## 1. Beauty



The study of Plato on beauty must begin with one warning. The Greek
adjective *kalon* only approximates to the English
"beautiful." Not everything Plato says about a
*kalos*, *kale*, or *kalon* thing will
belong in a summary of his aesthetic theories. 



Readers can take this distinction between the Greek and English terms
too far. It always feels more scrupulous to argue against equating
words from different languages than to treat them interchangeably. And
the discussion bears more on assessments of Platonic ethical theory
than on whatever subject may be called Plato's aesthetics.



But even given these qualifications the reader should know how to tell
what is beautiful from what is *kalon*. To begin with the terms
have overlapping but distinct ranges of application. A passage in
Plato may speak of a face or body that someone finds *kalon*,
or for that matter a statue, a spoon, a tree, a grassy place to rest
(*Phaedrus* 230b). Then "beautiful" makes a natural
equivalent, certainly less stilted than the alternatives. And yet even
here it is telling that Plato far more often uses *kalon* for a
face or body than for works of art and natural scenery. As far as
unambiguous beauties are concerned, he has a smaller set in mind than
we do (Kosman 2010).



More typically *kalon* appears in contexts to which
"beautiful" would fit awkwardly if at all. For both Plato
and Aristotle--and in many respects for Greek popular
morality--*kalon* has a particular role to play as ethical
approbation, not by meaning the same thing that *agathon*
"good" means, but as a special complement to goodness. At
times *kalon* narrowly means "noble," often and
more loosely "admirable." The compound *kalos
k'agathos*, the aristocratic ideal, is all-round praise, not
"beautiful and good" as its components would translate
separately, but closer to "splendid and upright." Here
*kalon* is entirely an ethical term. Calling virtue beautiful
feels misplaced in modern terms, or even perverse; calling wisdom
beautiful, as the *Symposium* does (204b), will sound like a
mistake (Kosman 2010, 348-350).



Some commentators try to keep *kalon* and
"beautiful" close to synonymous despite these differences
in their semantic ranges (Hyland 2008). David Konstan has rejuvenated
the question by emphasizing the beauty not in uses of the adjective
*kalon* but in the related noun *kallos* (Konstan 2014,
Konstan 2015). As welcome as this shift of focus is regarding Greek
writing as a whole, it runs into difficulties when we read Plato; for
*kallos* carries overtones of physical, visual attractiveness,
and Plato is cautious about the desire that such attractiveness
arouses.



Rather than seek a Greek equivalent for "beautiful,"
translators often choose another English word for *kalon*. One
rightly popular choice is "fine," which applies to most
things labeled *kalon* and is also appropriate to ethical and
aesthetic contexts (so Woodruff 1983). There are fine suits and string
quartets but also fine displays of courage. Of course modern
English-speakers have fine sunsets and fine dining as well, this word
being even broader than *kalon*. That is not to mention fine
points or fine print. And whereas people frequently ask what beauty
really consists in, so that a conversation on the topic might actually
have taken place, it is hard to imagine worrying over "what the
fine is" or "what is really fine."



The telling criterion will be not philological but philosophical.
Studying the *Hippias Major* each reader should ask whether
Plato's treatment of *to kalon* sounds relevant to questions
one asks about beauty today.


### 1.1 *Hippias Major*



For a long time scholars treated the *Hippias Major* as a
spurious dialogue. Today most agree that Plato wrote it, and its
sustained inquiry into beauty is seen as central to Platonic
aesthetics.



The *Hippias Major* follows Socrates and the Sophist Hippias
through a sequence of attempts to define *to kalon*. Socrates
badgers Hippias, in classic Socratic ways, to identify beauty's
general nature; Hippias offers three definitions. Quite preposterously
for instance "a beautiful young woman is beautiful"
(287e). Hippias had a reputation for the breadth of his factual
knowledge. He compiled the first list of Olympic victors, and he might
have written the first history of philosophy. But his over-ingestion
of specifics has evidently left him unable to digest his experience
and generalize to a philosophical definition.



After Hippias fails, Socrates tries three definitions. These are
general but they fail too, and--again in classic Socratic
mode--the dialogue ends unresolved. In one excursus Socrates says
beauty "is appropriate [*prepei*]" and proposes
defining it as "what is appropriate [*to prepon*]"
(290d). Although ending in refutation this discussion (to 294e) is
worth a look as the anticipation of a modern debate. Philosophers of
the eighteenth century argue over whether an object is beautiful by
satisfying the definition of the object, or independently of that
definition (Guyer 1993). Kant calls the beauty that is appropriateness
"dependent beauty" (*Critique of Judgment*, section
16). Such beauty threatens to become a species of the good. Within the
accepted corpus of genuine Platonic works beauty is never subsumed
within the good, the appropriate, or the beneficial; Plato seems to
belong in the same camp as Kant in this respect. (On Platonic beauty
and the good see Barney 2010.) Nevertheless, and of course, he is no
simple sensualist about beauty either. The very temptation in Plato to
link the beautiful with the good and to assess it intellectually is
part of why Porter calls him and Aristotle "formalists,"
who diverted ancient theorizing about art from its sensualist origins
(Porter 2010).



Despite its inconclusiveness the *Hippias Major* reflects the
view of beauty found in other dialogues:


1. Beauty behaves as canonical Platonic Forms do. It possesses the
reality that Forms have and is discovered through the same dialectic
that brings other Forms to light. Socrates wants Hippias to explain
the property that is known when any examples of beauty are known
(*essence* of beauty), the *cause* of all occurrences of
beauty, and more precisely the cause not of the appearance of beauty
but of its *real being* (286d, 287c, 289d, 292c, 294e,
297b).
2. Nevertheless beauty is not just any Form. It bears some close
relationship to the good (296d), even though Socrates argues that the
two are distinct (296e ff., 303e ff.). It is therefore a Form of some
status above that of other Forms.
3. Socrates and Hippias appeal to artworks as examples of beautiful
things but do not treat those as central cases (290a-b,
297e-298a). So too generally Plato conducts his inquiry into
beauty at a distance from his discussion of art. (But the
*Republic* and the *Laws* both contain exceptions to
this generalization: Lear 2010, 361.)



These three aspects of Platonic beauty work together and reflect
beauty's unique place in Plato's metaphysics, something almost both
visible and intelligible.


### 1.2 Beauty and art



The three features of beauty in the *Hippias Major* also apply
in the *Symposium*, Plato's other major analysis of beauty. In
the *Symposium* Socrates claims to be quoting his teacher
Diotima on the subject of love, and in the lesson attributed to her
she calls beauty the object of every love's yearning. She spells out
the soul's progress toward ever-purer beauty, from one body to all,
then through all beautiful souls to laws and kinds of knowledge,
finally reaching beauty itself (210a-211d).



Diotima describes the poet's task as the begetting of wisdom and other
virtues (209a). Ultimately desiring what is beautiful the poet
produces works of verse. And who would not envy Homer or Hesiod
(209d)? But aside from these passages the *Symposium* seems
prepared to treat anything *but* a poem as an exemplar of
beauty. In a similar spirit the *Philebus*'s examples of pure
sensory beauty exclude pictures (51b-d).



The *Republic* contains tokens of Plato's reluctance to
associate poetry with beauty. The dialogue's first discussion of
poetry, whose context is education, censors poems that corrupt the
young (377b-398b). Then almost immediately Socrates speaks of
cultivating a fondness for beauty among the young guardians. Let them
see gracefulness (*euschemosune*) in paintings and
illustrative weaving, a sibling to virtue (401a). Their taste for
beauty will help them prefer noble deeds over ugly vulgar ones
(401b-d, 403c). How can Plato have seen the value of beauty to
education and not mentioned the subject in his earlier criticisms? Why
couldn't this part of the *Republic* concede that false and
pernicious poems affect the young through their beauty?



