çàãðóçêà...
 
§1. The aesthetics of Ancient Greece
Ïîâåðíóòèñü äî çì³ñòó

§1. The aesthetics of Ancient Greece

Already in the 5th century BC replaced by sense-observation approach to reality, the rule of cosmology (the perception of space as a harmony, usefulness, and beauty) comes to sharpening of interest to the person who is able to learn and explore the world around us.

Theoretical views of Socrates relied on the political and ethical basis for attempts to define the concept of good and evil. Criticizing the Athenian democracy, Socrates insisted on the best transfer of power, that is highly moral members of society.

Morality, in his view, should serve pledge fairness, integrity, nobility of man.

Taking as a basis the principle of expediency, Socrates attempts to discover the relationship between ethical and aesthetic, beautiful and useful. He called this ratio Kalos kagathos – the union of the old Greek word "beautiful and good (perfect)

The adjective ????? means beautiful and encompasses meanings equivalent to English "good", "noble", and "handsome". The form given by convention is the masculine, but it was equally used of women (the feminine form is ????) and could also describe animals or inanimate objects.

Plato, in his work Republic, used the term ?? ????? (the neutral form) in his attempts to define ideals. However, his protagonist in the dialogue, Socrates, stated that he did not fully comprehend the nature of this ?????.

This second adjective «agathos» means good and had no particular physical or aesthetic connotations, but could describe a person's excellence of character (ethical virtue) for example their bravery. Again, around the 4th century, it had become politically meaningful, and carried implications of dutiful citizenship.

This is one of the most important concepts of classical aesthetics, which meant the harmony of external and internal that is the condition of the individual beauty.

This term was interpreted differently in different times. Pythagoras followers understood Kalos kagathos as an external human behavior, which simultaneously determines its internal quality. Herodotus connected Kalos kagathos with religious rituals, the priests of morality.

Herodotus linked Kalos kagathos with religious rituals, morals of the priests.

 

Plato believed that the principle kalos kagathos is directly related to the profession of soldiers, the notion of military honor and morality. Later, the Greeks are increasingly begun to transform this concept into the sphere of education, education rights. Since then began philosophical understanding of the concept.

The trend was directly related to the concept of Aristotle, who interpreted the Kalos kagathos as the outer and inner harmony. Under the inner, he understood wisdom, which leads a person to a deep understanding of the unity of beauty and goodness, the aesthetic and moral, that is, the harmony, which should become the norm of human existence.

Man cannot attain the ideal, but it must at least through the self-improvement strive for this. The principle of Kalos kagathos art sought to realize their creative property. (Phidias, Sophocles, Polycleitus).

In subsequent historical periods principle of kalos kagathos was forgotten, and the ethics and aesthetics more were separated and each of them to choose its own path of development.

The problem of link of these sciences has moved into the sphere of art, and the most typical aspect of studying the interaction of ethics and aesthetics was the problem of "art and morality."

The name of Sophocles related statement of problem of the relationship between the beautiful and useful, as well as an attempt to as closely as possible to determine what is ideal.

Aesthetic views of Socrates got a creative continuation of the philosophical concept of an outstanding representative of ancient philosophy – Plato (427-347 BC)

He investigated the nature of perception of beauty, sources of talent, the problems of aesthetic education. He paid particular attention the study of art, because it played a special role in the life of Athens t VI-V BC. Athenian democracy won the right to free access to the theater, the whole people enjoyed the work of respected poets and musicians. Plato and Socrates as linked the influence of art with the formation of the moral world of human: it brings both positive and negative qualities.

He expanded the aesthetic perspective. In his theoretical dialogues present ideas about the relativity of beauty, of the absolute best ways to achieve beauty, which exists only as an idea, but the very possibility of movement from simple to complex in the formation of fine opens the way for future theoretical developments in the field of aesthetic.

It was Plato, who set the contradictions in the formulation and solution of some aesthetic problems that in the future in different historical periods have become the basis for the formation of new philosophical concepts.

