ELEPHANT TO MARCO:
I don't want to be accused to taking the discussion too far from Prisig, but
Marco and I have this conversation going about Plato's attitude to intellect
and art.....
MARCO WROTE:
Plato's point about art was that it is "mimesis" (imitation) of
reality. Reality is truth, and art is merely its copy. Aristotle's point was
that it's possible to reach the truth by means of the logic.
In both visions, the Good becomes a frill.
ELEPHANT HAD WRITTEN:
A "frill"? I think not. In Aristotle's case, perhaps. But Plato
had more than just the one "point about art". Plato's theory of art is deep
and complex, centrally fixed around the very Prisigian idea that 'good' is a
noun: "Good is what every soul pursues and for which it ventures
everything"[republic 505e]. Everything. Both the 'intellectual' and the
merely 'artistic'.
MARCO WROTE:
Yes, you are right. Actually, IMO the right sentence should be: "In both
visions, ART as tool for the seeking for Good becomes a frill". Especially
in Aristotle, I agree, but Plato prepared the path for Aristotle's science.
ELEPHANT:
No. The point being that Plato doesn't have a concept of Art as just a
limited area of our tool usage. That concept of Art which limits it to what
we now call the 'high arts' (literature, music, theatre etc) is a Romantic
invention. All tools, and all tools for seeking the good, are Art in a
Platonic understanding of the term. Philosophy is one form of Poesis, it is
not something in a separate category altogether (that's why Plato is so
worried about corrupting kinds of Poesis: they are corrupting because they
contain false Philosophy). And in fact Plato is particularly good at using
poesis to his philosophical ends: hence the dialogue form, where the author
never actually tells us what to think but gives us a choice of interlocking
veiwpoints to identify with and explore: we are forced to do our thinking
for ourselves by this poetical device. In stark contrast, Aristotle is a
singularly unpoetic, uninvolving, plodding, first person narrator of the
philosophical truth as he sees it: listen to me, he seems to say, I know how
all the other guys got it wrong. The worlds first philosophologist. As to
Plato preparing the way for Aristotelian Science, er, hardly. There is a
certain amount of categorical division in Plato's works, but it always
stands out as the 'booring bit' before we get on to the edge-of-the-seat
intellectual combat of the dialogue proper, it is mostly a device for
getting down to the real business and making you keener for that business to
start, and in the Cratylus it is clear that Plato is actually taking the
Pith out of this kind of approach. The only sense in which Plato 'prepared
the path' for anything Aristotle did is that Aristotle is inconceivable
without Plato, in much the way that Adam is inconceivable without God. That
doesn't mean that Adam understood what God understands, or that Adam was
carrying out God's will. The place where this analogy breaks down is that
Plato did not create Aristotle: Aristotle is not, as some kids books make it
seem, some kind of appointed successor. For all we know, Plato was no more
concerned about or aware of Aristotle's existence than he was of a hundred
other pupils.
ELEPHANT HAD WRITTEN:
Iris Murdoch's discussion with Bryan Maggee does some justice to Plato's
thought here (originally broadcast on the BBC and now the accessible
introduction to the extensive collection of papers *Existentialists and
Mystics*, ISBN 0140264922). I recommend that you read this, because it also
sheds some light on the central issues for MOQers. Murdoch spent most of her
career thinking about just the issue which first set Prisig going when he
was a literature master: what is good art, and what is it about good art
that makes it good?
The important and intruiguing point made by Murdoch here is that for Plato,
copy making is not the only or most notable sin in art - distortion and
corruption in that copy making is. Copies are inferior ontologically, not
artistically: in art the only available distinction is between good and bad
copies. Plato prefers intellectual Philosophy-art to 'arty' art because he
sees it as a special, more disciplined, more austere, more challenging, less
self-indulgent, less attractively dreamy kind of copy-art than, say, the
theatre. The fact that the mass of people will pay good money to attend Les
Miserables, but are unlikely to spend their evenings reading Plato, would
seem to confirm this.
MARCO WROTE:
Don't you think that Plato would consider Les Miserables as "merely" a copy
of some "reality", and not being part of reality itself?
ELEPHANT:
Reading the Republic, the derogatory thing which Plato might want to say
about Lloyd Webber is not that his work is a copy, but that it is a copy of
a copy of a copy of a copy.... Plato's point here is not against copy
making, but about the lack of taste which is exercised by some in their
choices about what to copy. Great art strives to copy reality, derivative
art is derivative and poor quailty just because it is a xerox of a xerox of
a xerox, untill all trace of the original is lost. Now, it is important to
remember that the copies exist -in that sense they are part of reality too.
But Plato's point is a familiar pragmatic one, namely that because the
derivative art is so far removed from an original attempt to make sense of
the world, it is no longer Good art: truth, in art, being a species of the
good. So, like Dewey and James, Plato is reminding us that we don't want
just any old reality, we want a Good Reality: which means good art, and good
Philosophy.
ELEPHANT HAD WRITTEN:
Plato and the lesser variety of musical theatre are both Art.
MARCO WROTE:
I agree. Did Plato?
ELEPHANT:
Well, Yes. We are handicapped a little here because of course Plato didn't
use the exact word 'Art', except that atleast this reminds us not to read
Romanticism about Art into Plato. But if you examine his uses of Poesis and
Techne, I think the veiw I have been defending will seem a fair one.
toodlepip
Pzeph.
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