According to Plato, art is based on. Viii. aesthetics of Plato and his doctrine of artistic creativity. Quotes About Oratory
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INTRODUCTION
The main goal of Plato's activity is to help people rationally arrange their lives, give them such laws, introduce such an ideology into their consciousness that would become the basis of a harmoniously developed just society. It is no coincidence that one of the fundamental works of Plato - "The State" - begins with the question of justice. This task has been set over the years
Plato in different ways, but always a problem of art.
In the political and cultural life of Greece, the role of art was so great and obvious that the whole system of education of the ruling class of ancient society was based on it. And Plato, who discussed in such detail all the burning issues of our time, of course, could not ignore the question of what kind of art, on what part of society, in what way and with what result it acts, how it forms the feelings and thoughts of people, affects their morality, political consciousness, behavior.
Moreover, Plato himself was an extremely gifted person in an artistic sense - a great master of word and dialogic form, a first-class artist and an unsurpassed erudite. The merit of Plato is also great in the fact that he was one of the first to see in art a means of educating a certain type of person. The modern type did not correspond to the ideal
Plato, and in his dialogues he created a new teaching, partly rooted in various eras of pre-Platonic Greece, but on the whole always striving for an "ideal" future, where a new "ideal" person, brought up by the means of an "ideal" should live in an "ideal" state. art.
As a student of Socrates, Plato largely follows his aesthetics, but goes much further. The merit of Socrates is that he emphasized the connection between the aesthetic and the ethical, the moral and the good. His ideal is a wonderful person. For Plato, art is already becoming a criterion of morality, social structure, political well-being in the state and, at the same time, an instrument of justice, because everything must obey it.
Thus, the main trend is outlined in line with which the aesthetic teaching of Plato develops - art as a means of education and influence on social and political life.
What could fill the leisure of all those who had free time
(even engaged in some productive activity)? Of course, art, but art organized in a certain way, designed to influence the minds of people in such a way that the structure of their feelings and thoughts corresponded to the ideal of the ancient slave-owning policy. And this means that the question of art could not but appear in Platonic times as a directly political question. The mention of the social conditions in which the art of Greece developed at that time brings us directly to the analysis of Plato's aesthetic views, for the doctrine of aesthetic education turns out to be central in his project of an ideal state.
THE PROBLEM OF THE BEAUTIFUL IN PLATO'S AESTHETICS
In polls, aesthetics are considered by Plato in the dialogues: "Hippias the Greater",
"State", "Phaedrus", "Sophist", "Feast", Laws, etc. The most important problem for philosophers is the problem of beauty. In the dialogue "Hippias the Greater"
Plato seeks to find what is beautiful for everyone and always.
Beauty does not exist in this world, but in the world of ideas. In the local, accessible to human perception, diversity reigns, everything is changeable and transient. And the beautiful exists forever, it neither arises nor is destroyed, neither increases nor decreases, it is outside of time, outside of space, movements and changes are alien to it. It is opposed to the beauty of sensible things; therefore, sensible things are not the source of beauty. From this it follows that the way to comprehend the beautiful is not artistic creativity and not the perception of a work of art, but abstract speculation, contemplation through the mind. The rationality of this consideration, in our opinion, lies in the fact that Plato is looking for the source of beauty in objective conditions, outside the subject, of course, true to his idealistic concept of beauty.
And yet the sense of reality relentlessly possesses Plato when he speaks of the general laws of being. In art, Plato also sees his own patterns, which allows us to once again notice his desire for objectivity in matters of aesthetics.
When Plato wanted to outline the subject of his aesthetics, he called it nothing more, nothing less - love. The philosopher believed that only love for the beautiful opens the eyes to this beautiful and that only knowledge understood as love is true knowledge. In his knowledge, the one who knows, as it were, marries what he knows, and from this marriage arises a beautiful offspring, which people call sciences and arts. The one who loves is always a genius, because he reveals in the object of love what is hidden from everyone who does not love. The layman laughs at him. But this only testifies to the mediocrity of the layman. The Creator in any field: in personal relationships, in science, art, in social and political activity - there is always a lover. New ideas are open to him alone, which he wants to bring to life and which are alien to the unloving. So the artist, feeling love for the object of art and seeing in it what is hidden from others (in other words, influencing the object of art), in the process of an act of creativity creates something beautiful, or, more precisely, its copy.
artist (love (object of art (act of creativity (beautiful (copy))
These terms, like those of Plato, can be replaced by others, but against his enthusiasm and the very fact of the artist devoting himself to the object of his love - art - one can hardly raise any weighty objection.
ISSUES OF AESTHETIC EDUCATION
The doctrine of the creative process worries Plato still less than the problem of aesthetic education. The fruits of the creative process - works of art - certainly in one way or another affect the consciousness of people and, therefore, this is their direct and immediate function. Thus, as the links of one chain act: the creative process (indicated by us in the above diagram), the cognitive act and social consciousness
(final result).
Plato is interested not so much in the process of creating art as in the problem of its influence on people (although in connection with the latter he sometimes has to consider elements of the former in some detail).
Plato's idea of the aesthetic education of man consists in the struggle against all psychologism and subjectivism, in the struggle against all sophistication and sophistication, in the struggle against philosophical decadence. Plato preached the ideal of a strong, but necessarily simple man, in whom spiritual abilities are not differentiated so as to contradict one another, and not so isolated from the outside world as to resist it egoistically.
The harmony of the human personality, human society and all the nature surrounding man - this is Plato's constant and unchanging ideal throughout the entire creative path. In this regard, we should once again recall the Platonic idea of subordinating art to the needs of the state.
N.G. Chernyshevsky welcomed Plato in every possible way because he put life above art, defending the need to subordinate art to social needs. Not only does art not exist in Plato as an isolated and independent area, but such isolation is impossible, according to
Plato, also neither for philosophy, nor for religion, nor for science, nor for the state, nor for craft, nor, finally, for personal or family life.
