Placing Aesthetics: Reflections On Philosophic Tradition

II. Plato

II PLATO I    Plato, the first of the great philosophers to address matters aesthetic, I begin to flesh out more fully the framework considerations I have offered in the previous chapter by an interpretation that builds a whole world of meaning, encompassing every aspect of human existence . There is a sense in which one might say that Plato’s philosophy is essentially an aesthetic. Beauty plays a central role in his thought, though he has some harsh things to say about its appearance in art. However, in spite of the latter, his own works exhibit an artistry unmatched in the history of philosophy. The use of images and parables, the development of myths, the delineation of characters, the drama of their action and reaction in relation to the themes under discussion, and the overall structuring of the dialogues are neither pleasant accompaniments to philosophical argumentation nor irritating distraction therefrom. Though argumentation and rational construction are crucial to philosophy, they are essentially in a relation of mutual dependence upon a fuller sense of participation in life that affords the starting point, gives the basic insights about which we argue and from which we construct our theories, and finally, provides, in the holistic feel for things (the “lived aesthetic”) that it involves, the basic test of all comprehensive claims.¹ Rational development stands in a dialectical relation with the heart as the felt residue of an interplay between a tradition and the individual thinker that provides our basic orientation toward things. The key texts on beauty are in the Phaedrus, and especially in the Symposium . The key texts on art—and indeed on the pivotal ideas in Plato’s thought—are in the Republic, which stands at the logical and chronological center of Plato’s written work. The core idea of the latter dialogue is justice , but the key to understanding justice is understanding the relation between the city and philosophy. In that relation, beauty and art play an important role. It may seem odd to begin a treatment of aesthetics with notions like justice, the city, and philosophy. Today we are used to a division of labor, with specialization even in “philosophy.” We have fallen into that habit because of the astonishing success, both theoretically and technologically, of scientific method, which operates by specialized division of labor. Alexander Pope said, “Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; / the proper study of mankind is man.”² Today thinkers have gone further: they would say that the proper study of humankind is bits and pieces of nature. In what many today call philosophy, we find a family resemblance to what the ancient tradition called philosophy. Then philosophy was “love of wisdom ,” where wisdom was understanding something of how we humans fit into the total scheme of things and how we might come into proper relation to the whole in our lives. It involved conceptual analysis and argumentation , but always within the overall matrix of the pursuit of the wider, more comprehensive vision—indeed, a vision governed in Plato by growth in a pervasive sense of awe before the strangeness of our situation.³ In philosophy today conceptual analysis and argumentation conducted within regional specializations are the norm. In the more ancient view, represented in its first most powerful form by Plato, adequate understanding of any region involved understanding its place in the whole. Corollary to this is the view that each basic concept implies all the others. As Hegel later put it, “The truth is the whole.”⁴ I have begun this text by staking out the structure of the field of experience as it opens out to the whole of Being. I have gone on to locate art within that whole and to delineate the field of art by an analysis of the sensory fields and the spatiotemporal framework within which they operate. Following out that structure, I will approach each thinker by locating art and beauty within the whole of his thought. And that means seeing the place of the aesthetic within the whole of human life. Let us then take this approach to Plato’s aesthetics. Art in the Purged City In the Republic, Socrotes, Plato’s spokesman, focuses on justice. After an introductory skirmish in which conventional ideas of justice (giving to each Placing Aesthetics  his due; giving benefits to allies and harm to enemies; and obeying the laws made in the self-interest of the...