But the *Republic* takes pains to deny that beauty appears in
poetry. *Republic* 10 calls the beauty of poetic lines
deceptive. Take away the decorative language that makes a poetic
sentiment sound right and put it into ordinary words, and it becomes
unremarkable, as young people's faces beautified by youth later show
themselves as the plain looks they are (601b).


### 1.3 The Form of beauty



The fundamental datum in understanding Platonic beauty as part of
Plato's aesthetics is that Plato sees no opposition between the
pleasures that beauty brings and the goals of philosophy. Plato
mentions no other Form in the *Symposium*; the Form of beauty
is Form enough. Philosophers meet this beauty in an experience in
which they consummate their deepest love while also attaining the
loftiest knowledge. 



Many passages in Plato associate a Form with beauty: *Cratylus*
439c; *Euthydemus* 301a; *Laws* 655c; *Phaedo*
65d, 75d, 100b; *Phaedrus* 254b; *Parmenides* 130b;
*Philebus* 15a; *Republic* 476b, 493e, 507b. Plato
mentions beauty as often as he speaks of any property that admits of
philosophical conceptualization, and for which a Form therefore
exists. Thanks to the features of Forms as such, we know that this
entity being referred to must be something properly called beauty,
whose nature can be articulated without recourse to the natures of
particular beautiful things. (See especially *Phaedo* 79a and
*Phaedrus* 247c on properties of this Form.)



Beauty is Plato's example of a Form so frequently for a pair of
reasons. On one hand it bears every mark of the Forms. It is an
evaluative concept as much as justice and courage are, and suffers
from disputes over its meaning as much as they do. The Theory of Forms
seeks to guarantee stable referents for disputed evaluative terms; so
if anything needs a Form, beauty does, and it will have a Form if any
property does.



In general, a Form *F* differs from an individual *F*
thing in that *F* may be predicated univocally of the Form: The
Form *F* *is* *F*. An individual *F* thing
both is and is not *F*. In this sense the same property
*F* can only be predicated equivocally of the individual (e.g.
*Republic* 479a-c). Plato's analysis of equivocally
*F* individuals (*Cratylus* 439d-e,
*Symposium* 211a) recalls observations that everyone makes
about beautiful objects. They fade with time; require an offsetting
ugly detail; elicit disagreements among observers; lose their beauty
outside their context (adult shoes on children's feet). Here beauty
does better than most other properties at meeting the criteria for
Forms and non-Forms. Odd numbers may fail to be odd in some
hard-to-explain way, but the ways in which beautiful things fall short
of their perfection are obvious even to the unphilosophical.



But physical beauty is atypical being a Form that humans *want*
to know. This is the second reason Plato makes beauty such a frequent
example of a Form. The process known as *anamnesis* or
recollection is more plausible for beauty than it is for most other
properties. The philosophical merit of equivocally *F* things
is that they come bearing signs of their incompleteness, so that the
inquisitive mind wants to know more (*Republic*
523c-524d). But not everyone can read those signs of
incompleteness. Soft or large items inspire questions in minds of an
abstract bent. The perception of examples of justice or self-control
presupposes moral development before someone can recognize a law's
double nature as just and unjust. By contrast, beautiful things strike
everyone, and arouse everyone's curiosity. Therefore, beauty promises
more effective reflection than any other property of things. Beauty
alone is both a Form and a sensory experience (*Phaedrus*
250d).



So the *Phaedrus* (250d-256b) and *Symposium*
ignore people's experiences of other properties when they describe the
first movement into philosophizing. Beautiful things remind souls of
their mystery as no other visible objects do, and in his optimistic
moments Plato welcomes people's attention to them.



Those optimistic moments are not easy to sustain. To make beauty
effective for learning Plato needs to rely on its desirability (as
foregrounded in Konstan 2015) while also counting on the soul's
ability to transfer its desiring from the visible to the intelligible
(see *Philebus* 65e). Plato is ambivalent about visual
experience. Sight may be metaphorically like knowledge, but
metonymically it calls to mind the ignorant senses (Pappas 2015,
49).



Beauty's unmatched pedagogical effects, when the transfer of desire
succeeds, show why Plato talks about its goodness and good
consequences, sometimes even its identity with "the good"
(*Laws* 841c; *Philebus* 66a-b; *Republic*
401c; *Symposium* 201c, 205e; but the relationship between
beautiful and good, especially in *Symposium*, is
controversial: White 1989). These desirable effects also explain why
Plato speaks grudgingly of beauty in art and poetry. Another question
matters more than either poetry or beauty does: What leads a mind
toward knowledge and the Forms? Things of beauty do so excellently
well. Poems mostly don't. When poems (or paintings) set the mind
running along unphilosophical tracks away from what is abstract and
intelligible, the attractions they possess will be seen as
meretricious. The corrupting cognitive effect exercised by poems
demonstrates their inability to function as Plato knows the beautiful
object to function.



The corrupting effect needs to be spelled out. What prevents poems
from behaving as beautiful objects do? The answer will have to address
the orienting question in Plato's aesthetics, namely: What fosters
philosophical enlightenment, and what obstructs it?


## 2. Imitation



"Imitation" is the commonest English translation of
*mimesis*. Alternatives include
"representation" and "emulation." To make
things confusing, the transliterated Greek word sans diacritical mark
has come to be accepted as English ("mimesis"). All the
translations capture something of the word's meaning. As long as
"imitation" is used with awareness that it will not mean
everything that *mimesis* does, it makes a serviceable
translation. "Imitate" functions well enough as the verb
*mimeisthai*; so does "mimic." (See Sorbom
1966; also see Marusi&ccaron; 2011.)



Of course one can use the Greek *mimesis*, as this
discussion will frequently do. For simplicity's sake some prefer the
now-English "mimesis." But this last choice brings a risk.
The English word "mimesis" has begun picking up its own
contexts and connotations, becoming English proportionately as it
ceases to substitute for the Greek word.



Besides *mimesis* Plato sometimes speaks of a
*mimema*. "Imitation" like
*mimesis* can refer either to a process or to its
outcome. You engage in the act of imitation in order to produce an
imitation. A *mimema* however is only ever a copy, not
also the copying act that produced it.



(Mateo Duque was of much help in thinking through issues in the coming
sections.)


### 2.1 *Mimesis* in Aristophanes



Authors before Plato used *mimesis* more vaguely than he
did, neither specially applying the word to a poetic process nor
necessarily implying its fraudulence --with one important
exception. The comedies of Aristophanes, obsessed with Euripides and
with tragedy in general (*Birds* 787, 1444; *Clouds*
1091; *Plutus* 423-4), introduce comments about tragic
stagecraft that say *mimeisthai* and *mimesis* in
consistently pejorative ways.



Although comedy is sometimes identified as antagonist to philosophy in
the "ancient quarrel" Plato speaks of between philosophy
and poetry (Most 2011), Aristophanes has also long been seen as
Plato's precursor in the moralistic critique of poetry. They share
conservative sensibilities that outweigh Aristophanes' slander of
Socrates in *Clouds* (Nussbaum 1980). But Aristophanes'
influence on Plato extends, as commentators do not always recognize,
to the nature of *mimesis*. He uses that word in a
technical sense that describes what actors do in a play, and with
suggestions of fraud or concealment.



In addition to *Frogs* with its face-off between Aeschylus and
Euripides there is *Women Celebrating the Thesmophoria*, which
calls *mimesis* a disruption of life and opposes it to
nature. It can also be argued that *Women Celebrating the
Thesmophoria* finds an ambiguity in dramatic imitation that
anticipates Plato; for in that play, as in the *Republic*,
*mimesis* combines composition and performance, the
invention of characters and the portrayal of them (Pappas 1999).


