Critically examine Plato’s claims on art.

Plato doesn’t see the work of art like something Humans add into the world by the creation of something new or something more but he sees in art something less: The art object is less then its model. Art is imitation. Furthermore art doesn’t imitate the beings but the sensible. Plato compare the work of art to the representation of the word that you can see in a mirror “ With it (the mirror) you can quickly make the sun, the things in the heavens, the earth, yourself, the other animals, manufactured items, plants and everything else mentioned just now” (Republic book 10) To elucidate this point of view we will briefly summarise plato’s ontology especially from Plato’s Republic but also from the Timoeus and Hippias Major. Plato’s claims on aesthetics takes two main angles: the Ontological and epistemological depreciation of art, and the critic of sensibility followed by a scission between art and beauty, art is objects, beauty is a property of Ideas. This critical analyse will be supported by the comparison with other theories of art like Nietzsche and Schopenhauer.

To completely understand any of plato’s claim we have to keep in my is ontology of Ideas whereas a simple explanation or listing of his claim on art will, from the point of view of a modern thinker, seem, completely absurd. Plato created a very peculiar ontological scale, on the top, the Ideas, they are the very basis of any knowledge. Plato considered that we knows everything, we contemplated the whole truth of the world before our arrival on earth, but we also forgot everything. According to Plato there is a unique ontological ground constituted by immutable and universal realities independent of the intellect whom sensible world is the reflexion. Life consist on the re-discovery of the Ideas that we have been contemplating. According to Plato this is the reason why when I see a new kind of tree I am not asking what is it, even if its form