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A 1780 copy of Aristotle's Poetics, published in Latin and Greek side by side, translated by Theodori Goylstoni.

Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy that deals with beauty and art, broadly speaking, although the term 'aesthetics' was not used to describe this genre of philosophy until the eighteenth century. Notable ancient philosophers include Plato, Aristotle and Longinus.

Art, poetry and morality

While aesthetics as a term was not introduced into philosophical discourse until modern times, this does not mean that the ancients did not respond to questions of art and beauty. The name we use to describe the theory of beauty is immaterial.

Agonistic poetry competition in ancient Greece required an objective judgement on the quality of the poems in the competition, and to have that objective judgement, the ancient Greeks must have had criteria for what was good and bad art. Thus, they must have had theories of beauty that we would now call aesthetics.

Poetry began as chorus, with music and dancing attached to it. There was no spoken word poetry as we know it today. Ancient poetry was an art form connected to expression and emotion.

This choral poetry contained aspects of mimesis (or acting), catharsis (the freedom from some emotion) and morality, in its message.

Morality is described as a set of standards for conduct or behaviour that are either ascribed by a group or accepted personally by an individual. Plato demanded that poetry must be morally useful, and said that lust, laughter and anything unseemly was immoral.

A versatile poet, according to Plato, is a poet who will imitate anything at all, and thus cannot be of a good moral character himself, because you are what you imitate. A poet can distort the truth and create strong emotions in his audience, to the point that he can corrupt good people.

The sublime

The sublime (from the Latin sublīmis) is an aesthetic concept grounded in an experience of transcendence, or greatness.

Longinus is considered the one of the first philosophers to formally examine the sublime in around the 1st century CE in the treatise Peri hypsous (meaning, “on the sublime” in Greek), although his actual identity is not certain. At the least it would seem that the author of Peri hypsous was a roman-dwelling Greek rhetorician. Longinus analyses the concept of the sublime from a literary perspective. To him, the greatness and awe of the sublime is applied to literature with grandly descriptive language.

For Longinus there are five sources of sublimity: Great thoughts, strong emotion, figures of thought and speech, diction, and dignified word arrangement.

Mimesis

Mimesis (/mɪˈmiːsɪs, mə-, maɪ-, -əs/; Ancient Greek: μίμησις mīmēsis, from μιμεῖσθαι mīmeisthai, "to imitate", from μῖμος mimos, "imitator, actor") is a word that is often used synonymously with the term ‘imitation’, although it’s meaning is often more complex than the word ‘imitation’ can reasonably convey. Mimesis is the action which results in a reproduction of something original that it shares features with. Mimesis can be intentional or unintentional.

Mimesis is a form of expressive art, that can include doing what others do, adopting the customs of another, playing a part, or creating a reproduction. The view that all art is mimetic, or that its purpose comes from mimesis, is a view that has been ascribed to Plato, but his view on mimesis seems to be merely that some art can be mimetic. In book 3 of Republic, Plato contrasts mimetic poetry (poetry in which the poet takes the role of a character themselves rather than just describing the actions of a character) with descriptive poetry, and in book 10 of Republic Plato speaks of mimesis more broadly, including a discussion of it in relation to visual art and narrative poetry.

Aristotle has a similar understanding of the concept of mimesis as Plato in that it is a reproduction with likeness to an original, but his application of this concept is different. To Plato, mimesis is not necessarily a positive trait of art, but one that can be problematic. Aristotle however sees the pleasure we take from mimesis to be human nature, and thus positive. He even admits that some instances of mimesis improve on their original, like how medicine improves on nature.

Catharsis

Catharsis (from Greek κάθαρσις katharsis meaning "purification" or "cleansing") is relief from emotion through art. For example, tragedy brings forward emotions like sadness and angst, and catharsis releases them, because the expression of emotions, relieves you of them.

Where Aristotle believed that tragedy could release you from tragic emotion, Plato believed that what you imitate, you become; that if we indulge in negative emotion in the context of tragic theatre, then we become more likely to indulge in negative emotion in the real world.

Plato and Aristotle had differing opinions on what kind of emotion was appropriate and should be encouraged as well, for example grief at the death of a loved one would be an undesirable emotion to Plato but would be encouraged by Aristotle as death is wicked and should be feared and mourned. Aristotle’s theory of catharsis as emotional release is an answer to Plato’s fear of perpetuating negative emotion, as instead of prolonging undesirable emotion, you free yourself from it.