### 2.2 *Republic* 3: impersonation



Plato cites *mimesis* as a characteristic of poetry alone
in *Republic* Book 3 and *Laws* Book 4.



Books 2 and 3 of the *Republic* assess poetry's role in the
curriculum for the city's guardian class. The first part of this
passage, mainly in Book 2, condemns the images of gods and demigods
that Homer and the tragedians have produced, both blaspheming and
setting bad examples to the young (377e-392c). After this
criticism of content Socrates turns to what he labels the "style
[*lexis*]" of narration. Poetic narration can take place
through narration alone, through *mimesis* alone, or with
a mix of the two (392d).



Already this way of differentiating storytelling styles is irregular,
as if one analyzed walking into pure walking, running, and a
combination of the two, as a method for understanding
*running*. Such an analysis would mark the act of running as
failed or deviant walking. Likewise the taxonomy of narrations
presumes that *mimesis* is deviant.



The subsequent pages continue treating *mimesis* as
anomalous, or rather as comprehensible only under the sign of anomaly
and failure. Socrates defines imitation, develops two arguments
against it, and finally proclaims that no mimetic poetry will be
admitted into the city that the *Republic* is founding.



The defining example establishes *mimesis* as
impersonation. Homer's poems alternate between third-person accounts
of events (in which Homer narrates in his own voice) and speeches of
the characters involved in those events. When Homer relates
Agamemnon's rebuke to the priest Chryses he uses the abusive language
that a warriors' king would use when such a king refused to show mercy
(393a-c). The presentation of character is, notably, ambiguous
between the act of *writing* or composing the words of a
character like Agamemnon, and the act of *reciting*
(performing, acting out) the words. The ambiguity (seen also in
Aristophanes) lets Socrates deploy more than one argument against the
presentation of characters.



The main argument is blunt but clear, and plausible enough. What the
new city really does not want is the presentation of base types,
because acting such parts fosters the behaviors that are found in the
persons being mimicked (395c-397e). Attempts to read this
impersonation as attention to appearance alone (Lear 2011) have the
advantage of unifying Book 3 with Book 10, but sacrifice the
psychological simplicity behind the argument.



If acting a part does lead to taking on the characteristics of the
part, then in one respect Plato has a powerful point and in another
respect is generating a misleading argument. The point is powerful
inasmuch as it lets Plato ban all portrayals of vicious and ignoble
characters but not the portrayals of brave soldiers, philosophers, and
other wholesome types. Moreover the factual premise is believable.
Taking on someone else's traits and tics can have a more lasting
effect than the *Republic's* critics sometimes acknowledge.
Actors even today comment on how a role changed them.



Even this most plausible part of the argument runs into trouble.
Plato's list of things unworthy of imitation proves surprisingly
commodious. Alongside villains one finds women, slaves, animals,
musical instruments, gears and pulleys, and sounds of water. And these
last examples beg the question. Sounding like machinery does not make
the imitator more like a gear or pulley; it must be a deranged
practice only insofar as all impersonation is deranged. And that is
what the argument was aiming to prove.



But the significantly misleading nature of the argument goes beyond a
moment of overstatement. The case against *mimesis*
misleads in that it exploits the ambiguity between impersonation as
something a writer does and impersonation as the performer's task. In
1963 Eric Havelock stressed the importance of this ambiguity to Book
3; but Havelock understated the degree to which Plato exploited the
ambiguity. The most convincing part of Book 3 has to assume that
*mimesis* is performance, both because such effects as
thunder are mimicked in performance, not on the page; and because the
bad effects of impersonation on character make more sense when
describing young actors' playing a vicious role than grown playwrights
in the act of writing that role.



On the other hand performance does not involve a whole population.
Many young male Athenians did participate in choruses for comedy and
tragedy. Each year a few dozen future farmers and doctors, generals
and gentlemen, spent a season preparing for their time on stage. Even
so, the extensiveness of the practice among young people does not
justify barring all drama from the city and from the sight of each
citizen, and that is what Plato's concluding ban comes to:



> 
> If a man were to arrive in the city whose wisdom [*sophia*]
> empowered him to become everything and to mimic all
> things--together with the poems he wanted to perform
> [*epideixasthai*]-- we would worship him as someone holy
> [*hieron*] and wonderful and pleasant, but tell him there is no
> man like him in our city, nor by our traditional law [*themis*]
> can come to be here; and we would send him off to another city after
> pouring myrrh on his head and crowning him with wool. (398a)
> 



The religious language is lavish, and significant. No ordinary deeds
are being excluded but ones that smell of sacred power. And Plato's
censorship will be complete. The city fathers running mimetic poetry
out of town have broadened their scope from the young guardians'
education to the cultural life of a community. The literary
representation of characters will receive no hearing anywhere. It is
even doubtful whether the city will permit dramatic poems to circulate
in written form. The poet has had to bring his writings with him, and
he cannot get his foot in the door.



The poet is a visitor because mimetic poetry has no natural home in
the philosophers' town. Moreover he arrives offering to recite his
poems. That they are his makes him a *poet*, that he comes to
recite them makes him a *performer*. Thus he embodies the
ambiguity built into Book 3's definition of *mimesis*. If
the fate of imitative composition stands or falls with the fate of
imitative performance, a reasonable worry about behaviors that young
people experiment with balloons into an argument against a mammoth
body of literature. In short, the ambiguity in Plato's definition of
imitation does not merely remind us (as Havelock argued) that he is
witnessing the transition from oral to written culture. It makes
Plato's grand conclusion possible.



Imitation is a formal concept in Book 3. This is to say 1) that one
can distinguish poetic *mimesis* from poetic narration by
looking for a formal element in the poetry; and 2) that
*mimesis* may make poetry more deleterious than it would
otherwise be, but does not work these bad effects by itself, only when
the characters represented are bad to begin with. The definition of
imitation in Book 3 entails no general ideas of similarity or
likeness. *Mimesis* functions as a technical term with a
narrowly literary meaning, no more inherently philosophical than is
the distinction one would draw in English today between direct and
indirect discourse.



Book 10 will look at imitation from a different perspective. Space
does not permit a review of all existing proposals about how to square
the two passages. *Whether* Books 3 and 10 offer compatible
accounts of *mimesis*, and *how* one might make
them compatible, remains the most controversial question about Plato's
aesthetics. (See Belfiore 1984, Halliwell 1988, Nehamas 1982; and for
a superb summary of the main proposals, Naddaff 2002, 136n8. Lear 2011
is a recent argument in favor of the two passages' agreement with one
another.) Still one may trust a few summative statements.
*Republic* 10 revises the formal aspects of
*mimesis* with a picturing or portrayal that involves
more than direct quotation. The enhanced concept cannot be understood
without reference to the *Republic*'s psychological theory. And
in its expanded form the term refers to something bad in itself.


### 2.3 *Republic* 10: copy-making



As the *Sophist* does, Book 10 of the *Republic* treats
*mimesis* as a property broader than drama. The topic in
this passage (595a-608b) is a *mimesis* common to
painting and poetry and much like picturing or copying. It is a
relationship between a visible original and its visible likeness.