In the dialogs "Ion", "State" Plato admires the one hand, "divine power" of the artist, on the other side – deliberately humiliates him through the lack of utility of the results of its activities. According to Plato the poet and the doctor or craftsmen should be given an advantage because of their significant work in practice. The problem of the role of art in the spiritual development of man, the formation of his sensate culture is not formed theoretically, and at the level of identification of art and craft activities art loses its identity and self-worth.

Comparing God – the poet – rhapsode – spectator, Plato ascribed to the poet the role of an intermediary, who passed from God the benefit to human. This is a formal function, considered a philosopher, thus, high levels of creativity is lost.

Another controversial problem was Plato’s attempt to identify the subject of Aesthetics. This is thinking and watching man, and the world of the absolute idea, the world of soul, that are able to comprehend the essense.

While acknowledging that universal beauty created by God, and beautiful objects – it is only an imperfect copy of the universal beauty, Plato notes in the dialogue "Hippias Major", "Great - it's hard".

The pinnacle of ancient aesthetics is considered theoretical legacy of Aristotle (384-322 BC). His work "Poetics", "Rhetoric," "Politics", "Metaphysics," "ethics" covers a wide range of aesthetic problems.

Aristotle was fond of the cosmos as a carrier of harmony, order and integrity.

Aesthetic perception and art he saw as a reflection of world harmony. Aristotle first gave detailed structure of aesthetic categories, offered his own understanding of the beautiful, tragic, comical. He explained the basic principle of the creative activity of the artist – mimesis. He believed that mimesis is peculiar to man from childhood. Man is distinguished from the animal due to the ability to inheritance.

Mimesis (Greek: ??????? (m?m?sis), from ????????? (m?meisthai), "to imitate," from ????? (mimos), "imitator, actor") is a critical and philosophical term that carries a wide range of meanings, which include: imitation, representation, mimicry, imitatio, receptivity, nonsensuous similarity, the act of resembling, the act of expression, and the presentation of the self.

In ancient Greece, mimesis was an idea that governed the creation of works of art, in particular, with correspondence to the physical world understood as a model for beauty, truth and the good. Plato contrasted mimesis, or imitation, with diegesis, or narrative. After Plato, the meaning of mimesis eventually shifted toward a specifically literary function in ancient Greek society, and its use has changed and been re-interpreted many times since then.

One of the best-known modern studies of mimesis, understood as a form of realism in the arts, is Erich Auerbach's Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Published in 1946 and written while the author was in exile from Nazi Germany, the book opens with a famous comparison between the way the world is represented in Homer's Odyssey and the way it appears in the Bible. From these two seminal Western texts, Auerbach builds the foundation for a unified theory of representation that spans the entire history of Western literature, including the Modernist novels being written at the time Auerbach began his study.

The Frankfurt school critical theorist T.W. Adorno made use of mimesis as a central philosophical term, interpreting it as a way in which works of art embodied a form of reason that was non-repressive and non-violent.

The concept of mimesis, was later transformed into the development of cognitive and emotional functions of art. According to Aristotle inheritance promotes knowledge, creates a feeling of satisfaction, and stimulates the imagination. This property was used as a mimesis peculiar link to introduce the figurative and symbolic conception in the Middle Ages. Aristotle's aesthetic views are associated not only with aesthetic issues, but also to pedagogy, elements of psychology art criticism (genera, genres of literature).

Both Plato and Aristotle saw in mimesis the representation of nature. Plato wrote about mimesis in both Ion and The Republic (Books II, III and X). In Ion, he states that poetry is the art of divine madness, or inspiration. Because the poet is subject to this divine madness, it is not his/her function to convey the truth. As Plato has it, truth is the concern of the philosopher only. As culture in those days did not consist in the solitary reading of books, but in the listening to performances, the recitals of orators (and poets), or the acting out by classical actors of tragedy, Plato maintained in his critique that theatre was not sufficient in conveying the truth. He was concerned that actors or orators were thus able to persuade an audience by rhetoric rather than by telling the truth.

