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PlatoIon
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Background
Authorial Context: Plato’s Views on Art
Plato’s views on art are based on his Theory of Forms. Forms are perfect, absolute, unchanging versions of things; they are the ultimate reality on which all human experience and perception are based. For instance, when a person builds a circular window, they build an imperfect version of the Form of a circle. The Form of the circle is responsible (in a way Plato struggles to define in other dialogues) for the existence of every version of a circle that a person might encounter. Plato also invokes the Forms with references to things like Good, Beauty, Justice, and Truth (and they are often written with a capital letter to represent their superior nature). The circular window is at one remove from the Form of a circle. Art, then, is a representation of these imperfect reflections of the Forms—a representation of a representation. Plato argues that creating art and studying art takes one away from reality rather than closer to it. For Plato, art is not truth. It is a copy of a copy, which is why he believes art can be dangerous. It causes people to mistake imitations for reality.
Philosophical Context: Plato, Socrates, and the Socratic Method
Socrates was likely illiterate and never wrote anything himself, but he constantly engaged in conversations on philosophical topics with members of his community. His thinking is passed down to readers today through the writings of Athenians whom he influenced such as Plato and Xenophon. One reason Plato likely wrote dialogues rather than treatises was that this form most closely imitated his experience of listening to and learning from Socrates. Scholars debate whether Plato’s dialogues reflect the life and teachings of Socrates or Plato’s views.
Socrates’ characteristic mode of communication, the “Socratic method,” involves asking questions to help people discover things for themselves—as opposed to persuading them of something. One goal of this method is to reveal inconsistencies in people’s views. Rather than disagreeing with his interlocutors, Socrates uses questioning to show that they disagree with themselves. This moment of doubt gets people to question what they thought they knew. The Socratic method consists of a series of questions, usually about what we mean when we use certain terms (and Socrates often gets frustrated when his interlocutors keep giving him examples of a concept rather than definitions). After each question, the interlocutor either agrees or disagrees, and when he agrees, Socrates moves on to the next question. When they come to a conclusion, the interlocutor is obligated to agree because of everything else they agreed to along the way. See “syllogism” in “Literary Devices” for an example of the Socratic method in action.
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By Plato
