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Imperfect Art
Plato’s metaphysics and his Doctrine of Forms describes a general division of our universe into forms and particulars. Forms are instantiated by contingent particulars. That is, particulars are produced by imperfect participation in a form.
His argument is that if an imperfect representation of a thing exists, then there also exists a form to which the thing is relatively imperfect. For example, we may only be able to reproduce imperfect squares, but these representations are based on the perfect form “Square”, a definition of a two-dimensional shape with four equal sides and four right angles.
In later writings (namely Phaedo and The Republic), Plato expands the metaphysical levels at both ends. The mysterious qualities of souls – they are formlike in their perfection, but seem to be instances of something since we each have one – places them somewhere above forms. The more interesting expansion occurs downward (in Plato’s opinion, at least) regarding art. For Plato, since art is a representation of our world – a world composed of particulars – that it somehow ranks below particulars.
Is art really just a duplicate of a flawed universe? Isn’t what makes art beautiful its ability to represent the forms, to be even more real than reality?
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Comments
I don’t think that art’s beauty comes from its ability to more closely depict the “form” that Plato envisioned. I agree with him that art is a step away from the “perfect form.” Instead of getting us closer to the “real world” (the one outside cave), art provides us with an escape from reality. Why we need that escape is an entirely different topic.
Matt Davis
Feb 6, 03:13 PM #
I think art is a personal reception of your own side of perfection. Rather than see it in forms, its can be taken in a general form, than depicted to the own persons sense of perfection, in gathering the sights that they may deem perfect. Therefore, art is taken into that/
Sheoud
Mar 8, 07:13 PM #
Maybe art was all this things in the 19th century and before… Not now. Today, art and beauty (and not only beauty) are not necessarly together, and its frontiers have expanded a lot. Left the object of art, and now every art matter is a process. I particulally like it…
Eduardo
Nov 25, 10:23 AM #
Doesn’t neuroscience have quite a bit to say about this? If you study visual systems, there is a neuron each for vertical line, color, position; and apparently, a separate one for the face of Jennifer Aniston. At any rate, how we learn and generalize has a great deal to do with how we divide up the job. We collect information about each bird until we develop a sense of ‘birdness’. And we continue to add information, and modify our abstraction. I’m unclear if there ever is a ‘final’ form in our learning or the real world, or even in any metaphysical conception. Ask any biologist/geneticist whether the tree of life is a tree, bush, shrub. We like neat categories but how we approach phylogeny depends on methodology and patterns not clear, exclusive laws. Art to me is this abstraction in which an artist inserts their own creativity in enhancing the abstraction that the rest of us sees. They add an angle, notice details, recognize patterns, demonstrate emotion, see potential, or imagine meaning that we do not.
c
Jul 3, 09:14 AM #
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