The absence of such isolation creates, according to Plato, that universal harmony, without which an "ideal" state is impossible (in our opinion, the doctrine of this kind of harmony goes beyond idealistic philosophy).
As a consequence of the foregoing, it follows that art is the main factor in the life of the society of the "ideal" state (the forms of which Plato developed) for two reasons:
1. Art should fill all the leisure of the freeborn and accompany them in all serious matters, so that they all spend their lives "in sacrifices, festivities and round dances" ("Laws"); so that each of them - be it a man or a woman - would live, "play the most beautiful games" ("Laws").
2. Art, according to Plato, should, on the one hand, form the soul of every free-born in a certain way, destined by the legislator, informing them of "well-being" ("State") and through rhythm
"accustomed to the beat" in order to combine "gymnastics with music."
Gymnastics, like art, must play a decisive role in the education of the freeborn. On the other hand (as a consequence of the first), art must continuously, throughout the life of citizens, maintain the spiritual mood created by it.
Thus, it was a question of creating and maintaining by means of art some completely peculiar narcotic state, and not of an individual, but of an entire social stratum.
Plato created over thirty philosophical dialogues throughout his life.
In almost every one of them, in one way or another, he deals with questions of art. From all this, a certain form of Plato's philosophical theory is formed - the theory of art.
Considering the colossal role that Plato assigned to art in his
"ideal" state, and the extremely pessimistic assessment that the philosopher gave to the real state of his contemporary period of artistic life, it is not difficult to imagine the general scope of the prohibitive measures provided by the author of the "State" and "Laws" in order to turn art into an instrument of justice. The deeper the gap between the Platonic idea of "true art" and the actual state of art in Platonic times, the more sacrifices were required from art in order to fill the gaping depth.
If we sum up all the prohibitions issued in connection with art in
"State" and "Laws", then the overall picture will look like this.
First large group prohibitions stems from Plato's ideas about the role of art in shaping the younger generation. In this regard, prohibitions are formed, the purpose of which is to eliminate all "non-pedagogical" motives that existed in art (as well as mythology) of Plato's times.
Firstly, it is proposed to remove from the number of admissible in education all those works that describe the actions of the gods, unseemly from an ethical or "political" point of view (for example, wars, intrigues, malevolence and other deceit).
Secondly, it is proposed to delete from the number of acceptable in the upbringing of children and youth those works of art that set forth religious and mythological ideas that, according to Plato, can weaken the courage of future warriors, defenders of the state and the law: “What then?
Imagine what things and horrors are in the underworld, a person ... will he be alien to the fear of death and in battle will he prefer death to defeat and slavery?
("State").
Thirdly, it is proposed to exclude from the list of works that are acceptable in the upbringing of children and youth, in which the heroes - the children of the gods appear in an unfavorable light: "yes, we will not allow and will not agree that Achilles was so greedy that he could take the gifts of Agamemnon, or again - to hand over a dead body only for a ransom" ("State"). This idea runs like a refrain through all the passages of Plato's "Republic" devoted to criticism.
"impious and unjust" representation of mythology and poetry about the gods.
Fourthly, it is proposed to ban, as not meeting the goals of educating the younger generation, all those works of art that contradict the principle of the identity of happiness and justice for every citizen, postulated by the author of the "State" and "Laws".
The second group of Plato's prohibitive requirements, into which we are introduced by the thesis just considered (selfless faith appears in Plato as the only condition for the happiness of the individual), follows from the philosopher's ideas about the role of art in the "protection" of human souls "from external enemies" ("State" ).
First of all, this group of prohibitions includes works that are in conflict with the laws "on insulting the gods." Moreover,
Plato considers it possible to extend the mentioned prohibitions only to the writings of the "young generation of sages". Old tales are hard to reproach
"in view of their antiquity", indicating that they, apparently,
"Pleasant to the gods" ("Laws").
The vast majority of prohibitive requirements in this group concern not so much the content of certain works of art as their form, and the form is not so much of individual works as of the form of art in general: genres, types and types of art, their correlation, comparative value, etc. . At the same time, Platonic consideration deepens to the question of the right to existence of various ways of artistic embodiment.
(for example, various musical modes and instruments), various artistic manners and performance techniques.
Developing this program, Plato created a kind of classification of the art of poetry - one of the first experiments in dividing poetry into genera. Plato put the measure of "imitation" as the basis of this classification. Having applied this "measure" to poetic art, he found that "tragedy and comedy are created entirely through imitation" ("The State"), since all the characters in the works have to be imitated in them.
Thus, Plato is opposed to both tragedy and comedy.
The first completely contradicts the Platonic ideal of a "happy person", the second - Plato presents only as a "comic reproduction ... of ugly people", but there are certain reservations regarding comedy. Plato the legislator took care to ensure an insurmountable distance between the performers and the inhabitants: the actors are slaves and "foreign mercenaries", the spectators are free citizens.
As for other types of art, for example, music, the philosopher imposed a number of prohibitions on it: he rejected a number of musical modes, for example, Ionian and Lydian, leaving only Dorian and Phrygian modes for the citizens of the future society. Here the doctrine of
"ethos" - the Greeks believed that each mode (musical) in its own way educated citizens ethically and aesthetically. A ban was also imposed on a number of musical instruments: trigons, pekids and flutes, because. Plato believed that in the society he was designing "neither multi-stringed instruments nor instruments playing in all keys" ("State") would be required.
But what does Plato offer instead of all this? What does it look like positive side Platonic program of activities in relation to art? "A poet should not create anything contrary to state laws, contrary to justice, beauty and goodness; he should not show his creations to any private person before he shows them to judges appointed for this purpose and law enforcement officers and does not receive their approval"
("Laws").
Thus, the supreme judge in matters of art, who determines the direction of artistic creativity, as well as the conformity or, conversely, the inconsistency of individual works with this direction, is the same philosopher-legislator who constantly loomed before us as the initiator of all prohibitive measures in the field of art.
