Art is Superficial

Death of Socrates. Source: Wikipedia

Recently I got the opportunity to read about ancient Greco-Roman philosophies. The literary criticism by major philosophers of the classical period of the ancient Greek laid foundations for the contemporary notions of philosophy. Art is nothing but an illustration or vision of our ideas. Plato believed in a Utopian city, a city with a just government, with no sign of evil and ill civilized people. Plato, through Socratic dialogue (a discourse between his teacher Socrates and his brother Glaucon), in Book X of ‘The Republic’, tells that poetry should be censored in an ideal State. According to Socrates, imitative poetry is detrimental to those who don’t know the real nature of poetry and can infer whatever they heard in the poetry in real life which could be harmful to the state.

What is the real nature of poetry then? The real nature of poetry is imitation or mimesis. This can be clearly understood with the help of an example:

Socrates says that the real manufacturer of the ideas of all the things in the world is god. He says that god is the supreme pioneer of all the notions that exist in the world and there exists no way for a single person to be the manufacturer of such multiplicity(variety) of things such as living things, heaven, celestial bodies etc. But there could be a way so that we can manufacture all these things, not physically, but rather in appearance! If you take a mirror and turn it in around every direction, one can actually create all those objects which would be just the imitation of all those things mentioned above.

We can understand this with the help of one more example- if your room has a red wall and you create a painting of that red wall. What is the nature of the painting of the red wall? Its mimesis. You create a wall similar to or exactly like your room’s wall without actually creating it. Therefore, the constructions by a mirror or in a painting are unreal though they manufacture real forms in appearance, something like reality but still unreal. This is virtual reality!

Socrates further tells us that there exists many kinds of table or beds. But the real manufacturer or prime architect of the bed is none other than the god himself (Greek gods are omniscient). God is the real mastermind of all the ideas.

Socrates also mentions that god created only a single bed because if he had created two, the two beds would have been the absolute essential bed and everyone would have kept two beds and not a single one. Therefore, there’s only a single creation of different objects by the god. The manufacturer is thus the man who copies god’s creation and creates more beds. Therefore, manufacturer is the secondary artificer of the real bed. Hence god and the manufacturer are the artificers of the bed. *notice that the bed constructed by the manufacturer is not the truth as the true bed was created by the god*

What if we create a painting of the bed? The painter will paint the bed and can be referred to as the imitator of the bed.  Therefore, the creations by the painter is twice removed from the Reality as he had copied the creation of the manufacturer who has already copied the creation from the god! Hence an imitator’s creation is twice removed from truth. The imitator stands as the third descent of the truth. When we see an object through different angles, we observe different views of the same object and therefore the object appears different but its identity remains same. This means that the painting is an imitation of phantasm(illusion). Therefore, the imitative art is completely divorced from truth and apparently is enable to effect to so much because it only looks upon an object to a small extent and that small part is unsubstantial. This represents the theme of Reality and appearance.

Socrates says that an imitator has the ability to deceive people which could be harmful for the society. A painter’s knowledge is always less than the manufacturer’s knowledge. He also tells Glaucon that if a person claims himself to be omniscient then he might be a silly man as the one who claims himself to know everything might have encountered the imitations of everything which could’ve been deceiving.

There are three kinds of people, those who make things; those who uses things and those who imitates them. The imitators don’t know how the things scientifically work; they’re just concerned about their appearances. Art is superficial.