM of BEAUTY, accessible
  only to the intellect, not the senses (Symposium
  211d).
• Form of Beauty is itself beautiful (211a).

31
Appendix Hierarchy of Love-Objects
32
Appendix on Beauty

• The highest form of love
• If someone got to see the Beautiful, absolute,
  pure, unmixed, not polluted by human flesh or
  colors or any other great nonsense of
  mortalityonly then will it become possible for
  him to give birth not to images of virtue
  (because hes in touch with no images), but to
  true virtue (because he is in touch with the true
  beauty).
• Symposium, 211e-212a.

33
Appendix on Beauty

• The result
• While the poet makes imitations and understands
  images, the philosopher who encounters the
  eternal, pure, and immutable Beauty, is able to
  bring genuine goods into the world because he
  understands what virtue really is.
• Christopher Janaway, Plato in Routledge
  Companion to Aesthetics, 12.

34
Bibliography

• Plato Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper
  (Indiana Hacket Publishing, 1997).
• Routledge Companion to Aesthetics, edited by
  Berys Gaut and Dominic McIver Lopes (London
  Routledge, 2001).
• Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Plato and the
  Republic, 2nd. Edition by Nickolas Pappas
  (Routledge London, 1995).