Moreover, according to Plato, this philosopher-legislator acts not only as the highest judge, but also as the creator of the highest standard in art, which poets and artists should be guided by in an "ideal" state.
Since the philosopher was convinced that "any Muse" to which listeners are accustomed to can become pleasant, the question of the corresponding gifts and talents (as well as the question of skill) did not bother him at all. This is the case when Plato is inclined to allow the poet freedom of creativity. This is the case when one of those “gray-haired old men” suddenly takes up poetic creativity, to whom the decency of his entire previous life gives him the full right to become one of the “appraisers” of art himself.
He was worried about the purely technical side of the matter: how to attract old people to
"singing the most beautiful", overcoming the natural aversion of wise people to everything "frivolous", in particular, to round dances and chants, characteristic of youth. These difficulties, also connected with the fact that old people in general are not very willing to sing hymns, embarrassed by their gray hairs, Plato overcomes in a very original way.
Having made a preliminary reservation about the fact that he does not dare to "point out to the broad crowds the greatest good" brought to mankind by a warrior, the philosopher proposes to use this "gift of Dionysus" to break the last obstacle that prevents older people from performing moral songs ("Laws").
This is how the program of events envisaged by Plato in the field of poetry, music and singing looks like. As for dances and round dances, their true goal is that the person participating in them, all his life
"wore", embodied in the forms of external behavior such an "aesthetic uniform" that would generate and preserve in his soul a strictly defined mood - "ethos", provided by the philosopher-legislator.
Painting (and everything that we now call the applied arts) must organize the subject environment of singing and dancing free-born people in such a way that nothing in it contradicts Justice, sung by "the most beautiful Muse", as something completely identical
Beauty and even - the personal happiness of each individual.
Art thus should close, cement into a certain non-contradictory whole the state ideology, according to which the Law and political virtue completely coincide with the Beauty and personal happiness of an individual. It should give a universal form, covering all the connections of the individual with the surrounding world, "putting on" which the individual would "inside" this ideology, and with the help of which the philosopher-legislator could determine in advance the entire system of external manifestations of each individual, bringing it into line with with their "Laws".
Now that we have outlined Plato's program of artistic activities for the ideal state, the question arises: what is the real meaning of Plato's aesthetic program?
The whole set of problems that arose in connection with the separation of fine arts from other crafts, aesthetic experiences, in connection with the allocation of artistic consciousness into a special sphere, subject to the principle of pleasure, as the highest and absolute, was solved by Plato as radically as it was unambiguous. The struggle against the "imitative arts", which most clearly expressed this tendency of art to close into a specific sphere, testified that the ancient thinker wanted to preserve only those areas of art that had not yet been affected by the processes of progressive differentiation that had penetrated into spiritual culture.
In other words, Plato saw the prospect of solving aesthetic problems arising in his time on the path of eliminating the very conditions that give rise to them, on the path of returning society to a state that would exclude the very possibility of these problems arising.
But since this perspective was put forward at a time when the processes that Plato wanted to prevent were already almost completely dominant in the sphere of artistic culture, since a gap was inevitable between what the philosopher himself would like to achieve and what was to come out of it in reality, which would have to mean the implementation of Platonic measures in practice.
RELEVANCE OF A NUMBER OF PROPOSITIONS OF PLATO'S AESTHETICS
Platon is a philosopher who lived in the 4th century. BC. But why, then, have the problems posed by him been causing interest, controversy and disagreement for many centuries? They philosophize and argue about Plato, they criticize him, dispute him and ... elevate him to heaven as an ideal. What is the millennial significance of his philosophy?
If speak about philosophical views Plato in general (not only in the field of art), then a similar question looks like this: Plato is the very first representative of one of the largest movements philosophical thought- objective idealism. Objective idealism is alive to this day, and has become widespread among bourgeois scientists. So the debate about philosophy
Plato, about his individual philosophical views - this is the dispute about objective idealism in general, and the identification of the roots of objective idealism is detailed analysis philosophical concepts of Plato, as the father and founder of this philosophy.
But in the philosophy of Plato there is another, no less important side. It is also very firmly connected with his idealism and his mythology, although it differs not so much in scientific and theoretical as in life-practical character. As we saw above, Plato lived and acted in that fatal era of the ancient world, when the old, but culturally advanced and freedom-loving classical polis was dying. Instead, huge empires were born, which absolutely subjugated the individual in political terms, but provided him with a wide field for unbridled intimate-subjective life. The utopia to which Plato turned, dissatisfied with the decay of his contemporary public and private foundations of life, was reactionary, and directly connected with mysticism, with hopes for other world, and most importantly - with the hope of the reincarnation of human souls (with the help of art), with the preaching of selfless service to eternal ideas. However, even here, with all the critical attitude towards Platonism, a positive trend can be found.
This is what we now call simply ideological and the need to remake the reality around us in the name of convictions. In this sense
Plato has always been an enemy only of the inhabitants, who have already achieved everything, and who do not need anything other than everyday well-being; after all, every person who is dissatisfied with the reality surrounding him and wants to change it somehow, one way or another, must have some kind of ideology, some principles and ideas, something higher, in the name of which it is necessary to remake the present and for the sake of which only worth living. An ideological impulse, fundamental alertness, selfless service to the ideal - all this made Plato's philosophy popular for millennia, although its specific assessment has always been different, and although in its concrete form, of course, it deserves criticism and condemnation. The specific morality of Plato has gone into the depths of history, has become a museum exhibit. However, from the formal point of view, the idea, the need for which Plato defended, never died. The problem of ideology is still alive in our society. After all, how often do we talk about the ideological nature of literature, about the ideological content of art.
It turns out that this problem has existed for thousands of years, being solved in different ways in each era.
What about the idea of universal harmony and harmonious education of man? Doesn't it run like a red thread through the morality of our society? Another conversation is that we understand the "harmonic personality" in a different way than Plato, but the idea of a comprehensive education of the human personality is relevant both for Plato's philosophy and for our morality.
