Page "belles_lettres" Paragraph 287

The mimetic imagination in the arts

The word `` mimesis '' ( `` imitation '' ) is usually associated with Plato and Aristotle.

For Plato, `` imitation '' is twice removed from reality, being a poor copy of physical appearance, which in itself is a poor copy of ideal essence.

All artistic and mythological representations, therefore, are `` imitations of imitations '' and are completely superseded by the truth value of `` dialectic '', the proper use of the inquiring intellect.

In Plato's judgment, the arts play a meaningful role in society only in the education of the young, prior to the full development of their intellectual powers.

Presupposed in Plato's system is a doctrine of levels of insight, in which a certain kind of detached understanding is alone capable of penetrating to the most sublime wisdom.

Aristotle also tended to stratify all aspects of human nature and activity into levels of excellence and, like Plato, he put the pure and unimpassioned intellect on the top level.

The Poetics, in affirming that all human arts are `` modes of imitation '', gives a more serious role to artistic mimesis than did Plato.

But Aristotle kept the principle of levels and even augmented it by describing in the Poetics what kinds of character and action must be imitated if the play is to be a vehicle of serious and important human truths.

For both Plato and Aristotle artistic mimesis, in contrast to the power of dialectic, is relatively incapable of expressing the character of fundamental reality.