'The Shifting Problems of Mimesis in Plato' [AUTHOR'S MS] in J. Pfefferkorn & A. Spinelli (eds.) Platonic Mimesis Revisited (Academia Verlag, 2021) (original) (raw)
Related papers
On The Threefold Sense of Mimesis in Plato’s Republic
Epoche: A Journal for the History of Philosophy, 2013
The traditional reading of Plato’s criticism of the poets and painters in Book 10 of the Republic is that they merely imitate. In light of Plato’s own image-making, the critique of imitation requires a more careful examination, especially in regards to painting. This paper argues that it is insufficient to view Plato’s critique of image-making by the painter solely in terms of the image replication that does not consider the eidos. In view of the context of Plato’s argument within Book 10 and elsewhere, other considerations, such as the ideas of measure and proportion, which pertain to the notion of the beautiful, are required for a complete understanding of the argument against the painter. In light of these further considerations I argue for a threefold distinction between mimesis as replication, mimesis as false resemblance, and mimesis as true resemblance. With respect to the third kind of mimesis, which directly pertains to Plato’s own image-making, one can see in Plato a different configuration of the relation between image and original portrayed in the image.
Mimesis in Plato’s Republic and Its Interpretation by Girard and Gans
2021
In the light of the sheer scope, depth, and range of complexity of the Republic, of its pivotal role in Plato’s corpus, and of its still living interpretive reception, I will focus on a single but clearly central issue in the dialogue, that of mimesis, emphasizing its treatment in Book X, and referring also to a key passage in Book VI. Mimesis plays a crucial and highly contested role in the dialogue as a whole, figuring centrally in Books II, III, and X. Socrates picks up his earlier discussion of it in the tenth and final book in the light the intervening discussion in books IV through IX of the role of justice in an ideal city and in the well-balanced individual psyche. I will discuss some of the complexities attendant upon the role of mimesis in the Republic; this will be followed by a treatment of the responses of René Girard and Eric Gans, both of whom, because of the central role played by mimesis in their work, of necessity comment on Plato’s founding role in relation to the...
Plato's mimetic art: The power of the mimetic and the complexity of reading Plato
Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, 2010
I will begin by briefly setting out a problem in the interpretation of ancient mimesis between the received view and an explanation I think is more adequate to the Platonic and Aristotelian language as well as the social-political problematic in which they unfailingly speak of mimesis. I will then show, even more briefly, how that better view of ancient mimesis ties into language acquisition, findings in contemporary neuroscience, and Rene Girard’s theory about the origin (and plausible destruction) of culture. Those matters together set forth anew the power of the mimetic and place the ancient, and particularly Platonic, philosophical machinery on firm anthropological and cultural ground, where—even today—it finds significant real world traction. In the second part of the paper I will show that even if one disagrees with my interpretation of the mimetic, reading a Platonic dialogue requires attention to at least three levels of discourse: the arguments at the philosophical surface, the interaction of the interlocutors, and what those interactions aim to incite, invite or require of the readers. THIS IS THE TYPESCRIPT, FOR SCHOLARLY NOTATION REFER TO THE JOURNAL.
Plato’s Philosophical Mimesis: On the Pedagogical and Protreptic Value of Imperfection
ΣΧΟΛΗ. Ancient Philosophy and the Classical Tradition
This article addresses two often perplexing traits in Plato’s philosophical style: first, the fact that Plato’s writings are mimetic, despite the strong criticisms of mimesis we find therein; second, the fact that this mimesis not only features the constitutive defects inherent to any mimesis, but Plato actually increases its imperfection by adding other manifest defects. Based on epistemological and psychological views taken from the Platonic corpus (especially the soul’s tripartition), I show how Plato’s philosophical mimesis uses defectiveness or imperfection to overcome the limitations of mimesis identified in the Republic. To explain this, I argue that Plato’s philosophical mimesis should be primarily conceived as an imitation of people or conversations in which views or arguments are conveyed, but rather as an imitation of the act or practice of philosophical inquiry, and that by rendering this act visible to the reader, the Platonic corpus can better teach how to perform it a...
B. Bossi & Th. M. Robinson (eds.), Plato’s Statesman Revisited, De Gruyter, Berlin-Boston , 2018
In Plato’s dialogues, which are mimetic, the interlocutors talk to each other, and the style of writing enables readers to visualise the scene. The scene that the readers observe presents the speakers but, much more significantly, it presents the actual subject matter. This ability to use words to make something visible was an art that was studied intensively by theoreticians of language during antiquity.
