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Quick Answer: Did Plato Hate Art

Plato had a love-hate relationship with the arts. The arts, he thought, are powerful shapers of character. Thus, to train and protect ideal citizens for an ideal society, the arts must be strictly controlled.

What are Plato’s objections to art?

Plato says that art being the imitation of the actual is removed from the Truth. It only gives the likeness of a thing in concrete, and the likeness is always less than real. But Plato fails to explain that art also gives something more which is absent in the actual.

Who did Plato disagree with?

Although Plato had been his teacher, Aristotle disagreed with much of Plato’s philosophy. Plato was an idealist, who believed that everything had an ideal form. Aristotle believed in looking at the real world and studying it.

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).

What is Plato’s objection to Creative Arts on the basis of the inspiration theory?

Plato says that art being the imitation of the actual is removed from truth. It only gives the likeness of a thing in concrete, and the likeness is always less than real. But Plato fails to understand that art also give something more which is absent in the actual.

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 Socrates and Plato disagree on?

One of the primary differences between Plato and Socrates is that Plato gave a lot of importance to the soul of the human being than the body. On the other hand, Socrates did not speak much about the soul. Socrates always preached to be just than unjust.

Is Socrates only Plato’s spokesman?

Whereas the Socrates of Plato’s Apology assumes that there is no need to place limits on philosophical inquiry, the Socrates of the Republic—who speaks as the mouthpiece of Plato—holds that in an ideal society this kind of activity would be carefully regulated.

Does Plato agree with Socrates?

Plato accepts Socrates’ view that to know the good is to do the good. So his notion of epistemic excellence in seeking knowledge of the forms will be a central component of his conception of moral virtue.

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.

What did Aristotle say about arts?

According to Aristotle, art is an attempt to grasp at universal truths in individual happenstances. Aristotle took a particular interest in tragedy through art, which he described as an imitation of action. It creates a treatment for the more unbearable passions we hold in our minds.

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.

Why did Plato condemn art?

Plato had two theories of art. According to this theory, since art imitates physical things, which in turn imitate the Forms, art is always a copy of a copy, and leads us even further from truth and toward illusion. For this reason, as well as because of its power to stir the emotions, art is dangerous.

Why Plato banished or compelled artists from the Republic?

Plato is famous for having banished poetry and poets from the ideal city of the Republic. He banished them because they produced the wrong sort of poetry. To rebut Plato’s critique of poetry, what is needed is not a defence of poetry, but a defence of the freedom of poets to write as, and what, they wish.

What are the arguments against poetry by Plato?

Plato had distrusted poetic imitation because it represented particulars, and not general statements of truth; because mimesis works differently for Aristotle, it can repre- sent those general statements.

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 Plato theory?

In basic terms, Plato’s Theory of Forms asserts that the physical world is not really the ‘real’ world; instead, ultimate reality exists beyond our physical world. Plato’s Theory of Forms asserts that the physical realm is only a shadow, or image, of the true reality of the Realm of Forms.

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.

Who is better Plato or Socrates?

Although most of the historians and philosophers agree with the works of Plato to best depict Socrates. Plato was as good at literature as philosophy. He depicts the Philosophy of Socrates through his writings and extrapolates it at many occasions to include his own flavor. Hence its very difficult to separate the two.

Who disagrees with Socrates?

Socrates and the Sophists were fundamentally opposed. Socrates believed that truth and morality are never-changing constants that hold true for every human being. The Sophists, led by Protagoras, believed that truth and morality are relative. That what is true for one person may not be true for another.

Who Criticised Socrates?

Aristotle was not a contemporary of Socrates; he studied under Plato at the latter’s Academy for twenty years. Aristotle treats Socrates without the bias of Xenophon and Plato, who had an emotional tie with Socrates, and he scrutinizes Socrates’s doctrines as a philosopher.