ART AS IMITATION IN PLATO’S PHILOSOPHY: A CRITICAL APPRAISAL

Abstract

This study examines Plato’s theory of art. In the Republic, Plato argues that all arts and in particular epic poetry is imitation of reality and the artist (poets) imitators of reality. Being mimesis, art is at two removed from True Reality (the transcendent world of the eternal Forms), or in other words, art is just a copy of a copy, and therefore it is necessarily untrue and cannot but have a bad moral effect on the public. It is on the basis of the above that Plato dismisses art and artists as useless. For him, art adds nothing to our knowledge of the world nor to society. Art for Plato is aimed at deception, and this aim is achieved when the spectator mistook an imitation for reality. Hence, he concludes that art is potentially dangerous as it is psychologically destabilizing, leading to immorality, unconcerned with truth and therefore a threat to the common good. He therefore recommends that artists should be driven from the city. Through the method of critical analysis, this essay argues that Plato’s conversance with art is insubstantial and exclusionary. Art warrants not only subjects in virtue of utility, morality, and pleasure, but also subjects in virtue of feeling, impression, spirituality, and art itself.