Today, I'll begin a series of lecture posts in reading key authors and works in philosophy. In this entry, I'll begin with Plato's Aesthetics (Philosophy of Art) in The Republic.
The Republic—the magnum opus of Plato, that quintessential greek thinker of whom everything else in the history of ideas is a mere footnote of—is an excursion into the merit and meaning of Justice. It’s starting point—“what is justice?”—is, until today, a philosophical conundrum that permeates all forms of philosophising of any philosopher from any persuasion.
But what is striking in the Republic is its scope. It addresses fundamental questions about Politics, Ethics, Psychology, Ontology, Education, and Art, among others, while, at the same time, paying homage to the ideals of his master, Socrates, that martyr of philosophy, the protagonist of all of Plato’s Dialogues.
Hence, the Republic is a personal enterprise—an attempt to rectify the injustice that his master, Socrates, succumbed into in the hands of Athenian democracy. In so doing, Plato envisions an alternative, prescribes a better state other than greek democracy, suggests a Utopia, a perfect state where wisdom rules through a philosopher-king.
On its own, Plato’s Republic is a literary masterpiece—an art form par excellence—a grand narrative of a philosophical enterprise embodied in the figure of Socrates, the philosopher par excellence. This is why, among its varied themes, I find Plato’s views on Art as peculiar and worthy of insight. This lecture explores this peculiarity in the Aesthetics of The Republic vis-a-vis an art movement known as Neo-plasticism, that postmodern persuasion led by the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian.
In particular, I would like to exploit this possibility: had Plato encountered Mondrian’s art form, would he relieve art of its exile from the republic?
Art in Exile
The project of The Republic can be seen as an extended analogy between individual cases of justice and collective (state) justice. The latter, as exemplar, should provide justification for why justice is better than injustice, thereby suggesting a correct definition of “justice”.
This agenda led Plato to outline an ideal organic state comprised of three classes: that of the common folks (hunters, fishermen, slaves, and artists) leading lives of moderation, that of warriors or guardians capable of virtue, and lastly that of the philosopher king endowed with wisdom. This, to me, is a striking outline in that it places art among the lowest human pursuits pursued only in moderation. Books III and X of the Republic explains why…
Book III provides a critique of Art (poetry and literature in particular) as detrimental to the formation of the guardian classes. Art, to Plato, is Imitation or Mimesis. Elsewhere in Plato’s dialogues, Socrates is always critical of expressions that simply imitate. Hence, Plato’s utopia, the systematic visions of the great imaginative art must be censored in order to preserve the “ideal” (Idealism) thrust of the guardian’s education. Beauty, pleasure, and even laughter were disallowed. Art— be it plastic, literary, or musical—must be pursued in moderation so as not to disturb the ideal formation of the guardians.
Book X justifies this critique by exploring the “epistemological status” of artistic expressions. Accordingly, as mimesis, they are only capable of “conjecture” (opinion), the lowest level of truth. Socrates exploits an analogy known as “bed-imagery” to prove this point—First, God creates the real bed as idea. Second, the carpenter imitates God’s idea by making a particular (sensible) bed. Lastly, an artist creates an image (mimesis) of the sensible bed, an image that, in essence, is a mere copy of a copy (sensible bed) of the real bed (ideal). That artist should concern themselves with the lowest form of appearance is, for Plato, a cause for caution against artistic influence. For this reason, Plato urges that artists be banished from the republic.
Abstract Art as Reprieve
Postmodern artistic expressions, however, may qualify as exception to Plato’s critique. The De Stijl movement of the 1860s until the 1970s produced a radical artistic insight called “Neo-Plasticism” that highlights “abstraction” as technique. Mondrian explains it as follows:
It consisted of a white ground, upon which was painted a grid of vertical and horizontal black line and the three primary colors. It proposes pure abstraction and universality by reducing art to the essential form of colour (only primary colours along black and white) and simplifying visual compositions to the vertical and horizontal directions.
Mondrian describes his technique as one that “ignores the particulars of appearances, of natural form and color, in order to find its expression in the abstraction of form and color”.
At the close of book III, Socrates, after a stifling critique of hitherto existing art forms in ancient Greece, endorses an alternative, a simple, but not simplistic, artistic expressions capable of representing the ideal forms of the intelligible world. Among those he mentioned are solemn hymns and praises for the gods. Could the simplicity of Mondrian’s abstract art qualify as well?
I can only assume that had Mondrian been with Plato at that time of his political excursion, He would have had an honored place in Plato’s republic and art would find its rightful place: beside the philosophical king, gazing at the perfection of the ideal eternal form of the “Good”.
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