As Book 10 begins, Socrates links the coming treatment with what Book
3 had said about imitation. He also establishes the difference between
the passages. What follows will defend Book 3's banishment of
"imitative poetry" in terms that the *Republic*
developed after Book 3. "Now that we have differentiated the
soul's *eide*," the danger of imitation becomes
more evident (595a-b). An *eidos* is a kind, and this
phrase "kinds of soul" is most often taken to mean the
parts of the soul that Book 4 distinguished (435b-441c). The
*Republic*'s theory of reason, spirit, and desire can enlarge
what had been in Book 3 no more than suspicion about the impersonation
of ignoble people. The new argument will charge poetry with upsetting
the balance among the soul's parts. (Daniel Mailick contributed to
this discussion of the *Republic*'s psychological theory.)



In all Plato develops three theses during this first half of Book
10:


1. Poetic *mimesis*, like the kind found in painting, is
the imitation of appearance alone, and its products rank far below
truth. (596e-602c)
2. Therefore poetic *mimesis* corrupts the soul,
weakening the rational impulse's control over the person's other
drives and desires. (602c-608b)
3. It should therefore be banned from the good city.



The argument supporting (1) seeks to spell out how badly poetry and
painting fare at grasping and communicating knowledge. Partly because
they do so badly, but also for other reasons, mimetic arts bring moral
and psychological ill effects (2).



The words "imitation of appearance" in thesis (1) follow
from Plato's three-way differentiation:


1. *Form* (of couch, of table) made by a god.
2. *Individual things* (couches, tables) made by humans.
3. *Paintings* (of couch or table) made by imitators.



The carpenter works with eyes aiming "toward
[*pros*]" the Form (596b)--not with eyes *on*
the Form--so the individual couch the carpenter makes is
something less than the Form: an honest failing after a decent try. If
the Form is an object of knowledge, human creators at least possess
true opinion (601e).



Thus category II is not a domain of imitation, and the table in a
painting is not the "imitation of an imitation."
Nevertheless Plato's phrase "imitation of appearance" does
characterize artistic *mimesis* as a compounded problem.
Imitation intensifies a weakness present in existing objects; it not
only fails but fails twice, or doubly.



Skipping ahead for a moment, the *Republic*'s reader finds a
second three-way distinction (601c-602a) that criticizes imitation
from another perspective:


1. *User* (of a flute or bridle) who knows.
2. *Maker* (of flute or bridle) who has correct belief.
3. *Imitator* (of flute or bridle) who is ignorant.



This new list is intriguing and hard to make sense of. The three items
clearly belong alongside the previous three-part ranking. The
carpenter who makes a table resembles the leatherworker making the
bridle; both tripartitions put the visual imitator lowest. But why do
flautists and jockeys suddenly appear in the top spot, in place of a
god so supreme as to create even Forms?



The answer might appear among the particular manufactured objects that
these passages refer to, because for the reader familiar with Greek
religion both rankings evoke Athena. The couch- and table-making
carpenter practices a trade whose patron is Athena, while myths known
to Plato depict her as the original user of both flute (Pindar 12th
*Pythian Ode*) and bridle (Pindar 13th *Olympian Ode*).
If these associations stand up under scrutiny, they put the imitator
at the opposite pole from a god, rendering the products of imitation
not only lowly nothings but malevolently profane, even blasphemous
(Pappas 2013).



The argument thus far posits painting as the default case of
*mimesis* (Golden 1975, Nehamas 1982, Belfiore 1984, Moss
2007). But Socrates springboards beyond pictorial art to condemn
tragedy and its "father" Homer. Homer was ignorant, never
taught a useful thing to anyone (599b-600e). This apparent
*ad hominem* attack is designed to show that poetry too
imitates appearance. For that purpose it suffices to show that one
esteemed poet writes without knowledge. If great poetry can come out
of someone ignorant, then poetry must not require knowledge. Even if
ignorance is not necessary for the composition of poetry Homer's
example demonstrates that the two are compatible.



Modern readers protest: "Someone can be ignorant and still write
great poetry!" Plato nods in glum agreement, for this is exactly
the problem. What good will come of an activity that can not only be
attempted ignorantly but even succeeded at in ignorance? Poetry too
therefore imitates no more than appearance.



It remains for Plato to argue that poetry harms the soul. He says that
poetry's illusions fortify the worst part of the soul and turn it
against the best. The first stretch of this argument (602c-603b)
uses theoretical language taken from the *Republic*'s
psychological theory, while the second (603b-608b) appeals to
observable phenomena surrounding performances of tragedies.



Socrates returns to his analogy between poetry and painting. If you
are partly taken in by a painting's tricked-up table apparition but
you partly spot the falseness, which part of you does which? The
soul's rational impulse must be the part that knows the painting is
not a real table. But Book 4 established a fundamental principle: When
the soul inclines in more than one direction, this conflict represents
the work of more than one faculty or part of the soul (436b; recalled
in Book 10's argument at 602e). So being taken in by an optical or
artistic illusion must be the activity of some part of the soul
distinct from reason.



Invoking Book 4's psychological theory integrates the critique of
poetry of Book 10 into the *Republic*'s overarching argument.
The dialogue as a whole identifies justice with a balance among
reason, spirit or anger, and the desires. This controlled balance is
the happiest state available for human souls, and the most virtuous.
Imitation undoes the soul's justice, it brings both vice and
misery.



Plato does not specify the irrational part in question. Thinking the
sun is the size of your hand does not feel like either anger
overwhelming you or desires tempting. What do illusions have to do
with irrationality of motive?



Again commentaries differ. A complex and fertile debate continues to
worry over how perceptual error may undermine mental health or moral
integrity (Nehamas 1982, Moss 2007). Part of the answer comes from
Books 8-9, which sketch four character types graded from best to
worst. These are *eide* "kinds" of soul in a
different sense, not the species of motives within a soul but the
species that souls may be sorted into. This sorting deserves to play a
larger role than it has in the discussion of imitation.



The pleasures of the lowest soul are distinguished by their illusory
quality. Desire delights not in true beings but in "idols
[*eidolois*] of true pleasure" and painted images,
*eskiagraphemenais* (586b). *Skiagraphia* was an
impressionistic manner of painting that juxtaposed contrasting hues to
create illusionistic shadow and intensify color (Keuls 1974, Demand
1975, Petraki 2018), and Plato disapproved of it (*Parmenides*
165c-d, *Phaedo* 69b). (In fact the *Republic*'s
attacks on painting are sometimes interpreted narrowly as applying
only to *skiagraphia*.) Thus where Book 9 examines the desirous
part of the soul and finds its objects to be mere idols, Book 10
determines *mimesis* to be a show of mere idols and
concludes that it keeps company with the soul's desirous part.



Notice especially the terminology in Book 9. The tyrant is "at
the third remove" from the oligarch, his pleasure "a
third-place idol [*tritoi eidoloi*]"
compared to the truth (*aletheia*) of the oligarchic
soul's pleasure (587c). Meanwhile the oligarch's soul stands third
below the "kingly man [*tou basilikou*]" (587d).
Only ten pages later Book 10 echoes this terminology when it calls the
imitator "third from the king [*basileos*] and from
the truth [*aletheias*]" (597e; cf. 602c). The
language in Book 10 brings Book 9's equation of base pleasures with
illusory ones into its attack on art. If Book 10 can show that an art
form fosters interest in illusions it will have gone a long way toward
showing that the art form keeps company with irrational desires.



Another essential step in the argument is the recognition that what
Book 3 acknowledged as an exception to its critique, namely the
imitation of virtuous thoughtful characters, is not apt to exist.
Socrates has tragedy in mind (comedy secondarily) and observes that
playwrights neither know the quiet philosophical type nor profit from
putting that type on stage before spectators who came to the theater
to see something showily agitated (604e-605a). At one stroke
Plato intensifies his condemnation of *mimesis*, no
longer a dangerous technique when it presents the wrong kinds of
people but a technique that seldom presents any other kind.



