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Truth in Art

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Evanghelos A. Moutsopoulos
Evanghelos A. Moutsopoulos*
Affiliation:
Académie d'Athènes
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Extract

It seems at least daring to speak of truth on the subject of art, when Plato, in the Sophiste, 234c, likens art to sophistry, in other words, to falsity and deformation. To be sure, this comparison is based on an exaggeration, because elsewhere Plato insists on the necessity of artistic reality: in the same Sophiste, 299e, he states that “life would be unlivable without art.” The importance thus given to art becomes obvious when we think that this same expression is already used in the Apologie, 38a, with regard to philosophy, the activity that for a man conscious of his own existence is one of scrupulously examining his own life. This similarity in expression testifies to the conceptual and axiological similarity of two (but distinct) activities of the mind effected by Plato who, on a different level, as we have just seen, unhesitatingly condemns one of them, at least apparently; apparently, because basically Plato does not inveigh against art in general but against the art of his contemporaries, whom he openly accuses of accepting the postulate of verisimilitude by using artifice and acrobatics, with the sole end of pleasing the crowds by flattery. In other words, they substitute for the scarch for authenticity that of dexterity in creations conceived only for that effect, which means identifying this type of substitution of values with a prostitution of the artist himself with regard to his public.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 33 , Issue 132 , July 1985 , pp. 107 - 115
Copyright
Copyright © 1985 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

1 Cf. P.M. Schuhl, Platon et l'art de son temps (arts plastiques), Paris, Alcan, 1933, p. 39 et seq.

2 E. Moutsopoulos, La musique dans l'oeuvre de Platon, Paris, P.U.F., 1959, p. 278 et seq.

3 H. Koller, Die Mimesis in der Antike. Nachahmung, Darstellung, Ausdruck, Bern, A. Francke, 1954, p. 17 et seq.

4 P.A. Michelis, "Refinements in Architecture", Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 14, 1955, pp. 19-43, especially p. 26 et seq.

5 E. Moutsopoulos. "Vers un élargissement du concept de vérité: le presque-vrai", Annales de la Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines d'Aix, 40, 1966, pp. 189-196.

6 G. Bachelard, L'Expérience de l'espace dans la physique contemporaine, Paris, P.U.F., 1937, p. 94: "Maximum reality comes at the end of knowledge, not at the beginning of knowledge".

7 E. Moutsopoulos, "Du ‘faux' dans l'art", (II Congresso de Filosofia, Córdoba (Argentina), 1971), Actas, Vol I, Buenos Aires, Editorial Sudamericana, pp. 335-338.

8 L. von Ranke, Zur Kritik neuerer Geschichtsschreiber, Berlin-Leipzig, 1824, p. 7 et seq.

9 E. Moutsopoulos, "Alternative Processes in Artistic Creation", Proceedings of the 8th International Wittgenstein Symposium (Kirchberg am Wechsel, 1983), part I, Vienna, Hölder-Picher-Tempsky, 1984, pp. 107; Idem, "Le modèle de l'oeuvre d'art: idéalisme ou pragmatisme? La représentation", Actes du XVIIe Congrès de Philosophie de Langue Française, Strasbourg, 1980, pp. 300-302; Idem, "La finition de l'œuvre d'art: contraintes et licences, A filosofia e as ciencias" (IV Semana Internacional de Filosofia, Curitiba), Rio de Janeiro, 1978, pp. 22-24.

10 E. Moutsopoulos, "Sur le caractère ‘kairique' de l'œuvre d'art", Actes du V Congrès International d'Esthétique, Amsterdam, 1964, pp. 116-118.