Thus, the secret of Plato's thousand-year significance lies not in the literal content of his philosophy and the morality he preaches, not in the literal orientation of his scientific, religious, aesthetic or sociological theories. The most merciless analysis of Platonism has always been carried out here by progressive thinkers. But even with the most ruthless analysis, after excluding all archaic and museum-like things from it, there was still a lot of value left in it. Constructive-logical principles, the preaching of selfless service to the idea, the pathos of world harmony, fundamental anti-dogmatism, restless dramatic dialogue and language - this is the key to the mystery of Plato's thousand-year significance.
KALININGRAD STATE UNIVERSITY
PHILOSOPHY AND CULTUROLOGY
ABSTRACT
Aesthetic views of Plato on the problems of development
art and its role in the life of ancient Greek society
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Kaliningrad
LIST OF USED LITERATURE:
1. Asmus V.F. Plato (from the series "Thinkers of the Past") - M., 1975.
2. Asmus V.F. ancient philosophy. - M., 1976.
3. Bogomolov A.S. ancient philosophy. - M.: Thought, 1991.
4. Davydov Yu. Art as a sociological phenomenon. - M., 1968.
5. History of philosophy in summary. - M.: Thought, 1991.
6. Losev A.F. historical time in the culture of classical Greece: (Plato and
Aristotle) - In the book "History of Philosophy and Questions of Culture". - M., 1975.
7. Losev A.F. History of ancient aesthetics. Sophists. Socrates. Plato. - M.,
1969.
8. The world of philosophy: a book to read. In 2 parts. - M.: Politizdat, 1991.
9. Nersesyants V.S. Plato. - M.: Legal literature, 1984.
10. Plato. Dialogues. - M.: Thought, 1986.
11. Plato. Collected works. - M.: Thought, 1990.
12. Plato and his era. Digest of articles. - M.: Nauka, 1979.
13. Plato. Fidr. - M.: Progress, 1989.
14. Shestakov V.P. From Ethos to Affect: A History of Musical Aesthetics from Antiquity to the 18th Century. - M., 1975.
CONTENT:
Introduction ................................................ .................
............... 1 page
1.1. Art and socio-political life of Athens.
1.2. Place of art in Plato's "ideal state".
The problem of the beautiful in Plato's aesthetics .................................2 p.
2.1. Creative process from the point of view of Plato.
Issues of aesthetic education ............................................. 3 p.
3.1. The purpose of art (according to Plato).
3.2. Ban group.
3.3. New in the art of the "ideal state".
The relevance of a number of provisions of Plato's aesthetics .............................. 8 p.
List of used literature .............................................. 10 p.
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The aesthetic views of Plato flow into the mainstream of the main provisions of his philosophy. Sensible things (according to Plato) are changeable, transient. They constantly arise and annihilate, and for this reason alone do not represent true being. Genuine being is inherent only in a special kind of spiritual entities - "species" or "ideas". Ideas in Plato are general concepts. The idea opposes matter as non-existence. Between matter and ideas there is a world of sensible things. They are a mixture of being and non-being, ideas and matter. Ideas in relation to things are "prototypes", prototypes. Sensible things are only reflections of supersensible ideas.
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Of the same character are his popular judgments about God or gods; however, these judgments, especially with regard to faith in providence and theodicy, go beyond the strictly consistent conclusions of his system; in Plato's worldview, this is all the more easy because he did not compare the critically logical and concrete form of this belief with each other, and, in particular, did not raise the question - which arose much later - about the personal character of the deity. Along with the deity in the absolute sense, Plato calls the ideas the eternal gods, and the cosmos and the stars visible gods; at the same time, the philosopher does not hide the fact that he considers the deities of mythology to be creatures of fantasy, and expresses a sharp rebuke to many myths that have content that is immoral and unworthy of a deity.
Nevertheless, he wants to preserve the Hellenic religion as the religion of his state, and makes its myths the first basis of education, under the condition that they be cleansed of these harmful impurities; he does not demand repression, but only a reform of the popular faith.
As for art, Plato evaluates it, like religion, primarily from the point of view of its ethical influence. Precisely because he himself was an artist-philosopher, he is incapable of appreciating pure art that does not serve any extraneous purpose. He reduces the concept of the beautiful in a Socratic way, without a more precise division of its originality, into the concept of the good; he considers art as imitation, but imitation is not the essence of a thing, but only its sensual manifestation; and he reproaches art with the fact that, born of a vague inspiration, it equally demands our interest in false and true, bad and good, that in many of its creations, as especially in comedy, it flatters our lower inclinations and, with its colorful play, damages simplicity. and principles of character.
To receive the highest justification, art must submit to the tasks of philosophy; it should be looked upon as a means of moral education; his highest task should be to inspire love for virtue and aversion to vice. This measure should govern state administration and supervision, by which Plato in his two great political treatises wants to subordinate art, and especially poetry and music, down to the smallest detail; he himself applies the same standard, expelling from his state not only all immoral and unworthy stories about gods and heroes, but also all refined and pampering music, as well as all imitative poetry, and therefore also Homer.
In the same way, Plato demands that oratory, the usual exercise in which he emphatically rejects, be transformed into an aid to philosophy.
Plato (c. 428-347 BC) in the dialogue "Feast" writes: The beautiful exists forever, it is not destroyed, does not increase, does not decrease. It is neither beautiful here, nor ugly there ... neither beautiful in one respect, nor ugly in another. "Before a person who knows it, the beautiful" will not appear in the form of some kind of shape, or hands, or any other part of the body, nor in the form any speech, or any science, nor in the form of existing in anything else in any living being or on earth, or in heaven, or in any other object ... "The beautiful appears here as eternal an idea that is alien to the changing world of things.This understanding of beauty follows from philosophical concept Plato, who argued that sensible things are shadows of ideas. Ideas are the unchanging spiritual essences that make up true being.
