[MD] Plato & imitation

[Ant McWatt]

Ron, Dave,

I nearly forgot to say "thanks" for clarifying Plato's stance regarding poetry, music, fine art etc.  Like most philosophers of any standing, his philosophical position - though often simplified for the beginner/casual reader will have "shades of grey" which require going back to the original texts to pick out with a metaphysical "fine toothcomb" to deal with. The references provided by the Stanford people in this regard are invaluable in this regard. (e.g. as Ron also quoted, "Many passages in Plato associate a Form with beauty: Cratylus 439c;Euthydemus 301a; Laws 655c;Phaedo 65d, 75d, 100b; Phaedrus254b; Parmenides 130b; Philebus15a; Republic 476b, 493e, 507b.")  

Otherwise, I should note that Patrick Doorly points out in his MOQ text "THE TRUTH ABOUT ART" that Plato's regard of the fine arts as being largely imitative was not really challenged in Western Academia until Ernst Gombrich wrote his famous (infamous?) essay about a hobby horse in 1950.  A hobby horse, as Gombrich points out, does not imitate a horse (a wild horse does not have a wheel for instance!) but rather acts as a "substitute".

Best wishes,

Ant


http://moq.robertpirsig.org/Doorly.html



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DMB said to Ron Kulp, August 21st 2014:


Ron said to Ant earlier:

The Stanford Essay on Plato - aesthetics ...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". 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.

dmb then added:

I think Plato's attitude toward poetry and art has to be understood as a feature of his overall view, which is extremely anti-empirical. He is the godfather of rationalism. What's really real, for Plato, lies beyond mere appearance. The Forms, ideals that somehow exist outside of empirical reality, are the real thing and everything down in this dirty old phenomenal world (not just art and poetry and unoriginal copying) is a pale imitation of these Forms. The empirical world, Plato thought, is not to be trusted. In the famous allegory, the empirical world is the world of mere appearance, nothing but empty shadows on a cave wall.

So art was denigrated as an imitation of a copy of the Form. It was considered to be mighty low indeed, especially when compared to the rational understanding of philosophers. The radical empiricism of James, Dewey, and Pirsig reverses this so that empirical reality is primary and ideas are always secondary. There are no Forms and there is no reality beyond appearance - or if there were we could never know anything about it because appearance is the only reality we can ever have access to.


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