Encounter Ekambaram

Plato's View of Art and Imitation

Art is for all. It can't be owned by a single man. "Art is a way of recognising oneself, which is why it will always be modern." —Louise Bourgeois. Art is not only the reflection of reality, but it's also entertainment. It makes many of us land on the unknown land and emotions. It makes us feel the emotions of strangers and understand them. But art is not always welcomed. Even many famous personalities have also stood against the art. One of them is Plato.

Plato is the Greek philosopher, critic, and founder of the Platonist academy where Aristotle studied. For Aristotle, Plato is his guru. Plato hates art in any form. His hatred can be seen in his "Republic", where he mentioned that the poets and dramatists were kicked out of Plato's utopian state, in which the king was also the philosopher and people were also educated in the way to support rational thinking rather than emotions.

We have noticed that the word mimesis often revolves around Plato and Aristotle. The word “mimesis” was taken from Greek, which means to imitate or to make something. But for him, it means making a copy of the original. Plato's point of view is different from the modern ideologies. His point of view of the world divides into two: one is the physical realm and the other is the spiritual realm.

1. Physical realm: it includes all the things in the world that we can see, such as cars, bikes, dogs, cats, etc.
2. Spiritual realm: it cannot be seen. It's beyond the material world that is the physical world.

For Plato, all the objects in the world (physical world) that we can see are the inferior copies of the absolute reality (spiritual world).

Here, we can see that the dog in the above image was repeated thrice, which signifies that the art is thrice removed from reality. 

Plato sectioned his view of art into four types.

• Art is mere imitation.

Art is the inferior copy of ultimate truth. According to Plato's theory of forms, the primary form is essential for every object and every thought, and the form alone is real, as it is unchanging.

• Art encourages emotions and passions and lets them rule over intellect.

Plato's views on art are always philosophical rather than artistic. For him, rational thoughts and intellect are superior to emotions. He argues that art forms like poetry and drama make the people emotional, which makes the people find it difficult to know the ultimate truth.

• Art leads to immorality.

Greek poets like Homer portray the gods and heroes as morally weak, cruel, and ruthless characters, which made Plato assume that these kinds of forms make the characterisation worse. For Plato, enacting a play was harmful because he thought that a person who acts is giving up his own attitude and behaviour and adopting another character, which is harmful, and it’s the inferior copy of reality.

According to Plato, art = immorality.

• Art is an untruthful representation of reality.

Plato thought that the artists are not only imitating the reality but also pretending to have knowledge of things that they actually have zero knowledge about.

For instance, Homer is not a warrior or commander general and has won no wars, but he depicts the heroes in war.