In the Philebus dialogue, Plato claims that beauty is not inherent in living beings or pictures, it is "straight and round", that is, the abstract beauty of the surface of the body, the form separated from the content: "... I call it beautiful not in relation to something ... but eternally beautiful in itself, in its nature" (Platon. 1971, p. 66). According to Plato, beauty is not a natural property of an object. She is "supersensual" and unnatural. It is possible to know the beautiful only being in a state of possession, inspiration, through the memory of the immortal soul about the time when it had not yet settled into a mortal body and was in the world of ideas.
The perception of beauty is a special pleasure. Plato reveals his understanding of the way of knowing beauty. The character of his dialogue, the wise woman Diotima, expounds the "theory of eros" (supersensible comprehension of beauty). Eros is the mystical enthusiasm that accompanies the dialectical ascent of the soul to the idea of beauty; this is philosophical love - the desire to comprehend truth, goodness, beauty. Plato outlines the path from the contemplation of bodily beauty (something insignificant) to the comprehension of spiritual beauty (the highest stage in the cognition of beauty is its comprehension through knowledge). According to Plato, a person cognizes the idea of beauty only in an obsessed state (= inspiration). The eternal and immortal beginning is inherent in a mortal human being. To approach the beautiful as an idea, it is necessary for the immortal soul to remember the time when it had not yet settled into a mortal body. Plato connected the aesthetic category of the beautiful with the philosophical categories of being and knowledge and with the ethical category of the good.
According to Plato, objects are shadows of ideas, while art imitates objects and is a reflection of what is reflected (the shadow of a shadow), and therefore a lower phenomenon. Access to him in an ideal state should be limited (hymns to the gods).
From an idealistic point of view, Plato approaches art. At first glance, it may seem that he completely follows the ancient tradition. It is known that the predecessors of Plato considered art as a reproduction of reality through imitation. This is how Democritus and Socrates approached art. Plato also speaks of the imitation of sensible things, which, however, are themselves images, reflections of ideas. An artist who reproduces things, according to Plato, does not rise to comprehend the truly existing and beautiful. Creating works of art, he only copies sensible things, which, in turn, are copies of ideas. This means that the artist's images are nothing but copies of copies, imitations of imitations, shadows of shadows. Suppose a carpenter is making a bed. This activity belongs to the realm of the truly “existing”, because he does not work on the very concept of a bed (the concept of a bed was created by God), but forms sensual things. The master thus does not create the very essence of the bed. The artist, copying sensual things, departs even further from the “genuinely existing”. From these considerations it is clear that art, as imitation, "is far from the truth," for it takes from the object "something insignificant, some kind of phantom."
As a secondary reflection, as a reflection of the reflected, art, according to Plato, devoid of cognitive value, moreover, it is deceptive, deceitful and prevents the knowledge of the truly existing world.
On a mystical-idealistic plane, Plato also considers the creative process. He sharply contrasts artistic inspiration with the cognitive act. The artist's inspiration is irrational, counter-rational. Describing the creative process, Plato uses such words as "inspiration" and "divine power". The poet creates "not from art and knowledge, but from divine determination and obsession." The philosopher thus develops the mystical theory of poetic creativity. According to this theory, the artist creates in a state of inspiration and obsession. In itself, this creative act is incomprehensible, has an irrational character. The artist and the poet create without understanding what they are doing. Of course, with such an interpretation of the creative process, there is no need to study the artistic tradition, acquire skills and dexterity, develop certain skills, because the artist, as inspired by God, is only a medium through which the action of the forces of the deity is revealed. Plato is not limited to a general analysis of the category of beauty, the nature of art and the essence of artistic creativity. The philosopher is also interested in the social side of the aesthetic. What place does art occupy in the life of society, how should the state treat it? These questions are very important for the philosopher, and he considered them in some detail.
In the book The State, Plato, as mentioned above, believes that art has no place at all in an ideal state. However, he allows the composition and performance of hymns to the gods, while only Dorian and Phrygian modes are allowed, since they excite courageous and civil feelings.
Plato's harsh demands on art are clearly relaxed in his Laws. Here he declares that the gods, out of compassion for the human race, created for labor, established festivities as a respite and bestowed on people the Muses, Apollo, their leader, and Dionysus, a participant in these festivities, so that they could correct the shortcomings of education at the festivities with god help. Plato allows the organization of choral festivities, dances, provided that they are sublime, harmonious, they will bring up a sense of order, proportion, inner composure. The philosopher distinguishes between two Muses: "ordered" and "sweet". The first "improves people", the second - "deteriorates". In an ideal state, it is necessary to provide space for an "orderly" Muse. To do this, Plato proposes to select special "appraisers" from people not younger than fifty years old who will exercise control over artistic activity in the state. Plato allows comedies to be staged if foreigners and slaves play. With strict censorship, tragedy is also permissible.
From what has been said above, it is clear that Plato, despite a sharply negative assessment of art from the point of view of its cognitive significance, at the same time is not inclined to neglect the effective side of artistic activity.
The great ancient Greek philosopher Plato (427 - 347 BC) created a system of objective idealism, characterized by the coverage of a wide range of phenomena of the surrounding reality, the development of issues of dialectics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, and education.
In the light of considering the history of the development of aesthetic thought, Plato's ideas about beauty are seen as extremely important.
The dialogue “Hippias the Greater” is devoted to consideration of this category. In dialogue, Plato seeks to find what is beautiful for everyone and always. He is looking for an answer not to the question "what is beautiful?", but to the question "what is beautiful?", trying to characterize the very essence of beauty.
Plato confronts two characters in his work: Hippias and Socrates. Hippias is a real person, one of the famous sophist philosophers; in this dialogue, he is presented as a dim-witted but very self-confident person. Hippias and Socrates comprehensively analyze the beautiful, trying to combine utilitarian, sensualistic and ethical definitions. They never come to a final definition, but the very analysis of the beautiful, comprehensive and dialectical, is extremely useful.
