Throughout the ages, art has been an essential part of our life. It could be found anywhere in the history of mankind. However, art has also been a popular topic among philosophers. Many great minds have theorized on the nature of art. One of the most significant thinkers who tackle the nature of art is Aristotle.

  Aristotle followed one of the most emphatic thinkers to comment on the nature of art, which was his teacher Plato. Nevertheless, most of the philosophers, just like Plato and Aristotle, they were forced to establish a theory of art based heavily on their metaphysical views about the nature of the world. Therefore, to understand Aristotle’s perspective towards art, understanding his metaphysics is crucial.

  Plato believed that all things that exist in reality are mere representations of perfect metaphysical constructs which he called the Forms. He separates the sensible world with the intelligible world because he holds that the intelligible world is the only reality. But Aristotle suggests that such separation removes any intelligibility and meaning to the world. According to him “the intelligibility is present in every being and everything. The world consists of substances. The substance can be either matter or form, or a compound of both”. 

  Since they possess their metaphysics, their perspective towards the notion of art differs. “For Aristotle, the notion of form was a part of all matter and the distinction between the form and the actual substance that made up an object was merely an intellectual one.”This bears a relation to art because for both Plato and Aristotle art is an imitation of the actual world (Palmer, pp 447-452). However, although they both thought of art as an imitation, they interpret the nature of this imitation in opposing manners. “While Plato condemns art because it is in effect a copy of a copy – since reality in imitation of the Forms and art is then imitation of reality – Aristotle defends art by saying that in the appreciation of art the viewer receives a certain “cognitive value” from the experience (Stumpf, p 99).” he saw it as useful. He believed our body needs to experience a full range of emotions to stay in balance. He argued that, if we have not been sad in a while, or had a good adrenaline rush, we can start to crave those feelings. Art can step into our life and give the experience of emotion. When we finally experience the sensations we feel a pleasurable release that Aristotle called “Catharsis”. The theory resolves a little conundrum in an aesthetic that’s known as the “Problem of Tragedy”. This is the weird puzzle of why people would be paid to walk into a theatre and are prepared to cry for two hours. This is an example of people who made themselves express strong negative emotions in a safe context and the emotional purge that comes with the experience of satisfied people. The purging of the emotions “through pity and fear”, that is accomplished by a tragedy.

Aristotle doesn’t only disagree with Plato about the notion of art. Compared to his teacher, Aristotle proceeded to a more serious investigation of aesthetics phenomena to develop by scientific analysis certain principles of beauty and art. “In his treatises on poetry and rhetoric he gives us, along with a theory of these arts, certain general principles of beauty; and scattered among his other writings we find many valuable suggestions on the same subject. He seeks (in the Metaphysics) to distinguish the good and the beautiful by saying that the former is always in action (`en praxis) whereas the latter may exist in motionless things as well (`en akinetois.)”( art andpopularculture.com) While good is derived only by taking a certain action, beauty could be derived from nothing. Aristotle has also stated his theory of beauty in the Metaphysic“The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree” (The Complete Works of Aristotle Barnes ed., volume 2, 1705, 1078a36)” This is which he commented to be the absence of all lust or desire in the pleasure it bestows.

  As a philosopher and an aesthetician, Aristotle had thought a lot about art. Although he maintains that art is an imitation, he holds that art is useful since it contributes to the share of negative emotions. He argued about the standard of beauty and art and gives inspiration to descendants. 

Preface

The word aesthetics is origin from the Greek word “aisthetikos” means the sensible object. In the eighteenth century it became a branch of philosophy. I agree that aesthetics has a strong relationship with sensation. Because when people talk about beauty, or to define beauty. it starts with self-perception and sensation. In linguistic way, the negative form of aesthetics is anesthetic. Which a medicine degree the sensitive of sensation. Nowadays, aesthetic is not only a topic of philosophy but also highly related with others subject. Such as architecture, design, literature. All in all, we called it art. Aesthetic is a major which discuss about art. What is beauty and what is ugly. I will briefly demonstrate the Plato’s aesthetics and Aristotle’s aesthetics and find out the difference between them.

Plato’s Aesthetics

Plato believes that art and poetry are imitations and demotions of real life. Base on Plato’s “Mimesis”. He thinks the real life is the imitation of ideal life, and the art is imitation of real life. In ancient Greece, poetry had a high status. People will sing poetry in public as a tradition. But Plato thinks poetry is untrue and immoral. He put poetry and art on the opposite side of philosophy. In his metaphysics of binary relations, art is nothing more than a simple imitation of real life. In Plato’s “Republic“He forbids poets and artists from entering his ideal country. I think Plato’s negation of art stems from the innate infection and incendiaryness of art. At the same time, some Plato’s idea are outdated in modern conception. Some neoteric philosopher such as Nietzsche and modern philosopher such as Gilles Louis René Deleuze and Jacques Derrida think that Plato’s argument of “illusion” is “Achilles Heel” which the weakness of him.

