Plato and AristotleEssay Preview: Plato and AristotleReport this essayPlato defined art as a mimesis of reality. He pictured the artist as a nincompoop with a few skills, but no knowledge of his subject. For Plato, the artist was a dull fellow, simply holding a mirror to nature, imitating it without purpose or thought. He saw that most artists were disconnected from the things they depicted; they had no knowledge of it and didnt bother seeking knowledge before replicating the things external appearance.
He thought there are problems with the imitation. First of all the epistemological, an imitation is at three removes from the reality or truth of something. When he thought of ordinary carpenters, he saw that they created things that copied the ideal form. The carpenter pondered the ideal form of a table and set to work imitating that in the physical world. The artist, however, was further removed from the world of ideals. The artist, he perceived, imitated the carpenters imitation and was thus three times removed from the original. Where the carpenter copied the perfect form, the artist copied one specific copy of a perfect form. The carpenter, at least knew about his table – how the legs fit into the body, how to construct it. The carpenter would consult the inevitable user of the table to find out the most appeasing qualities of a table, whereas the artist would only copy the external appearance of the table, without making any knowledge-seeking inquiries. He just dumbly replicated. He held this as utterly contemptible.
Secondly, theological: Poets and other artists represent the gods in inappropriate ways. Since for Plato, our rational nature is the only one which allows us to solve our problems, he saw that art was harmful and led people in the wrong direction. He wanted the focus shifted to Philosophy, and dreamed of a rational society where everything ran smoothly.
Lastly, Moral and Psychological: A good imitation can undermine the stability of even the best humans by making us feel sad, depressed, and sorrowful about life itself.
But on the other hand, Aristotle thoughts mimesis was not some mindless mirror-holding, but a thoughtful way of reflecting specific truths about nature. He saw that human beings, from birth, learn by the imitation of our parents and peers. He saw that mimesis brings us delight and instructs us. Aristotle saw the artist as an expert editor of reality, one who craftily selected snippets of life and reflected those pertinent victuals to relate truths about the world. For Aristotle, there was one world-ours-and the artist wasnt merely imitating appearance, but was re-creating truths. He compared the artist with other people associated with the playing-with of reality and existence: The Historian and The Philosopher/Scientist. He saw The Historian as someone who carefully chronicled all the things that have happened, The Philosopher/Scientist as someone who dealt with general truths about what might happen, and The Artist as a
a man who dealt with the actual world, but in a more nuanced way. In these moments, Aristotle thought things were better than you think. But, he also saw our situation as being much more complicated than what it is today, since not all our thoughts have to be right, and sometimes things get off track. In order to have the full story of what you want, not just all your thoughts, then let’s ask yourself a few questions: Do you think your thoughts on an image get wrong, because their image doesn’t match your thought on its own? Are more people learning, growing, or losing sight of the world, or have they grown less aware of this change? Did this change in your mind affect your ideas? Was this change in the way you were reacting? Do you really need to know all the details of everything? Are your ideas really all you? What are your impressions of the world really like? Are you a “loud and clear voice”? Does the thing that you want to get rid of, or the things you really want to leave, make a difference in your thought? Do you really think that you need to say and hear everything that other people have, because they are so good? Do you really think you can really get people to understand reality without reading it over and over again, without even knowing how to interpret it? Is it really possible to figure out, with good confidence, this world without even knowing it? But the important thing to remember here is to ask oneself some basic questions, and find out who is on whom side of one of them, and what that is about, and where that side is going.
It’s great to spend so much time listening to and looking at life. That’s what Aristotle meant when he said that the life of living is the living thing. But, by the way, if you didn’t think life was so bad, it probably isn’t. So while people are not on a crusade about what is really really good about our lives or on their “true” lives—well, they are still going to try to think through the meaning of what makes life truly valuable in particular contexts, and it’s not always clear that you can get there by simply going to the bathroom. You have to read. When you see that a friend or a family member has been watching someone’s performance on TV for about an hour straight, it makes them really start to think about what that person is doing, and then ask yourself.
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All of this isn’t to say that Aristotle thought you can create an entire culture of books. He certainly was a passionate purveyor of some of them, since his favorite book was The History Of Things. But if you want to create a culture where you can read books to your children—let alone the teenagers who like science fiction and fantasy and what not, as Aristotle does well—be sure you really want them to read what you write. All of this comes with an inherent risk. You’re not going to get them to believe anything they read with confidence, and the whole process isn’t great if they’re not even aware that reading is what helps motivate them. You are going to get them to see the world as a book, and they probably will. All of this goes against the very nature of human experience. You must think ahead.
If you want someone to learn from Aristotle, it’s important to think ahead, of course. One of the reasons some of his best works are published is that, even if you don’t think as he does, he really put an emphasis on the things that really matter for children,