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Plato had a love-hate relationship with the arts. On the other hand, he found the arts threatening. He proposed sending the poets and playwrights out of his ideal Republic, or at least censoring what they wrote; and he wanted music and painting severely censored. The arts, he thought, are powerful shapers of character.
Why does Plato hate artists?
Plato saw the truth as the key to a good life and a good society. He saw art as a false representation of life and reality and felt it influences people in a manner which leads them away from truth. Hence the condemnation.
Does Aristotle agree Plato about the dangers of art?
Aristotle was Plato’s most famous student and greatest critic. While disagreeing with much else that Plato said, Aristotle agreed that art was essentially an imitation of nature. But, he maintained, art was not useless nor dangerous.
How do Plato and Aristotle’s ideas about art differ?
While Plato condemns art because it is in effect a copy of a copy – since reality is imitation of the Forms and art is then imitation of reality – Aristotle defends art by saying that in the appreciation of art the viewer receives a certain “cognitive value” from the experience (Stumpf, p 99).
Is Plato right that imitative art corrupts?
Plato, on this picture, believes that art perverts and corrupts: being simply “imitation”, it makes us attached to the wrong things – things of this world rather than eternal Forms – and depicts vile and immoral behavior on the part of the gods and humans as if it were normal or admirable.
What did Socrates say about art?
The oldest theory of art in the West is to be found in Plato, in Book X of “The Republic.” There, Socrates defines art as imitation. He then declares that it is very easy to get perfect imitations — by means of mirrors. His intent is to show that art belongs to the domain of reflections, shadows, illusions, dreams.
What did Plato say about beauty?
In the view of Plato (427-347 BCE), beauty resides in his domain of the Forms. Beauty is objective, it is not about the experience of the observer. Plato’s conception of “objectivity” is atypical. The world of Forms is “ideal” rather than material; Forms, and beauty, are non-physical ideas for Plato.
What did Plato say about art?
In the Republic, Plato says that art imitates the objects and events of ordinary life. In other words, a work of art is a copy of a copy of a Form. It is even more of an illusion than is ordinary experience. On this theory, works of art are at best entertainment, and at worst a dangerous delusion.
How does Aristotle refute Plato’s view on art and imitation?
Aristotle replied to the charges made by his Guru Plato against poetry in particular and art in general. He replied to them one by one in his defence of poetry. Plato says that art being the imitation of the actual is removed from the Truth. Art cannot be slavish imitation of reality.
What did Aristotle say about art?
According to Aristotle a work of art is not only a technical question: he thinks of the work of art as a structured whole. Only as a “structured whole” can a work of art relate to human emotional experience and knowledge. Art imitates nature, but differently from the way Plato intended it.
What did Aristotle and Plato disagree on?
Differences in Contributions Plato believed that concepts had a universal form, an ideal form, which leads to his idealistic philosophy. Aristotle believed that universal forms were not necessarily attached to each object or concept, and that each instance of an object or a concept had to be analyzed on its own.
Who said that art is twice removed from reality?
According to Plato’s theory of mimesis (imitation) the arts deal with illusion and they are imitation of an imitation. Thus, they are twice removed from reality. As a moralist, Plato disapproves of poetry because it is immoral, as a philosopher he disapproves of it because it is based in falsehood.
Who rejected the theory of imitation?
Plato rejected poetry as it is mimetic in nature on the moral and philosophical grounds. On the contrary, Aristotle advocated poetry as it is mimetic in nature. According to him, poetry is an imitation of an action and his tool of enquiry is neither philosophical nor moral.
How does Plato view art twice removed from reality?
According to Plato’s theory of mimesis (imitation) the arts deal with illusion and they are imitation of an imitation. Thus, they are twice removed from reality. As a moralist, Plato disapproves of poetry because it is immoral, as a philosopher he disapproves of it because it is based in falsehood.
How do Plato and Aristotle differ in their aesthetic ideas?
Plato believed that the pleasure we get from artistic imitations, but whereas he was distributed by it (because he thought our pleasure seduced us into accepting a false view of things), Aristotle was not. He differed from Plato on this point because the artist’s imitation helps us learn something.
What is the philosophical perspective of Plato?
In metaphysics Plato envisioned a systematic, rational treatment of the forms and their interrelations, starting with the most fundamental among them (the Good, or the One); in ethics and moral psychology he developed the view that the good life requires not just a certain kind of knowledge (as Socrates had suggested).
Did Socrates do art?
The Role of Art in Socrates’ Philosophy Socrates was born in 469 BC in the deme of Alopece, Athens. He did this in acknowledgment of a recurring dream that spoke the following words to him: “Socrates, practice and cultivate the arts.” Even though his time had just about run out, Socrates composed poetry.
What is the philosophy of art?
philosophy of art, the study of the nature of art, including concepts such as interpretation, representation and expression, and form. It is closely related to aesthetics, the philosophical study of beauty and taste.
What is art According to Kant?
Kant has a definition of art, and of fine art; the latter, which Kant calls the art of genius, is “a kind of representation that is purposive in itself and, though without an end, nevertheless promotes the cultivation of the mental powers for sociable communication” (Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, Guyer Oct 23, 2007.