Seeing through Plato's Looking Glass. Mythos and Mimesis from Republic to Poetics
Aisthesis 1(1): 75-86, 2017
This paper revisits Plato's and Aristotle's views on mimesis with a special emphasis on mythos as an integral part of it. I argue that the Republic's notorious " mirror argument " is in fact ad hominem: first, Plato likely has in mind Agathon's mirror in Aristophanes' Thesmoforiazusae, where tragedy is construed as mimesis; second, the tongue-in-cheek claim that mirrors can reproduce invisible Hades, when read in combination with the following eschatological myth, suggests that Plato was not committed to a mirror-like view of art; third, the very omission of mythos shows that the argument is a self-consciously one-sided one, designed to caricature the artists' own pretensions of mirror-like realism. These points reinforce Stephen Halliwell's claim that Western aesthetics has been haunted by a «ghostly misapprehension» of Plato's mirror. Further evidence comes from Aristotle's " literary " (as opposed to Plato's " sociological ") discussion: rather than to the " mirror argument " , the beginning of the Poetics points to the Phaedo as the best source of information about Plato's views on poetry.
Revisiting Mimesis in Plato: An Introduction
Platonic Mimesis Revisited, 2021
On peut dire que l'idée d'imitation est au centre même de la philosophie platonicienne. Auguste Diès 1 The painter at work A terracotta column-krater, at display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, shows a painter engaged in applying pigment to a stone sculpture of Heracles. 2 The statue, standing on a pedestal, is dominantly placed in the centre of the image and sticks out by its white colouring. We can identify Heracles by his characteristic items: club, bow, and lion-skin. The painter is standing at his right (from the spectator's perspective), holding a small bowl with paint in his left hand and his forearm resting on his upper left leg. With the spatula in his right hand he applies paint (that is, tinted wax) to Heracles' lion-skin. The bent-over posture and concentrated expression of the painter, who wears only a cap and a garment leaving his upper body bare, suggest expertise and experience. As we can assume from the column and phialê (libation bowl) at the far left, the whole scene probably takes place in a sanctuary. There are four other figures grouped around the statue and the painter: to the bottom left a boy managing a brazier, which serves to heat the rods for spreading the wax. On the top left and right two deities supervise the painter's work: to the left the ruler of the gods, Zeus, with the sceptre in his right hand; to the right the personification of victory, Nike, represented as a graceful woman with open wings. Both deities are floating over the scene, in a seated position, facing each other. Perhaps their presence in the picture indicates the factors of correctness and success in the painter's work. The last figure is the most interesting: it is Heracles himself, sneaking in from the right, behind the painter's back and invisible to him. The sculpture's model, too, wears his lion-skin, bow, and club. He has lifted 1 Diès 1927, 594. 2 This description of the krater makes use of the information provided on the webpage of the Metropolitan Museum (see the following page for the web address). The krater is original from Apulia and was crafted between 360 and 350 BC. It is a rare surviving representation of an artist at work, providing evidence of a colouring technique with liquid wax which is called 'encaustic'.
Why has Plato written about Mimesis?
Anthology of Philosophical Studies, Athens Institute for Education and Research, 2015
Mimesis is one of the “most baffling words in the philosophical vocabulary”. Its importance in the history of Western Philosophy, especially in regards to its aesthetic declination, is never sufficiently highlighted. The word appears in the ancient Greek language as linked to certain theatrical performances from Sicily, but it is Plato who first gave it an enormous philosophical scope. The concept is present all along the Dialogues, with an evolving – or even changing – meaning and function which constitutes a fluctuant reflection. Among these different uses, we will first distinguish between two semantic poles. On the one hand, mimesis allows Plato to understand and to judge phenomena as sophistic discourses as well as poetry and arts. On the other hand, although linked to this aspect, he will make it the bridge point between the two worlds of his ontology. In this way mimesis becomes the main justification for excluding the imitative poet (i.e. the theater’s performer) from the Republic’s just city: imitation is untruthful (book III), and furthermore, it hides the reality (book X). It is nevertheless surprising that Plato builds his criticism around this concept when considering its semantic origin. Why would Plato use a theater-related word as such in order to develop a devastating criticism of theater? This paper tackles this variation of a classic philosophical paradox (why Plato employs the dialogic form of writing, which is theatrical itself, whereas he condemns theatre?) according to a new approach: the conceptual procedure applied by Plato to mimesis is at the very end his answer to a challenge proposed by theater. In order to demonstrate this, it will be necessary to analyze this conceptual procedure on its own, as well as to specify which kind of theater this challenge could possibly come from. This study thus aims to clarify the relationship between philosophy and theater which the concept of mimesis seems to bring to the front. Keywords: Mimesis, Plato, philosophy, theatre.