PLATO’S OBJECTIONS TO MIMETIC ART
Extra Credit Op for all my students
Admirers of Plato are usually lovers of literary art,
for Plato wrote dramatic dialogues rather then scholarly treatises
and did so with rare literary skill. You would expect such a
philosopher to place a high value on literary art, but Plato actually
attacked it, along with other forms of mimêsis such as
representational painting and sculpture, arguing that most of it
should be banned from the ideal society that he described in the
Republic. What objections did Plato have with mimêsis? Do those
objections apply to the sort of art we value today? Are they well
founded?
