Plato's View Of Art Essay

First, Plato believed that ideas are the realist things in the world. What we see in our daily life is not reality; sense perceptions are only appearances. And appearances are unreliable material copies of the immaterial pure ideas. Thus to him the world of the ideas is reasonable and fixed and holds the truth. While the world of physical appearances is variable and irrational, and it only bears reality to the extent that it succeeds in capturing the idea. To live the best life that you can and to be happy and do good, as a person you have to strive to understand and imitate the ideas as best as you can. So, with this philosophy in mind we can understand why Plato considered art as just a mindless pleasure. He viewed art as just an imitation.

Let us start with some similarities between the two that will lead us to understand why Aristotle deviated from Plato’s beliefs on the arts. Both of these thinkers believed in the idea or the unchanging rational essence, which shapes everything we know. To them, nothing can be understood without understanding the idea or form of it. Aristotle however was more tolerant towards art and tried to rationalize the tragedies, for example, rather than reject them as Plato did. Even though, he did not explicitly say that he was countering Plato’s theories about art, in his writings that was what he

Let us start with some similarities between the two that will lead us to understand why Aristotle deviated from Plato’s beliefs on the arts. Both of these thinkers believed in the idea or the unchanging rational essence, which shapes everything we know. To them, nothing can be understood without understanding the idea or form of it. Aristotle however was more tolerant towards art and tried to rationalize the tragedies, for example, rather than reject them as Plato did. Even though, he did not explicitly say that he was countering Plato’s theories about art, in his writings that was what he did.

First, Aristotle contested Plato’s belief that a person is either rational or emotional, split between a half animal and half divinity and that one should only strive to be logical. Instead, Aristotle saw the fault in this theory and believed that there is no such thing as two irreconcilable parts but that all the faculties interacted together. Mainly all we do uses the mind, and it is impossible to separate a rational part from the emotional. And so it is incorrect to say that art appeals solely to emotion but not reason because they two are connected. All our brain is thoroughly