Catharsis as emotional release

Perhaps the most well-known interpretation of the concept of catharsis is that when we express negative emotions through the medium of drama, we prevent those emotions from expressing themselves in harmful ways later on. There are no real stakes when viewing art, whereas expressing anger, for example, in front of your superior at work because you didn't express it impotently through art, could have real consequences. For Aristotle, this is the purpose of theatre as an art form, although he doesn't make explicitly clear how exactly theatre brings about the discharging of emotion, or how the discharging of emotion actually frees us from it.

Catharsis as ethical training

Catharsis as ethical training is another part of Aristotle's ethical theory. It is the theory that in order to develop appropriate emotional responses, we must first be exposed to a situation that will arouse emotion. Aristotle doctrine of the mean says that we must learn to have appropriate amounts of emotions in any particular situation, and not merely a medium level of emotion at all times, for example, you should appropriately feel worried before a job interview, but you shouldn't feel moderately worried at all hours of the day no matter the circumstance. Catharsis in art teaches you how to judge what level of emotion is appropriate according to Aristotle. Aristotle also proposed a doctrine that we learn ethical virtue by habituation, meaning that we learn how to respond emotionally through habit. There are some emotions and events in life that are rarer than others, grief, for example, and theatre is necessary to habitually learn to respond to those events, because without theatre we would be exposed to them too rarely to form habitual ethical virtue, although the emotions aroused in theatre to do with rare emotional events are not truly comparable to the emotions around in real situations, so this kind of ethical training cannot be truly effective.

Catharsis as intellectual clarification

Plato used the word 'catharsis' to refer to the removing of obstacles, and Martha Nussbaum posits that this could be evidence that Aristotle, Plato's contemporary and student, could be using a wider or more nuanced definition when discussing catharsis, rather than using it to mean simply purification. To feel sadness at the loss of a pet, for example, you must understand that that pet has died, and that there is nothing you can do to revive them. In this way, emotion informs you, however Andrew Mason would argue that this intellectual clarification reading of catharsis is not the kind of reading Aristotle intended.

Catharsis as consolation

A possible reading of Aristotle on catharsis could be that catharsis can act as consolation. In Greek tragedy, the protagonist often has tragedy befall them through a fault of their own. This is a comfort to audiences, because it tells them that they are not subject to a cruel and unwavering fate, but rather that they can control how much tragedy befalls them. In the case where a protagonist has no control over their fate, the protagonist usually copes with that tragedy with dignity, showing audiences that even if they find themselves in a terrible situation, they can maintain their poise.

Beauty

Although aesthetics is often used analogously with beauty, its essence lies more centrally with the appreciation of art, and although the attractiveness of art plays a role in its appreciation, a piece does not need to be beautiful to be valuable, or good. Beauty is simply a facet of the study of aesthetics.

Plato first considers the concept (or at least the definition of) beauty in Hippias Major. Definitions considered in this dialogue between Socrates and Hippias include 'beauty is that which is appropriate', 'beauty is that which is useful', ‘beauty is that which is favourable’ and ‘beauty is the pleasure that comes from seeing and hearing’. None of these definitions satisfy both Socrates and Hippias, although ‘beauty is the pleasure that comes from seeing and hearing’ comes the closest. That definition has its own problems though. Why only seeing and hearing? Is pleasure that comes from the other senses less noble? And what about pleasure that doesn’t involve the senses at all, but the mind, like learning?

Plato later contemplates beauty in the frame of passionate love (eros) in Symposium and Phaedrus. In the Symposium, love is examined as the love of beauty, as love cannot be good and beautiful in itself if it craves those things. Love is also not ugly, so it is concluded that love must be somewhere in between, an intermediary between divinity and humanity. Socrates expands on this as he retells a story told to him by the woman Diotima. According to her, love is a daemon, or intermediary spirit, and love is expressed through sex and the reproduction of ideas. The “form of beauty” is the knowledge which all must strive for. In the Phaedrus, Socrates explains why beauty is the highest of the platonic Forms by saying that we all have a vision of the Forms before we are born, and that because beauty has visible images, and our memory is most triggered by visible images, thus beauty is most able to remind us of those pre-birth images of the forms.

Aristotle used the term kállos (the ancient Greek word meaning beauty, especially physical beauty associated with erotic desire) most often to mean physical beauty, but also used it in reference to the beauty of the soul, abstracting the definition of beauty to meanings beyond the physical. He acknowledged that it is possible to appreciate beauty without actively desiring it in Eudemian Ethics. He also says that it is the human ability to feel pleasure from contemplation that makes us able to appreciate beauty without desire, and that sets us apart from animals, who are incapable of it.

See also

Sublime (philosophy)

Catharsis

Mimesis

Beauty

Ancient philosophy