Tragedy's hero, inherently impulsive and impassioned, acts contrary to
the dictates of reason. An illusion of virtue guides him. His son dies
and he doesn't save his tears for a private moment but lets them flow
publicly and at length (603e-604a). The spectators' reason is
appalled; their other impulses rejoice (605c-e). They reckon
that there is no harm in weeping along with the hero, enjoying an
emotional release without the responsibility one feels in real-life
situations. Thus does dramatic illusion induce bad habits of indulging
the passions; the soul that had spent its life learning self-control
sets about unlearning it.



Incidentally this argument turns on an assumption that Plato asserts
without discussion, that *mimesis* is the presentation or
representation of characters (e.g. 603c; 605a, c). Although Book 10
sometimes speaks of *mimesis* in other terms
(*mimesis* of virtues: 600e), the argument about
fostering passions requires that objects of poetic representation be
humans. When what we call *literary works* practice what we
call *representation*, Plato claims that they represent human
beings. For him as for Aristotle drama presents *prattontas*
"people doing things," but where Aristotle emphasizes the
things done, for Plato it is the people. Character is the essence of
epic and drama. (Halliwell 1988 argues otherwise.)



Plato's emphasis on character already predisposes him not to find
philosophical worth in literature. A character speaks from a single
point of view. Bring several characters together representing several
idiosyncratic perspectives on the world and the very idea of deriving
a general statement from the work becomes impossible (*Laws*
719c-d). This situation is as it were the dramatic corollary to
a general principle in *mimesis*, that it represents
plurality or multiplicity and so is forever indeterminate,
undeterminable.


### 2.4 *Sophist* and other passages



Plato's interpreters sometimes play up the passages in which he seems
to counter the *Republic*'s anti-poetic comments with hopeful
assessments of imitation. According to the standard chronology of the
dialogues, the relevant passages occur in dialogues written after the
*Republic*. If Plato changed his views over time, these
conciliatory remarks could indicate that he ultimately disavowed the
censorship of *Republic* 10.



The *Statesman* for instance calls existing constitutions
*mimemata* of moral truths as the philosophical
legislators know those truths (297c). Such likeness-making is not
fraud, for its outcome remains something worthy of respect. One can
say the same for scientific theories in Plato's *Timaeus*,
whose main speaker Timaeus argues that discourse about the natural
world mimics the intelligible world (47c). The *Laws* sees
imitation in music as a potentially accurate process (668b); the
hard-to-date *Menexenus* urges the young to imitate their
elders' virtues (236e, 248e). All these passages suggest, from
different angles, a rehabilitation for the process that Plato
elsewhere demeans as counterfeiting (Robinson 2016).



Nevertheless these passages do scarcely more than touch on
*mimesis*. What Plato says about imitation when he has
set out to define and evaluate it ought to weigh more heavily than a
use of the word he makes briefly. Anyway the later dialogues do not
speak as one. Plato's *Sophist*, a companion to the
*Statesman*, devotes much of its length to understanding
*mimesis*, and the context is derogatory.



The *Sophist* looks into imitation in order to define what a
sophist is. But the sophist--whom the main speaker calls an
imitator (*mimetes*) and sorcerer
(*goetes*) (235a)--is not far removed from the
deceiving poet (Notomi 2011). And although the *Sophist*'s
theory of imitation diverges somewhat from the one in
*Republic* 10, similarities between them preponderate. Like the
*Republic* the *Sophist* characterizes imitation
mockingly as the creation of a whole world, and accuses imitation of
misleading the unwary (234b-c), even if it also predicts more
optimistically that people grow up to see through false likenesses
(234d). Again as in *Republic* 10 imitation is contrasted with
a god's work--except that in the *Sophist* gods make all
living things (265c-d) and also images, *eidola*
(266a): dreams, shadows, reflections.



Most importantly, the representation that Plato charges the sophist
with is fraudulent. It is the kind that makes not an honest likeness
(*eikasia*) but an illusory image, a *phantasma*
(235d-236b). Makers of realistic statues are attending not to
what a human figure really looks like but to what looking at it is
like. In drawing the distinction between these kinds of
representations the *Sophist* does strike a conciliatory tone
not found in *Republic* 10, for it seems that a branch of the
mimetic profession retains the power to produce a reliable likeness of
an object. But the consolation proves fleeting. Reliable imitation
plays no role in a definition of sophists, would presumably play no
role in talk of poets either, and seems to make an appearance here
only for the purpose of being shuffled offstage as the excluded
*mimesis*, that which the imitation being talked about
*is not*.



The *Sophist* decisively marginalizes positive imitation when
it takes up *mimesis* a second time, subdividing the
production of illusions to identify a species in which imitators use
their own voice and bodies: "This part is called imitation
[*mimesis*]" (267a). The Eleatic Stranger who is
speaking recognizes that he has appropriated the general word for the
specific act of enacting false images. "Let's designate this to
be what we call the imitative profession
[*mimetikon*]"; everything else in the large genus
can go by some other name (267a).



Narrowing the process down to impersonation should make clear that
Plato finds a sophist's imitativeness to be much like a poet's.
Moreover this development neutralizes the suggestions that
*mimesis* has its good side. The imitative
*techne* will have many manifestations, including those
legitimate practices that the *Statesman* and other dialogues
refer to; but the real work of *mimesis*, the one that is
worth defining and applies to dominant art forms, is mendacious
impersonation. Where *Republic* 3's taxonomy made imitation
look like a freakish variety of narration, this use of a word both
generically and specially excludes good imitation as the exception and
the problem case. Essentially speaking the art of
*mimesis* is a bad and lying art.



After all, as the Stranger says, there is a shortage of names for
types of *mimesis*. The ancients did not work hard enough
making all relevant philosophical distinctions (267d). It is as if
Plato were saying: "Colloquial language being loose, I will
sometimes use *mimesis* in the broader sense that
contains epistemically sound practices, even though the core sense of
the word is pejorative."



Whether Plato should be *permitted* to juggle words' meanings
is another question. His quest to condemn imitation leaves him open to
criticism. But he does not consciously change his theory in the
direction of imitation understood positively.


### 2.5 Closing assessment



The *Sophist*'s references to divine copy-making invite another
worry. The images that gods produce in their kind of imitation are
shadows and reflections, and the products of truly bad
*mimesis* are to be something worse than that. But what
could be metaphysically lower than a shadow? Coming back to the
*Republic* one finds shadows and reflections occupying the
bottom-most domain of the Divided Line (510a). Where does poetic
imitation belong on that ranking?



One can articulate the same worry even remaining with the
*Republic*'s terms. Shadows and reflections belong in the
category of near-ignorance. Imitation works an effect worse than
ignorance, not merely teaching nothing but engendering a perverted
preference for ignorance over knowledge. Plato often observes that the
ignorant prefer to remain as they are (*Symposium* 204a), but
this turn toward ignorance is different. Why would anyone choose to
know less? The theoretical question is also a practical one. If
*mimesis* poisons the soul, why do so many people swallow
it? Plato's attack on poetry saddles him with an aesthetic problem of
evil.



*Republic* 10 shows signs of addressing the problem with
language of magic. Socrates begins by promising that insight into
*mimesis* operates as a countercharm (595b). People need
countercharms because the imitator is a "sorcerer
[*goetes*]" and thereby a deceiver (598d; cf.
602d). The *Republic* already said that sorcery robs people of
knowledge (413b-c). Finally the catalog of Homer's kinds of
ignorance ends by saying his poetry casts a spell (601b). As the
English "charm" does, this noun
*kelesis* can mean "appeal" but also
something fully magical, a spell or conjuration. Poetry works
magically to draw in the audience that it then degrades.



