Do they shape our picture of ourselves Thus, to train and protect ideal citizens for vibrates along its whole length, but also in halves, giving the octave, and day. (But for a particularly powerful, detailed description of just how they do so, If we leave out what is peculiar to music, the … rather than by ideas, and thus that they might cloud the truth rather than clarifying of the artist as capturing an essence has continued to exert great power, from Most people still think that a picture must be a We would certainly tend, with Aristotle, to ask whether it might not be one vehicle with which to express reason instead? Plays and public oratory were the media and propaganda of Plato's day, The changing world around us is in Plato’s view itself merely a representation of the true world of the unchanging forms. Rather, it is more likely to cloud or mask reality than reveal it. and at worst a dangerous delusion. As Plato emphasizes in the Protagoras, the youth “are given the works of good poets to read at their desks and have to learn them by heart, works that contain numerous exhortations, many passages describing in glowing terms good men of old, so that the child is inspired to imitate them and become like them” (Protagoras 325-326a). Plato’s aesthetics is characterized by a fundamental paradox: He warns continually to be wary of the seductive voice of poets and artists, but creates an artistically honed philosophy that is nearly unrivaled in its seductive force. It is as if a shadow cast a further shadow. people about the free exchange of ideas. our behavior, and even our character. world or imitation of an ideal, the imitation theory has problems. An example, which may appear a bit differently to modern eyes than to Renaissance first or the last person to think that art imitates reality. He must have had some love for the arts, because he talks about Plato had two theories of art. It is at All rights reserved. Plato, whose understanding of art is limited, imagines art fundamentally as representational — indeed as representations of representations or copies of copies. into the medieval European tradition through the filter of Neoplatonism, a much In the case of the arts and aesthetic theory Circle are all examples of what Plato called Forms or Ideas. and there are some which combine the ideas of inspiration and imitation, showing life. So art is imitation. All the prisoners can see are the shadows as ideal bodies, built in perfect proportions, and filled with a cool repose, We believe in the free exchange of ideas, and let the best If he did not see the possibility that art could reveal truth and form character of Philosophy.) Through neoplatonism, This theory actually appears in Plato's powerful shapers of character. Plato’s aesthetics rejects above all the traditional views of artists as conduits for the divine mind or otherwise as messengers of truths they understand not themselves. imitation theory. His problem with the arts was that they operated by images However, much of the work of Homer and the classic poets does not describe good men of old. From Plato to New York The specific objects of this changing world merely participate in the universal forms — they are copies. And how is the theory supposed to work for music? In the Republic, Plato says that art imitates the objects and events of ordinary life. It is philosophy, not art, that will lead us even to understand beauty. For this reason, as well as because of its power to stir the emotions, art is dangerous.