Plato’s Warning Against Representational Art in the Book X

Upon reading Book X, it might be easy to infer that Plato simply dislikes poets, painters, and playwrights, however this isn’t true. In fact, Plato himself is something of a playwright; the whole piece is written as a dialogue between two characters, he uses literary devices such as metaphors, and he uses the text to get a lesson across to his audience. Therefore, we can’t assume that Plato dislikes representational artists simply because of what they do for a living, rather he dislikes them because of how they do it.

The aspects of representation that Plato opposes are straying from the truth and encouraging emotion, and in turn he also disapproves the audience’s superficial consumption of such representational art. What Plato values above everything else is truth and reality. One of the first things he expresses in Book X is that he’s reluctant to denounce Homer, whom he has always been fond of, and yet he must remain loyal to the truth, which is that Homer, and all other representational artists that came after him, do not depict reality (that is, god’s creation), or even the craftsman’s product. Plato states that the truth is that which can be proved by logic, measurements, and calculations; therefore, to know the truth is to have knowledge. He asserts that representational artists have no real knowledge of what they depict; he compares painters to a person who carries around a mirror claiming that he can create everything, illustrating his point that “it doesn’t take the knowledge of truth to create a painting (since what they are creating are appearances, not reality). ”

In creating an image of something rather than the thing itself, the artist seems to not be know the truth of what he is representing; all he can do is show the audience what he sees, and so his work is not real, and not even close to being real. “It is, in fact, two generations from reality. ” What the artist does is hold up a mirror to reality, and claim to have created something valuable, something real, when he has, in fact, contributed nothing to society. Plato is adamantly against letting the emotional part of ourselves get the better of us; he calls this “the low-grade part” of us, which is unintelligent and impressionable, while “the best part” is that which uses logic and reasoning to understand the truth. He uses the example of seeing one object as seemingly bigger when we’re closer to it, and smaller when we’re farther away from it; while in our logical minds we know that this is the same object and it cannot change in size, the unintelligent side of our minds registers it as changing in appearance based on our perspective. This is our internal contradiction of truth versus perception, and because a painter only shows his audience what he perceives, he is tricking them into believing something other than the truth; he is pushing the logical, best side of our brains to the side and appealing to the low-grade side. Poets do a similar thing by depicting characters who are unafraid to be emotional in public, something the rational part of us tells us is not okay because of social conventions. By showing a man who cries when his son dies, the poet is communicating that the “low-grade” side of ourselves should be fed and fostered, when in fact, this side of ourselves clouds our judgement and bars us from being able to think clearly about our situation. Instead of wallowing in our grief and pain, “we should constantly be training our minds to waste no time before trying to heal anything which is unwell. ”

In the argument of nature versus nurture, Plato seems to be leaning toward nurture as he states the importance of pushing away our natural emotions, such as grief, sadness, and even humor – when, in private, we laugh at vulgar or foolish things even though we would be embarrassed to do so in public – in order to remain steadfastly rational and deserving of our place as a member of a civilized society. He says that by allowing representational artists to appeal to our emotional side, the side which “can’t even recognize what size things are”, society will inevitably dismantle and become uncivilized. Furthermore, Plato acknowledges that it’s not the representational artists alone who are in the wrong; after all, what is an artist without his audience? The representational poet neglects the intelligent side of ourselves “because otherwise he’d lost his popular appeal” Plato degrades the majority audience, likening them to children, by saying that if poets were to represent the truth – which is “difficult to represent” – the audience would have difficulty understanding it because they are not familiar with that side of themselves. The audience doesn’t have any more knowledge about what is being represented than the artist does, “they just base their conclusions on the colors and shapes they can see.

Despite this, Plato admits that at one point or another, everyone falls under the spell of these works, and that he himself enjoys them. He even calls for a justification for the seemingly useless and even harmful nature of representational art, saying that “we’ll be the winners if poetry turns out to be beneficial as well as enjoyable”. He ends the piece by saying that, in the case that there is no justification for it, just as “a lover does when he thinks that a love affair he’s involved in is no good for him”, he must reluctantly detach himself.

In conclusion, Plato, while a consumer of representational art, finds it to have no benefit to society. Interestingly, Plato touches on many aspects of society but fails to acknowledge the psychological aspect. Art, in general, is made and consumed by people who seek to understand the “low-grade” part of themselves, in order to become more in tune with who they are, what they feel, and what they value. While Plato believes that indulging that side is what fuels it and renders it uncontrollable, it can be actually be cathartic, which helps not to let it get out of hand and spill out into public interactions. Plato’s warning against representational art can be compared to parents warning their children against violent video games. In the case of the latter, there has been no solid evidence of video games making children violent; similarly, there is undisputable proof against Plato’s theories, in the fact that hundreds of years later, representational art is more prevalent than ever, even farther from the truth than in Plato’s days (e. g. the depiction of supernatural creatures), and continues to target people’s emotions. And yet, society has progressed significantly, and civilization remains unfaltering.