In Book II of The Republic [377], Plato describes Socrates' dialogue with his pupils. Socrates warns we should not seriously regard poetry as being capable of attaining the truth and that we who listen to poetry should be on our guard against its seductions, since the poet has no place in our idea of God.

In developing this in Book X, [596–599] Plato tells of Socrates' metaphor of the three beds: one bed exists as an idea made by God (the Platonic ideal); one is made by the carpenter, in imitation of God's idea; one is made by the artist in imitation of the carpenter's.

So the artist's bed is twice removed from the truth. The copiers only touch on a small part of things as they really are, where a bed may appear differently from various points of view, looked at obliquely or directly, or differently again in a mirror. So painters or poets, though they may paint or describe a carpenter or any other maker of things, know nothing of the carpenter's (the craftsman's) art, and though the better painters or poets they are, the more faithfully their works of art will resemble the reality of the carpenter making a bed, nonetheless the imitators will still not attain the truth (of God's creation).

Similar to Plato's writings about mimesis, Aristotle also defined mimesis as the perfection and imitation of nature. Art is not only imitation but also the use of mathematical ideas and symmetry in the search for the perfect, the timeless, and contrasting being with becoming. Nature is full of change, decay, and cycles, but art can also search for what is everlasting and the first causes of natural phenomena. Aristotle wrote about the idea of four causes in nature. The first formal cause is like a blueprint, or an immortal idea. The second cause is the material, or what a thing is made out of. The third cause is the process and the agent, in which the artist or creator makes the thing. The fourth cause is the good, or the purpose and end of a thing, known as telos.

Aristotle's Poetics is often referred to as the counterpart to this Platonic conception of poetry. Poetics is his treatise on the subject of mimesis. Aristotle was not against literature as such; he stated that human beings are mimetic beings, feeling an urge to create texts (art) that reflect and represent reality.

 

Aristotle considered it important that there be a certain distance between the work of art on the one hand and life on the other; we draw knowledge and consolation from tragedies only because they do not happen to us. Without this distance, tragedy could not give rise to catharsis. However, it is equally important that the text causes the audience to identify with the characters and the events in the text, and unless this identification occurs, it does not touch us as an audience. Aristotle holds that it is through "simulated representation", mimesis, that we respond to the acting on the stage which is conveying to us what the characters feel, so that we may empathize with them in this way through the mimetic form of dramatic role-play. It is the task of the dramatist to produce the tragic enactment in order to accomplish this empathy by means of what is taking place on stage.

In short, catharsis can only be achieved if we see something that is both recognizable and distant. Aristotle argued that literature is more interesting as a means of learning than history, because history deals with specific facts that have happened, and which are contingent, whereas literature, although sometimes based on history, deals with events that could have taken place or ought to have taken place.

Aristotle thought of drama as being "an imitation of an action" and of tragedy as "falling from a higher to a lower estate" and so being removed to a less ideal situation in more tragic circumstances than before. He posited the characters in tragedy as being better than the average human being, and those of comedy as being worse.

The poets, beginning with Homer, far from improving and educating humanity, do not possess the knowledge of craftsmen and are mere imitators who copy again and again images of virtue and rhapsodise about them, but never reach the truth in the way the superior philosophers do.

Plato’s “Theory of Creativity” emphasized the mystical, beyond the reality stimuli of talents, the Aristotle’s “Poetics” appeals to generalize the artistic image, transfer it to others during their upbringing and education.

Aristotle developed a new ethical concepts, as well as the theoretical basis of existing (mimesis, Kalos kagathos, catharsis). It includes in the analysis of theoretical concepts such notions as "canon" – a system of norms and rules in the development of art, "hedonism" (pleasure) – the emotional and sensual nature of the arts, "allegory" – imaginative way of saying, “measure", "proportion" "association". Aristotle not only enriches the perspective of science, but also develops his own categories and concepts. Based on these concepts and categories aesthetics could subsequently become an independent science.



çàãðóçêà...