[MD] Dr McWatt's advice to his unknown student from a remote spot of the world.

[John Carl]

Ron,

Wow.  This blew me away.  I've had a bone to pick of my own, over the issue
of "graven images" and to hear your expounding
of Plato's perspective on the matter, in a way I've never heard before...
Well, it's just a blessing.

Thank you,

John


On Thu, Aug 21, 2014 at 1:41 PM, Ron Kulp <xacto at rocketmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> Any had said:
>
> >> The only things not included within the realm of the four static
> patterns (and this is the important, critical point that Plato got wrong)
> are the (essentially) formless Beauty, Love, and the Good.  They can only
> be understood by metaphor in the form of poetry, fiction and music.
> >>
> >> (In fact as a young women, you might be interested to know that not
> only would Plato have banned all poets from his ideal Republic but also all
> women,
> >> all musical instruments, most modern technology and, for some weird
> reason,
> >> sounds of water too.)
> >>
> >> http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-aesthetics/
>
> Ron:
> I have been reading and digesting
> The Stanford Essay on Plato -aesthetics.
> Interesting enough, to be sure, it
> More clearly states after a more careful reading, that Plato was
> Banning imitation in poetry and
> Art. The mimicking of women
> And musical instruments and such
> In artistic performance.
> It recalled the painting " this is not
> A pipe".
> "Socrates returns to his analogy between poetry and painting. If you are
> partly taken in by a painting's tricked-up table apparition but you partly
> spot the falseness of it, which part of you does which? The soul's rational
> impulse must be the part that knows the painting is not a real table. But
> Book 4 established one fundamental principle: When the soul inclines in
> more than one direction, this conflict represents the work of more than one
> faculty or part of the soul (436b). So being taken in by an optical or
> artistic illusion must be the activity of some part of the soul distinct
> from reason."
>
> It sounds to me that what Plato
> Really wants to ban is reification.
> He wants to ban stereotypes,
> Characitures . He thinks art and
> Poetry (and the performance)
> Is best when it deals with the
> Empirical.
> Imitation, like worshiping graven
> Images, encapsulates, and renders
> Static the now of experience.
>
> "Notice especially the terminology in Book 9. The tyrant is “at the third
> remove” from the oligarch, his pleasure “a third-place idol [tritôi
> eidôlôi]” compared to the truth,alêtheia, of the oligarchic soul's pleasure
> (587c). The oligarch's soul in turn stands third below the “kingly man [tou
> basilikou]” (587d). Only ten pages later Book 10 will call the imitator
> “third from the king [basileôs] and from the truth [alêtheias]” (597e; cf.
> 602c). The language in Book 10 brings Book 9's equation of base pleasures
> with illusory ones into its attack on art. If Book 10 can show that an art
> form fosters interest in illusions it will have gone a long way toward
> showing that the art form keeps company with irrational desires.
> But Plato does not confine himself to reasoning by analogy from painting
> to verse. He recognizes that analogies encourage lazy reasoning. So
> Socrates proposes looking at imitative poetry on its own terms, not just as
> a painting made of words (603b–c). He exerts himself to show that poetry
> presents false representations of virtue, often drawn from popular opinion
> about morality (Moss 2007, 437), and that because of their falseness those
> images nourish irrational motives until all but the finest souls in the
> audience lose control over themselves."
>
> The kind of art Plato wants to ban In his republic  seem to be arts like
> Commercials, tv shows (reality tv Especially) advertising, propaganda
>
> And the unrealistic imitative images
>
> Of female beauty that objectify
>
> Women as sex symbols.
>
> Also, it seems, that religion would
>
> Also be banned:
>
> "Imitation works an effect worse than ignorance, not merely teaching
> nothing but engendering a positive perverted preference for ignorance over
> knowledge. Plato often observes that the ignorant prefer to remain as they
> are."
>
> What seems to be the most
>
> Interesting topic where poetry
>
> And art is concerned is divine
>
> Inspiration (dynamic quality)
>
> Concerning the art of persuasion.
>
> The topic of the Phaedrus.
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-- 
"finite players
play within boundaries.
Infinite players
play *with* boundaries."