plato's philosophy of art
...nterpreted, the interpreter's own subjective bias (even if unintentional) emerges in the translation. Plato in the republic criticises the extraordinary reverence held for poets. The esteem held for poets as being wise and full of practical information is well documented. The Athenians for example, claimed the high command of an expedition against the Persians in reference to a part of the Iliad (2, 552-554), because the Athenian Menestheus was said to be an unrivalled general and expert tactician. It is hardly surprising then that Plato condemns poetry for lacking in pragmatism. Plato shows this in two ways. First he directly asks "What city attributes the benefit of its legal system to your skill?...is there any record of a successful war being fought in Homer's day either under his command or with his advice? Is he said to have invented any ingenious technical or practical devices like Thales of Miletus..."etc. (599e ff). Plato shows that "The artist who makes a likeness of a thing knows nothing about the reality but only about the appearance." (601b). Plato examines to support this a bridle and bit. The horseman knows the practical side to it; the harness-maker and smith are only told what to make due to the specifications the horseman gives, the artist painting the bridle and bit knows even less about the practical side -the painter only judges the physical appearance of the bridle and bit. This itself, as Plato points out, is dependent on the light and angle of view. The painter, then "has neither knowledge nor correct opinion about the goodness or the badness of the thing he represents" (602a). The poet likewise knows little, if anything, about the subjects represented and whether "what he produces is good or bad" (602b). Thus Plato has a case for criticising a pragmatic interpretation of literature because he has proved the lack of practical knowledge which the artist possesses: and it "stands at third remove from reality" (597e). It is from this that Plato decides why poets should be restricted to telling stories for example and not writing arguments or other works of a practical nature. The reason why art should not be relied on for rationality is because art is devoid of it. Throughout history man's soul/mind has been classed into various groups. In the Renaissance thinking there was the idea of the Rational Soul, the Animal Spirit and the Intuitive Soul (as allegorically exemplified in "The Tempest" with the characters of Prospero, Caliban and Ariel), an idea based on Plato's. In more modern times, psychologists have confirmed these elements even physically, with the right side of the brain responsible for rational thought, and the left for creativity/intuition. Plato's ideas conform with this modern view, for he sees the creativity and intuition of art as separate from rationality: he calls inspiration "the divine madness": ecstasy is a prerequisite for artistic quality and it cannot be replaced by rationality. "For a poet is...unable ever to indite until he has been inspired and put out of his senses and his mind is no longer in him: every man, whilst he retains possession of that, is powerless to indite a verse or chant an oracle." (Ion 534b). Plato is right to divorce rationality from art therefore, and this view is supported in hindsight by modern science. His attack on the lack of rationality is perhaps the single most important objection Plato has against poetry and, as can be seen, he seems to have a good case for believing this. In the above section, it was mentioned that art was at the third remove from reality. Another important criticism of poetry is that it is imitation ("Mimesis", with which there is some difficulty in interpreting the meaning in each context) which is so far from the truth. To understand this it must be realised that as Dižs said, (Autour de Platon) "the idea of imitation is at the centre of his philosophy.": thoughts and arguments are imitations of reality and (Ti. 47b-c, Crit. 107b-c), words are imitations of things (Cra. 432e-424b), visible figures are imitations of eternal ones (Ti. 50c), etc. However it must be remembered that imitation in art is not an exact carbon copy. Imitation is to be likened to the art movement of Impressionism: simply "giving the general impression of a subject" (Oxford English Dictionary). Plato himself writes (Cra. 432b): "The image must not by any means reproduce all the qualities of that which it imitates, if it is to be an image." It is due to the imprecision that poetry can be criticised, for it is only at third remove from reality as quoted before. Plato seems to see art like an instruction manual containing errors -people reading poetry should similarly be aware of the sometimes erroneous knowledge to be derived from it. Plato picks several examples here drawn from mythology -examples of gods behaving in morally perverted ways. Plato fears that this will encourage vice in the people who read or see this. Plato was the first real advocate of the "closed society" -ie. censorship, with no freedom of t...