Socrates works by induction and tries to lead his interlocutor to a correct understanding of the problem.
To Socrates' question "What is beautiful?" Hippias replies: "A beautiful girl." This is the starting point of the study - the statement: the beautiful is singular and concrete. But the beautiful is also universal, and Socrates emphasizes this in his objection to Hippias: "... and the beautiful mare, which even God glorified in a well-known saying, isn't there something beautiful?" This points to the saying: "From the cities - the most beautiful Argos, from the horses - the Thracian, from the women - the Spartan." Thus, the beautiful is also characterized as the best, the most perfect of its kind. For Socrates, the beautiful is diverse: “... but the beautiful lyre ... and isn’t the beautiful pot something beautiful?” He brings the interlocutor to the conclusion: the beautiful is the general, manifested through the singular; specificity with generality.
It seems inconvenient for Hippia to put a woman and a pot in the same value range. Then Socrates introduces the idea of the degree of beauty and, in order to determine the degree of beauty of an object, compares it with other objects. Socrates recalls the dictum of Heraclitus: “Of monkeys, the most beautiful is ugly, if we compare it with the human race ... Of people, the wisest in comparison with God will seem like a monkey - both in wisdom, and in beauty, and in everything else” and ironically turns this saying against his opponent : "The most beautiful of pots is ugly in comparison with the breed of a girl, as the sage Hippias says." But even a girl, says Socrates, will turn out to be ugly if compared with a goddess. Socrates leads Hippias into a dead end: the latter has to agree that the same thing can be both beautiful and ugly.
Hippias is looking for a standard of beauty and assumes that it is gold, for which everything is exchanged. After all, one must find such beauty, such “beauty itself, which colors everything else and from which everything turns out to be beautiful.” And that's exactly what gold is. However, Socrates expresses doubt: after all, Phidias made a beautiful sculpture of Athena not from gold, but from ivory. Moreover, in combination with a clay pot, a fig spoon is beautiful, but a golden one is ugly.
Confused, Hippias guesses what Socrates wants from him: "You are looking for something so beautiful for an answer that it could never, nowhere and no one seem ugly." But, having correctly sensed the intention of Socrates, he still continues to wander in his definitions.
Then, perhaps, the beautiful is an ordinary, normal, generally accepted course of life that has developed over the centuries and consecrated by traditions? “... I affirm,” says Hippias, “that it is always and everywhere the most beautiful thing for every husband to be rich, healthy, to be honored by the Hellenes and, having reached old age and arranged for his parents, when they die, a beautiful funeral, to be beautiful and magnificent buried by their children." Socrates notes that this does not take into account that the exceptional can be beautiful: after all, the definition proposed by Hippias does not apply to heroes born by immortal gods, and they cannot be denied beauty. Then a judgment arises: beautiful - appropriate, suitable, suitable. But Socrates reminds us that there is something suitable for doing evil. Then isn't that beautiful that is suitable for doing good, that is, useful? This definition is also rejected: “The definition of the beautiful, as if it is useful ... is not at all the most beautiful definition” (the distinction between useful and beautiful belongs to the character of Plato’s dialogue. The real Socrates believed that the useful is beautiful for what it is useful for).
The analysis of the sixth answer is most interesting: “The beautiful is the pleasant, experienced through sight and hearing.” In Plato's dialogue, a sensualistic-hedonistic approach arises, arguing that beauty is a source of special pleasure: "...beautiful is pleasant due to hearing and sight", and "pleasant, associated with all other sensations received from food, drink, love pleasures » goes beyond the limits of the beautiful.
Plato distinguishes between the physically and spiritually beautiful, and the question is put into the mouth of Socrates: are beautiful actions and laws pleasing to us through hearing and sight? Here comes the actual Platonic presentation of the problem and an attempt is made to combine utilitarian, sensualistic-hedonistic and ethical definitions: the beautiful is “pleasure that is useful”, and useful is “that by which good is produced”.
But Plato distinguishes between good and beauty. His Socrates says: "...neither good can be beautiful, nor beautiful - good, unless each of them is something else."
The dispute between Hippias and Socrates does not lead to a final definition of beauty. But in the course of the discussion, the beautiful is comprehensively analyzed, and its conclusion is the final phrase of the dialogue: "The beautiful is difficult."
In the dialogue "Feast" Plato writes: The beautiful exists forever, it is not destroyed, does not increase, does not decrease. It is neither beautiful here, nor ugly there ... neither beautiful in one respect, nor ugly in another.
Before a person who knows it, the beautiful “does not appear in the form of some form, or hands, or any other part of the body, nor in the form of any speech, or any science, nor in the form of something that exists in something else in any some living being, or on earth, or in heaven, or in some other object... The beautiful appears here as an eternal idea, alien to the changing world of things. Such an understanding of the beautiful follows from the philosophical concept of Plato, who argued that sensible things are shadows of ideas. Ideas are the unchanging spiritual essences that make up true being.
In the Philebus dialogue, Plato claims that beauty is not inherent in living beings or pictures, it is “straight and round”, that is, the abstract beauty of the surface of the body, the form separated from the content: “... I call it beautiful not in relation to something ... but eternally beautiful in itself, in its own nature.
According to Plato, beauty is not a natural property of an object. She is "supersensual" and unnatural. It is possible to know the beautiful only being in a state of possession, inspiration, through the memory of the immortal soul about the time when it had not yet settled into a mortal body and was in the world of ideas.
The perception of beauty is a special pleasure. Plato reveals his understanding of the way of knowing beauty. The character of his dialogue, the wise woman Diotima, expounds the "theory of eros" (supersensible comprehension of beauty). Eros is the mystical enthusiasm that accompanies the dialectical ascent of the soul to the idea of beauty; this is philosophical love - the desire to comprehend the truth, goodness, beauty. Plato outlines the path from the contemplation of bodily beauty (something insignificant) to the comprehension of spiritual beauty (the highest stage in the cognition of beauty is its comprehension through knowledge). According to Plato, a person cognizes the idea of beauty only in an obsessed state (= inspiration). The eternal and immortal beginning is inherent in a mortal human being. To approach beauty as an idea, it is necessary for the immortal soul to remember the time when it had not yet settled into a mortal body.