References to magic serve poorly as explanations but they bespeak the
need for explanation. Plato sees that some power must be drawing
people to give up both knowledge and the taste for knowledge. But what
is striking about this *deus ex machina* that explains poetry's
attractiveness is what it does *not* say. In other dialogues
the magic of poetry is attributed to one version or another of divine
inspiration. Odd that the *Republic* makes no reference to
inspiration when dialogues as different as the *Apology* and
the *Laws* mention it and the *Ion* and the
*Phaedrus* spell out how it works. Odder still, Plato almost
never cites imitation and divine inspiration together (the lone
exception *Laws* 719c), as if to say that the two are
incompatible accounts of poetry. Will inspiration play a role
ancillary to imitation, or do the two approaches to poetry have
nothing to do with one another?


## 3. Divine Inspiration



In simplest form "inspiration" names the claim that poets
are aided in producing their own poetry. At lucky moments a god takes
them over and brings value to the poem that it could not have had
otherwise.



Inspiration of that kind is a common idea. Either a divine source
provides the poet with information needed for writing the poem
(information about past events or the gods' lives, for example); or
more generally the source gives the poet the talent needed for writing
anything. The idea is far from original with Plato. Within Greek
culture alone there are Homer and Hesiod, who begin their great works
asking a Muse to "speak into" them. In this case, by
contrast with that of imitation, Plato finds a new use for an idea
that has a cultural and religious meaning before him (Ledbetter 2003,
Murray 1981, Tigerstedt 1970).



Plato's version of the idea has proved to be durable and influential.
The old chestnut about a fine line between genius and insanity is only
the best-known legacy of Platonic inspiration, as popularized in one
way by Cesare Lombroso's work on "psychiatric art"
(Lombroso 1891, 2); in another way by Shelley, who translated the
*Ion* in 1821 believing its account of poetic madness supported
his own defense of poetry (Shelley 1840).



The topic occurs throughout Plato's corpus. Platonic characters
mention inspiration in dialogues as far apart--in date of
composition; in style, length, content--as the *Apology*
and the *Laws*, though for different purposes. Socrates on
trial tells of his frustrated effort to learn from poets. Their verses
seemed excellent but the authors themselves had nothing to say about
them (*Apology* 22b). Socrates concludes that poets work
instinctively and while inspired, *enthousiazontes*, as
prophets and soothsayers also do (*theomanteis*,
*chresmoidoi*), as opposed to writing on the basis
of *sophia* (22c). The opposition between wisdom and
inspiration does not condemn poets. They write by some nature
(*phusei tini*), as if inspiration were a normally occurring
human instinct.



For its part *Laws* 719c links the effects of inspiration to
the nature of drama and its multiple perspectives: 



> 
> When the poet sits on the Muse's tripod [*en toi tripodi
> tes Mouses*] he is not in his right mind
> [*emphron*] but ready to flow like a fountain; and
> because his profession [*techne*] is that of imitation
> [*mimeseos*], then in creating people
> [*anthropous*] who are set against one another he is
> compelled to contradict himself frequently, and he does not know
> [*oiden*] whether these or the other thing of what he says are
> true [*alethe*]. But it is not for a lawmaker to
> make two statements about a single topic in a law. (719c-d)
> 



As in the *Republic*, *mimesis* leaves the
spectator with no truths to evaluate or wish to assess them. And, as
in the *Apology*, inspiration means the poet has no truths to
transmit. When the god's power comes the poet's
goes. Lawmakers work differently from that. And this contrast between
inspiration and the origin of laws--occurring in a dialogue
devoted to discovering the best laws for cities--hardly suggests
an endorsement for inspiration.



But it is also true that the passage puts the poet on a tripod, symbol
of Apollo's priestesses. Whatever brings a poet to write verse brings
divine wisdom out of priestesses; and Plato regularly defers to the
authority of oracles. Even supposing that talk of inspiration denies
individual control and credit to the poet, the priestess shows that
credit and control are not all that matters. She is at her best when
her mind intrudes least on what she is saying. Her pronouncements have
the prestige they do, not despite her loss of control, but because of
it (Pappas 2012a).



Another passage in the *Laws* says as much when it attributes
even reliable *historical* information to poets writing under
the influence of the Muses and Graces (682a). The *Meno* makes
inspiration its defining example of ignorant truth-speaking.
Politicians are just like "prophets and soothsayers
[*chresmoidoi, theomanteis*]." All three,
"when inspired [*enthousiontes*], speak truly
[*alethe*] about many things, but do not know what
they are talking about" (99c). Removing all doubt about the
origin of that truth, Socrates calls prophets, soothsayers, and all
poets *theioi* "divine" because of how well they
speak without possessing knowledge (99c-d).



In these more tangential remarks in the *Apology*,
*Laws*, and *Meno*, Plato seems to be affirming 1) that
inspiration is really divine in origin, and 2) that this divine action
that gives rise to poetry guarantees value in the result. It may
remain the case that the poet knows nothing. But something good must
come of an inspiration shared by poets and priestesses, and often
enough that good is truth.


### 3.1 *Ion*



Plato's shortest dialogue, the *Ion* is the only one that most
readers would clearly situate within aesthetics. It does not address
poetry alone. The character Ion is a performer and interpreter of
Homer's poems, not a poet. Meanwhile, most of what are classed as arts
today--painting, sculpture, music--appear as activities for
which the problems of irrationality and knowledge signally
*fail* to arise (532e-533c; for painting as
*techne* cf. *Gorgias* 448c, *Protagoras*
312d). Nevertheless the *Ion* belongs in aesthetics by virtue
of its focus on artistic inspiration, and the question it provokes of
what inspiration implies about poetry's merits.



As a rhapsode Ion travels among Greek cities reciting and explicating
episodes from Homer. Between the dramatic recitation and the
interpretation, these performances offered much latitude for displays
of talent, and Ion's talent has won him first prize at a contest in
Epidaurus. (For some discussion of the rhapsode's work see Gonzalez
2011, Gonzalez 2013.)



His conversation with Socrates falls into three parts, covering
*idiosyncrasy* (530a-533c), *inspiration*
(533c-536d), and *ignorance* (536d-542b). Both the
first and the third sections support the claims made in the second,
which should be seen as the conclusion to the dialogue, supported in
different ways by the discussions that come before and after it. The
idiosyncrasy in Ion's attachment to Homer shows that Homer, and Ion
because of him, function thanks to a divine visitation. But because
Ion resists accepting a claim according to which he is deranged in his
performances, Socrates presents a fall-back argument. Ion is
unqualified to assess any of the factual claims that appear in Homer,
about medicine, chariot racing, or anything else. When Socrates
compels him to choose between divine inspiration and a very drab brand
of knowing nothing, Ion agrees to be called inspired.



This is to say that although poets' and their readers' ignorance is
indeed a fact for Plato, it is a fact in need of interpretation.
Whether it means as in the *Ion* that gods inspire poetry, or
as in *Republic* 10 that imitative poetry imitates appearance
alone, ignorance matters less than the implications drawn from it.
Moreover, ignorance alone will not demonstrate that poets are
possessed by the gods. The proof of Ion's ignorance supports
inspiration but does not suffice to generate that doctrine. Even if
Ion's ignorance takes up the last part of the dialogue, it is not
Plato's last word about poetry.