Aristotle’s Poetics

Compare to Plato’s aesthetic, Aristotle didn’t over stress the relationship between truth and illusion. But focus on the real feeling that art brings to people. He thinks that art should not be assessed by morality. What really matters is the relationships, understanding, interaction, emotions and feelings that art brings. Like Aristotle, he believed that the origin of art was imitation. But he doesn’t think art is false, or lower than reality. Aristotle thinks In poetry and tragedy, we will encounter a variety of ideas: the goal of choice, success and failure, honor and suffering, good at evil, sin and innocence. Aristotle valued the fictional nature of art. He believes that it is precisely because art is different from reality that people can appreciate the lack of attraction and pain in reality. According to Aristotle’s aesthetic concept, his “cathartic” concept was formed. It provided the foundation for ancient Greek drama.

The difference between Plato’s idea and Aristotle’s idea

Both Aristotle and Plato believed that art came from ” Mimesis.” But their attitude towards virtual is different. Plato’s attitude to virtualision is negative and immoral. Aristotle, on the other hand, believed that art should not be ethically audited. What matters is the message and emotion that art conveys. I agree with Aristotle. In today’s art iteration, Aristotle’s idea is still essential to art conception.

Works cited：

Aristotle, et al. Poetics. Harvard University Press, 1999.

Kul-Want, Christopher, and Piero. Introducing Aesthetics: a Graphic Guide. Icon Books, 2014.

Introduction:

We all know that Plato was an great philosopher during the Classical period in Ancient Greece, and he is famous for “Republic”, and Plato also founded the Academy. Plato also has his own unique understanding of Aesthetics. In this following paper I will introduce with: “What did Plato say about Beauty? ” “Does Plato think Beauty is objective or subjective?”     

According to Plato, Beauty was an idea or Form of which beautiful things were consequence. By comparison, beauty begins in the realm of comprehensible objects, because beauty has a form. He thought that all the beautiful things have in common. Plato argues that we also have a general idea of beauty itself, that we can recognize the beauty of a person or a painting only because we have this abstract idea of beauty. This form of beauty itself is invisible, eternal, unchanging, unlike the tangible world where things grow old and lose their beauty. That is to say, people will grow old and then become ugly, but the beauty in our mind, this is not an object, so it is always beautiful in spirit.

Symposium: 

In Plato’s “Symposium” , it depicts a friendly contest of extemporaneous speeches given by a group of notable men attending a banquet. Beauty is associated with responses to love and desire, but beauty itself is positioned in the domain of the forms and the beauty of certain objects participating in the forms. Sometimes the distinctive of beauty shows the good side or the good consequences, and Plato think even its identity with “the good”. In Plato´s Symposium, it mentioned about Beauty Theory: “Beautiful is an objective quality which is more or less intensified in and exemplified by beautiful or less beautiful objects respectively. Beauty itself exists independently of the object’s relationship to a perceiver or of its being a means to some end.” 

Plato points out that in a set of beautiful things it is not just the man and the body that are beautiful. Aesthetics is not only a philosophy of beauty, but also a philosophy teaching or art theory. This is the modern understanding and understanding of aesthetic objects. In Plato’s philosophy, the question is raised in a completely different way. His aesthetics, at least, are a philosophy of art. There is no opposition between the transcendental nature of Plato’s idealism and the concept of the real phenomenon (but beyond the limits of all the senses). Truly great art appreciation, in principle, is rooted in the sensuous nature of the world. Furthermore, these features preclude the idea that the object of aesthetics is art. Plato’s aesthetics is the mythological ontology of beauty, that is, the theory of the existence of beauty, rather than the philosophy of art. Because of Plato’s original place of teaching, its beautiful expression transcends the boundaries of art and places it within the realm of the existence of the world. 

Subjective and Objective

Beauty is internal, independent of things. It becomes a beauty by sharing the existence of beauty.A beautiful thing is internal and external. Its beauty has nothing to do with the perceiver, and its beauty or ugly has nothing to do with personal evaluation. So, Is beauty subjective or objective？

Plato regarded beauty as objective in the sense that it was not localized in the response of the beholder. He thought beauty is objective, it is not about the experience of the observer. The world of Forms is “ideal” rather than material; Forms, and beauty, are non-physical ideas for Plato. He think that  it is a feature of the “object,” and not something in the mind of the beholder.

Compare to some Subjectivist views, many other philosopher, such as Immanuel Kant, David Hume. They thought that was aware that subjective judgments of taste in art engender debates that do actually lead to agreement on questions of beauty. 

Reference：

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symposium_(Plato)

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-aesthetics/