In all the dialogues devoted to the problem of the beautiful, Plato explains that the subject of the beautiful is not that which only seems beautiful, and not that which only happens to be beautiful, but that which in truth is beautiful, i.e. beautiful in itself. The essence of the beautiful does not depend on its random, temporary, changeable and relative manifestations.
Beauty does not exist in this world, but in the world of ideas. In other words, Plato derived the ability to understand the beautiful from the presence of a pure idea in a person.
According to Plato, the “idea” is the cause, the source of being, the model, looking at which the world of things is created, the goal towards which, as the supreme good, everything that exists strives. In some ways, Plato's "Idea" comes close to the meaning that this word received in everyday life. “Idea” is not being itself, but the concept of it corresponding to being, a thought about it. This is the usual meaning of the word "idea" in our thinking and in our speech, where "idea" means precisely the concept, idea, guiding principle, thought, etc.
The one who consistently ascends the steps of the contemplation of the beautiful, "will see something beautiful, amazing in its nature." This characteristic is enough to establish a number of important features of Plato's definition of the beautiful and, at the same time, features of each "kind", each "idea". These signs are objectivity, non-relativity, independence from all sensory definitions, from all conditions and restrictions of space, time, etc. Platonic beauty is an “idea”, in the specifically Platonic sense of this concept, i.e. truly existing, supersensible being, comprehended by reason alone.
The "idea" of beauty, i.e. beauty in itself, truly existing beauty, is not subject to any change or transformation. It is the eternal essence, always equal to itself. Comprehension of the "idea" of the beautiful is a most difficult task. The beautiful as an “idea” is eternal. It neither arises nor is destroyed, nor increases nor decreases, it is outside of time, outside of space, it is alien to movement, change. It is opposed to the beauty of sensible things; therefore, sensible things are not the source of beauty.
Sensible things, called beautiful, arise and perish. The beautiful is immutable, sensual things are changeable. The beautiful does not depend on the definitions and conditions of space and time, sensible things exist in space, arise, change and perish in time. The beautiful is one, sensible things are multiple, suggest fragmentation and isolation. The beautiful is unconditional and irrelevant, sensible things always stand under certain conditions.
According to Plato, it is not a sensual object that really exists, but only its intelligible, incorporeal, not perceived by the senses essence. Plato's teaching is an objective idealism, since the "idea" exists in itself, regardless of numerous objects of the same name, exists as a common thing for all of them.
From this it follows that the way to comprehend the beautiful is not artistic creativity and not the perception of a work of art, but abstract speculation, contemplation through the mind.
Plato connected the aesthetic category of the beautiful with the philosophical categories of being and knowledge and with the ethical category of the good.
Plato put the idea of the good above all else. For him, the good was the cause of everything beautiful both in the world and in people's lives. Thus, the world is known thanks to the good. Fortunately, according to Plato, this is a world principle.
When Plato speaks about the general laws of being, the feeling of reality relentlessly possesses him. In art, Plato also sees his own patterns, which allows us to once again notice his desire for objectivity in matters of aesthetics.
When Plato wanted to outline the subject of his aesthetics, he called it nothing more, nothing less - love. The philosopher believed that only love for the beautiful opens the eyes to this beautiful and that only knowledge understood as love is true knowledge. In his knowledge, the one who knows, as it were, marries what he knows, and from this marriage arises a beautiful offspring, which people call sciences and arts.
The one who loves is always a genius, because he reveals in the object of love what is hidden from everyone who does not love. The layman laughs at him. But this only testifies to the mediocrity of the layman. The Creator in any field: in personal relationships, in science, art, in social and political activity - there is always a lover. New ideas are open to him alone, which he wants to bring to life and which are alien to the unloving. So the artist, feeling love for the object of art and seeing in it what is hidden from others (in other words, influencing the object of art), in the process of an act of creativity creates something beautiful, or, more precisely, its copy.
artist = love = art object = creative act = beautiful
The essence of love is in moving towards the good, the beautiful, happiness. This movement has its own steps: love for the body, love for the soul, love for the good and the beautiful.
Let's turn to Plato (427-347 BC). What role does he assign to artistic activity, what, in his opinion, is the status of artistic creativity? Plato proceeds from the fact that the most authentic is the world of ideas, the world of the ultimate essences of human existence. Widely known is his figurative model, likening divine origin a magnet, through a series of subsequent links-rings directing any actions of a person. Poets and artists imitate those who have already somehow perceived and were able to realize in their forms these ultimate ideas of being. Artistic activity, therefore, is only a shadow that reproduces by means of art everything that has already been embodied in concrete forms of reality. But the visible world itself exists as a shadow of hidden entities. Therefore, the artist's creations are the shadow of shadows. Plato's attempt in a similar way to connect the nature of artistic forms with the world of the ultimate essences of human existence subsequently began to be interpreted as a theory that is close to Jung's doctrine of archetypes.
It is impossible not to notice certain difficulties that Plato experiences in constructing his theory of art. As you know, he himself was a man with an amazing artistic flair, well educated and a fine connoisseur of art. At the same time, speaking as a statesman, Plato is fully aware of the most polar possibilities of the impact of art and is trying in every possible way to "tame" art, to direct its energy in the right direction. Reflecting on what forms of artistic creativity are permissible in an ideal state, and which should not be allowed, Plato shares sweet muse And ordering muse, seeks to filter works of art according to the principle of their educational value.