The idiosyncrasy treated in this dialogue's opening section, by
comparison, is (for Plato) irrational on its face. The idiosyncrasy
appears as soon as Socrates asks Ion about his *techne*
(530b). That essential Platonic word has been mistranslated
"art" or "craft." "Skill" is not
bad; but perhaps a *techne* most resembles a
*profession*. The word denotes both a paying occupation and the
possession of expertise. In Ion's case Socrates specifies that the
expertise for a rhapsode includes the ability to interpret poetry
(530c). Ion rates himself superior at that task to all his competitors
but concedes that he can only interpret Homer (531a). Even though
Homer and other poets sometimes address the same subjects, Ion has
nothing to say about those other poets. He confesses this fact without
shame or apology, as if his different responses reflected on the poets
instead of on his talents. Something in Homer makes him eloquent, and
other poets lack that quality.



Socrates argues that one who knows a field knows it whole
(531e-532a). This denial of the knowledge of particulars in
their particularity also appears at *Charmides* 166e;
*Phaedo* 97d; *Republic* 334a, 409d. It is not that what
is known about an individual thing *cannot* transfer to other
things of the same kind; rather that the act of treating an object as
unique means attending to and knowing those qualities of it that
*do not* transfer, knowing them as nontransferable qualities.
This attitude toward particulars *qua* particulars is an
obstacle to every theoretical expertise. It is the epistemic analogue
to the irrational one-on-one erotic bond that Aristophanes describes
in Plato's *Symposium* (191c-d).



It may well be that what Ion understands about Homer happens to hold
true of Hesiod. But if this is the case, Ion will not know it. He does
not generalize from one to many poets, and generalizing is the mark of
a professional. Diotima's speech in the *Symposium* supplies a
useful comparison. She differentiates between love that clings to
particular objects and a philosophical *eros* that
escapes its attachment to particulars to pursue general knowledge
(210b). Ion's investment in Homer, like the lover's lowest grade of
attachment, reveals (and also causes) an unwillingness to move toward
understanding.



And so Ion presents Socrates with a conundrum. Although the man's love
for Homer prohibits him from possessing expertise, Socrates recognizes
how well Ion performs at his job. How to account for success minus
skill? Socrates needs to diagnose Ion by means of some positive trait
he possesses, not merely by the absence of knowledge.



Socrates therefore speaks of poets and those they move as
*entheous*. He elaborates an analogy. Picture an iron ring
hanging from a magnet, magnetized so that a second ring hangs from the
first and a third from that second one. Magnets are Muses, the rings
attached to them poets, the second rings the poets' interpreters,
third the rhapsodes' audiences. (For a recent treatment of this image
see Wang 2016.)



Plato's image captures the transferability of charisma. By being made
of iron each ring has the capacity to take on the charge that holds
it. But the magnetism resides in the magnet, not in the temporarily
magnetized rings. No ring is itself the source of the next ring's
attachment to it. Homer analogously draws poetic power from his Muse
and attracts a rhapsode by means of borrowed power. Ion charged with
Music energy collects enthusiastic fans, *as if* to his own
person and *as if* by *techne*--but only as
if. The analogy lets poets and rhapsodes appear charismatic without
giving them credit for their appeal.



Socrates takes a further step to pit inspiration against reason.
"Epic poets who are good at all are never masters of their
subject. They are inspired and possessed [*entheoi ontes kai
katechomenoi*]" (533a). Inspiration now additionally means
that poets are irrational, as it never meant before Plato. This
superadded irrationality explains why Ion rejects Socrates' proposal,
in a passage that is frequently overlooked. He is not unhinged during
his performances, Ion says; not *katechomenos kai mainomenos*,
possessed and maddened (536d). Inspiration has come to imply madness
and the madness in it is what Ion tries to reject.



What went wrong? The image of rings and magnets is slyer than it
appeared. While the analogy rests transparently on one feature of
magnetism, the transfer of attraction, it also smuggles in a second
feature. Socrates describes iron rings hanging in straight lines or
branching: Although each ring may have more than a single ring
dependent upon it, no ring is said to hang from more than one. But
real rings hang in other ways, all the rings clumped against the
magnet, or one ring clinging to two or three above it. Why does
Socrates keep the strings of rings so orderly?



Here is one suggestion. Keeping Homer clung only to his Muse,and Ion
clung only to Homer, preserves the idiosyncrasy that let Socrates deny
expertise to Ion. For otherwise a magnet and rings would show how
genuine knowledge is transmitted. Suppose you say that a Muse leads
the doctor Hippocrates to diagnostic insights that he tells his
students and they tell theirs. That much divine help is all that the
image of magnet and rings strictly implies, and it is no threat to a
profession's understanding of itself. But no one would claim that a
doctor can learn only from a single other doctor, or that a doctor
treats a unique group of adulatory patients. That constraint on
medical practice would threaten its status as *techne*;
and that is exactly the constraint added by the array of rings as
Socrates describes it. (For a contrasting and compelling reading of
this passage see Chapter 3 of Capra 2015.)



Analogies always introduce new traits into the thing being described.
That is in the nature of analogical thinking and no grounds for
suspicion. Plato's readers should become suspicious because the
feature that slips into this figure, the orderly hanging of the rings,
is neither called for by the way iron actually transmits magnetic
force, nor neutral in effect. Plato has distorted magnetism to make it
mean not inspiration *simpliciter* but something crazy.



The combination of possession and madness in the *Ion*'s
version of inspiration makes it hard to decide whether the dialogue
implies some approval for inspired poetry or condemns it entirely.
Readers have drawn opposite morals from this short work. (On the
debate see Stern-Gillet 2004.) As Socrates characterizes
*enthousiasmos*, it denies Ion's professional credibility, not
to mention his sanity. But there is religion to think of. If not
traditionally pious, Plato is also not the irreverent type who would
ascribe an action to divinities in order to mock it. And consider the
example of inspired verse mentioned here. Socrates cites Tynnichus,
author of only one passable poem, which was a tribute to the Muses
(534d). It's as if the Muses wanted to display their power, Socrates
says, by proving that their intervention could elicit a good poem even
from an unskilled author. If this is Socrates' paradigm of inspired
poetry, then whatever else inspiration also explains, it appears
particularly well suited to producing praise of the gods. And praise
of the gods is the lone poetic form that Plato respects and accepts
(*Republic* 607a).



Finally there is a version of the same problem that arose regarding
the *Apology*, *Laws*, and *Meno*, that the
*Ion* calls soothsayers and diviners possessed
(*chresmoidos, mantis*: 534d). That already seems
to justify inspiration. Add in that Socrates calls the diviner's
practice a *techne* (538e; cf. 531b) and this dialogue
seems to be saying that an activity can be both professional and the
result of divine possession. So what does the charge of madness mean?
The word makes Ion recoil--but what does he know about higher
states of understanding? Maybe madness itself needs to be reconceived.
The *Ion* says far from enough to settle the question. But
Plato's other sustained discussion of inspiration returns to the
language of madness and finds some forms of it permissible, even
philosophical.


### 3.2 *Phaedrus*



When introducing the *Phaedrus*'s major speech on
*eros* (244a-250d), Socrates defines desirous love
as a species of *mania*, madness, in a context that comments on
philosophy and poetry with an aside about *mimesis* a few
pages later. Although other sections of the *Phaedrus* are
relevant to Platonic aesthetics, this is the only part directly about
inspiration.



Socrates' speech begins by sorting out *mania*. Madness comes
in two general forms: the diseased state of mental dysfunction, and a
divergence from ordinary rationality that a god sometimes brings (see
265a-b). Divine madness subdivides into love, Dionysian frenzy,
oracular prophecy, and poetic composition (244b-245a). In all
four cases the possessed or inspired person
(*enthousiazon*: 241e, 249e, 253a, 263d) can accomplish
what is impossible for someone in a sane state. All four cases are
associated with particular deities and traditionally honored.