In Plato's dialogue "Ion" an interpretation of the process of artistic creation is given. At the moment of the creative act, the poet is in a state of frenzy, he is driven not by training, not by skill, but by divine power. The poet "can speak only when he becomes inspired and frenzied and there is no more reason in him ... After all, they say this not from skill, but thanks to divine power." And if so, then the identity of the creator in itself appears as insignificant, although the artist is endowed with a special gift of insight. Hence Plato's ambivalent attitude towards poets: on the one hand, these are people who can spontaneously come into contact with higher worlds, they have specially tuned sense organs for this, and on the other hand, it is impossible to predict and even more so control the channel into which this ecstatic state will turn out to be. Since the sweet muse and even the corrupting muse appear as instruments of artistic creation, the possibility of creative frenzy is not in itself a positive phenomenon.
Hence the quite definite place that Plato assigns to art as exploiting sensory perception in the view hierarchy human activity. These problems are discussed in the "Feast" dialogue. Why, as the content of this dialogue testifies, Plato needed to search for the idea of beauty through interpretation love relationships? According to Plato, love relationships are not just the basis of a strong craving for sensual beauty, they are something more. Every thing tends to its limit, and in man he considers the power of Eros - love to be such an aspiration. This can be understood in such a way that the love desire appears in Plato as the eternal, intense and endless desire of man. Love desire is a kind of universal gravity; because of this, the love experience lies and I! the basis of an aesthetic sense of pleasure. All the motives and actions of people are the result of the transformation of the impulses of a strong love craving that lives inside everyone.
Researchers of the Freudian orientation often try to include Plato among the predecessors of the Austrian scientist. Nevertheless, Plato does not speak of libidinal motives for creativity and perception in the Freudian sense. He interprets the experience of love broadly - as coming from the Cosmos, understands it as a tense endless aspiration, set by the power of higher ideas. The nature of beauty is to the same extent the result of love striving and therefore can be its source.
In the dialogue "The Feast" one should not see in a straightforward and simplified way an apologetics of male friendship, understood in a specific way. Along with the influence of the traditions of same-sex love in the aristocratic Greek polis, it is important here to feel the deep symbolism inherent in the ancient consciousness as a whole. The masculine principle was understood as that which generates in another, the feminine principle - as that which generates in itself. Therefore, at the level of ancient ideas Earth acted as a feminine principle, i.e. that which generates in itself, and sun, air, sky - as a masculine principle, i.e. that which, warming, irrigating, generates in another. From such logic it followed that the masculine principle is by its nature more spiritual, and this is the reason for the development of exactly the plot that we find in the "Feast". A type of love relationship, not connected by any considerations of benefit, a union based on a spiritual and disinterested feeling, and later received the name "platonic love."
If we generalize the logic of the narrative in "The Feast", then unequal levels of perception of beauty are found. Sensual craving, exciting urge - this is the initial impulse of aesthetic admiration, which evokes the appearance of physical perfection. This, the first, stage of aesthetic perception is not self-sufficient, since beautiful bodies are transient in their attractiveness, time is merciless to them, and therefore the very idea of beauty cannot be detected at the sensual level. The next step is the level spiritual beauty person; here, in fact, we are talking about ethical-aesthetic. Analyzing this stage, Plato comes to the conclusion that beautiful souls are also fickle, they are unstable, capricious, and therefore the idea of beauty cannot be comprehended while remaining at the second level. Third step - science and art, which embody knowledge that encompasses the experience of all mankind, here it seems as if one cannot go wrong. However, here, too, selectivity is required: often the sciences and some arts show inferiority, since human experience is too diverse. And finally, the fourth level is the highest sphere wisdom, good. Thus, Plato again comes to the limit, where at a single point common good connect the lines of all conceivable perfections real world. Plato unfolds before us the hierarchy of beauty and thereby shows what place proper artistic beauty occupies.
What is the conceptual apparatus of Plato, who talks about artistic perfection? His conceptual apparatus is marked by attention to such a category as measure. Plato writes that when the limit enters into identity with the infinite, then it becomes a measure, understood as the unity of the limit and the infinite. Despite Plato's repeated assertions that art should be oriented towards socially significant needs, he also has another idea: the measure is dictated by the inner nature of the work itself. Measure, according to Plato, is always finite, it makes the world organic, whole and visible. The measure is one of Plato's "atoms" of his aesthetic theory, one of the basic categories. Its interpretation reveals the general ideas of antiquity about time, which were cyclical.
Another category actively used by Plato is harmony. It is close to the concept of measure, proportion, symmetry. According to Plato, harmony is not something that is directly connected due to similarity. Following Heraclitus, he repeats that harmony was created from initially divergent. This is especially evident in the art of music, where divergent high and low tones, demonstrating interdependence, form harmony. Thus, we are talking about harmony as a contrast, a combination of opposites, which was later embodied in the Aristotelian interpretation of beauty as unity in diversity.
It is interesting to trace how the concept of harmony evolved in the ancient artistic consciousness. If initially harmony was perceived mainly cosmologically, i.e. as an extrapolation of all the objective properties of the Cosmos (hence the craving of the Pythagoreans for calculating the mathematical ratios of musical intervals), then later they began to look for harmony in the earthly, everyday world of people, where it often bears the imprint of an individual attitude.
In this regard, it is difficult to overestimate the category catharsis which was developed in antiquity in relation to the designation of the essence of any aesthetic experience. When we get a sense of satisfaction as a result of artistic perception, we experience a state of catharsis. Hesiod has a saying: "The voice of the singer quenches the sadness of a torn heart." Many thinkers of antiquity found a comparison of the concepts of "purification" and "catharsis". Moreover, the latter concept is also used in relation to gymnastics, to science (learning things that have a regulatory significance in our life, we are cleared of superficial), etc. In general, in antiquity the concept of catharsis is used in a kalokagatian sense - both in the aesthetic, and in the psychological, and in the religious.
- Plato. Works: in 3 vols. M., 1968. T. 1. S. 138, 139.
- Cm.: Losev A. F., Shestakov V. P. History of aesthetic categories. M, 1965. S. 85