On reconciling the possession described in the *Ion* with that
in the *Phaedrus*, see Gonzalez 2011 for extended discussion.
In abbreviated terms we can say that the madness of the
*Phaedrus* is separated from ordinary madness as the
*Ion*'s version is not, and is classified pointedly as
*good* derangement. Being a god, Eros can't do anything bad
(242d-e). The greatest blessings flow from divine *mania*
(244a). 



Nor is this possessed condition associated with idiosyncrasy in the
*Phaedrus*. On the contrary. To account for the madness of love
Socrates describes an otherworldly existence in which souls ride
across the top of heaven enjoying direct visions of the Forms
(247c-d). After falling into bodily existence a soul responds to
beauty more avidly than it does to any other qualities for which there
are Forms.



Associating beauty with inspiration suggests that poetry born of
(another kind of) inspiration might also have philosophical worth. But
before welcoming the lost sheep Plato back to the poetry-loving fold,
recognize the *Phaedrus*'s qualifying remarks about which
poetry one may now prize. It cannot be imitative. When Socrates ranks
human souls depending on how much otherworldly being they saw before
falling into bodily form--philosophers come in first on this
ranking--the poet or other *mimetikos* occupies
sixth place out of nine (248e).



Indeed the argument of the *Phaedrus* only identifies a single
type of poem that the Muses call forth: the poem that
"embellishes thousands of deeds of the ancients to educate
[*paideuei*] later generations" (245a). But Plato exempts
hymns to gods and encomia of heroes from even his harshest
condemnation of poetry (*Republic* 607a). Quite compatibly with
the *Republic*'s exemption the *Ion* specifies a hymn to
the Muses as its example of inspiration and the *Phaedrus*
describes the praise of heroes. Whenever possible Plato reserves the
benefits of inspiration for the poems he does not have reason to
condemn. And this restriction on which poems derive a true merit from
being inspired leaves inspiration a long way from guaranteeing
poetry's value.


## 4. Imitation, Inspiration, Beauty



*Mimesis* fails in two ways. 1) It originates in
appearance rather than in reality, so that judged on its own terms the
product of imitation has an ignoble pedigree (*Republic* 603b).
2) The imitative arts positively direct a soul toward appearances,
away from proper objects of inquiry. A mirror reflection might prompt
you to turn around and look at the thing being reflected; an imitation
keeps your eyes on the copy alone. Imitation has a base cause and
baser effects.



Although the dialogues offer few arguments for the second claim, the
perverseness with which *mimesis* leads one to prefer
appearance partly follows from a contrast between traditional visual
art and its later developments. Aeschylus had, they say, already
praised the religiosity of the rougher old visual forms, by comparison
with later visually exciting statues that inspired less of a sense of
divinity (Porphyry *On Abstinence from Animal Food* 2.18).
Early votive objects, sometimes no more representative than a plank or
oblong stone, were treated as markers of the gods' presence and points
of contact with unseen powers (Faraone 1992, Collins 2003). Stone and
wooden figures could serve as surrogates for absent humans, as when
mourners buried an effigy in place of an irrecoverable body (Herodotus
*Histories* 6.58; Vernant 2006, 322; Bremmer 2013), or treated
a grave marker as if it were the buried person (Euripides
*Alcestis* 348-356; see Burkert 1985, 193-194).
Whereas the mimetic relationship connects a visible likeness with its
visible original, such objects though visible link to invisible
referents.



Plato seems to distinguish between the pious old art and its
modernized forms, as he distinguishes analogously among poems. Statues
suggest communication with divinities (*Laws* 931a,
*Phaedrus*230b). Wax likenesses participate in the magic of
effigies (*Laws* 933b). Metaphorically the dialogues imagine a
body as a statue that invites comparison with its invisible referent
the soul (*Charmides* 154c, 157d-158c; *Symposium* 215b,
216d-e), or as a *sema* "tomb" but also
"sign" of the soul within (*Cratylus* 400b-c,
*Gorgias* 493a). Compared to such referential relations, the
mimetic art object's reference to what is visible can feel like a
forcible misdirection of attention to appearances and to delight with
visibility as such.



Beauty by comparison begins in the domain of intelligible objects,
since there is a Form of beauty. And more than any other property for
which a Form exists, beauty engages the soul and draws it toward
philosophical deliberation, toward thoughts of absolute beauty and
subsequently (as we imagine) toward thoughts of other concepts.



Plato therefore hates to acknowledge that poems contain any beauty. He
does not go so far as to call *mimesis* beauty's
contrary, accusing poems or paintings of ugliness. He hardly could. It
is bad enough for his view that he does not account for an imitative
poem's appeal; to deny the appeal would rob his account of all
plausibility.



Nor can a good (philosophical) version of imitation work as opposite
to the poetic kind. Plato recognizes a salutary function that
imitations sometimes have, even the function of drawing the mind
toward knowledge. But he offers no more than hints about positive
*mimesis*. There is no account of sound imitation that
would counterweigh the attacks in the *Republic*. In any case
this is a constructive turn that never seems to be made available to
poems or paintings. If good imitation does exist, its home is not
among the arts. Still the idea invites a worthwhile question: Is there
*anything* human beings can produce that would function
oppositely to mimetic poetry? Inspiration is the most promising
possibility.



The cause behind inspiration is unimpeachable, for it begins in the
divine realm. Is that a realm of Forms? The *Phaedrus* comes
closest to saying so, both by associating the gods with Forms
(247c-e), and by rooting inspired love in recollection (251a).
But this falls short of showing that the poets' divine madness
likewise originates among objects of greater reality. It might, but
does not have to.



The *Ion* says less about poetry's divine origins than the
*Phaedrus*, certainly nothing that requires an interpreter to
discover Forms within the Muse's magnetism. *Laws* 682a and
*Meno* 99c-d credit the inspired condition with the
production of truths, even in poetry. Neither passage describes the
truths about Forms that philosophical dialectic would lead to, but
that might be asking too much. Let it suffice that inspiration
originates in some truth.



What about the *effects* of inspired poetry? Could such poetry
turn a soul toward knowledge as beautiful faces do? Would it always do
so? Poetry's defenders will find scant support for that proposal in
the dialogues. Inspired poetry has its merits but Plato rarely credits
it with promoting philosophical knowledge. In fact the *Ion*
conceives inspiration as the cause of the worst cognitive state, for
the poet's possession by the Muses is what attaches the audience
(irrationally, particularly-minded) to that one poet. The
*Phaedrus* does say that Muse-made poems teach future
generations about the exploits of heroes. Inspired poetry at least
might set a good example. But one can find good examples in verse
without waiting for inspiration. Even *Republic* 3 allows for
instances in which the young guardians imitate virtuous characters.
The educational consequences of inspired poetry do not set it apart
from imitative poetry, and they never include philosophical
education.



A clear opposition between imitation and inspiration, or any clear
relationship between them, would suggest a coherent whole that can be
titled "Plato's aesthetics." In the absence of such a
relationship it is hard to attribute an aesthetic theory to Plato as
one can straightforwardly do with Aristotle.



If unification is possible for the elements of Plato's aesthetics,
that may arrive from another direction. Religion has not been explored
as much as it should in connection with Plato's aesthetics, even
though a religious orientation informs what he has to say about
beauty, inspiration, and imitation. The quasi-divine status that
beauty has in the *Symposium*; the *Republic*'s
characterization of the imitator as enemy to Athena and other gods;
and of course inspiration, which cannot be defined without appeal to
divine action: All three subjects suggest that Plato's aesthetics
might come together more satisfactorily within Plato's theology. The
question is worth pursuing now, for scholarship of recent decades has
advanced the study of Greek religion, providing unprecedented
resources for a fresh inquiry into the fundamental terms out of which
Plato constructs his aesthetics.