(c. 428-347 BC) believed that the task of aesthetics is to comprehend beauty as such. Considering beautiful things (a beautiful girl, a beautiful horse, a beautiful vase), Plato concludes that beauty is not contained in them. The beautiful is an idea, it is absolute and exists in the “realm of ideas”.

You can get closer to understanding the idea of ​​beauty by going through a series of steps:
looking at beautiful bodies;
admiring beautiful souls (Plato rightly shows that beauty is not only a sensual, but also a spiritual phenomenon);
passion for the beauty of the sciences (admiring beautiful thoughts, the ability to see beautiful abstractions);
contemplation of the ideal world of beauty, the actual idea of ​​beauty.

True comprehension of the beautiful is possible thanks to the mind, intellectual contemplation, this is a kind of supersensory experience, i.e. Plato's aesthetics is rationalistic aesthetics. Plato explains the human desire for beauty with the help of the doctrine of Eros. Eros, the son of the god of wealth Poros and the beggar Penia, is rude and untidy, but has lofty aspirations. Like him, man, being an earthly being, desires beauty. Platonic love (eros) is love for the idea of ​​beauty; platonic love for a person allows you to see in a particular person a reflection of absolute beauty.

In the light of Plato's idealistic aesthetic (an aesthetic that believes that beauty is an ideal entity), art has little value. It imitates things, while things themselves are the imitation of ideas, it turns out that art is “imitation of imitation”. Poetry is an exception, because at the moment of creation the rhapsodist is seized with ecstasy, which allows him to be filled with divine inspiration and partake of eternal beauty. In his ideal state, Plato wanted to abolish all the arts, but left those that have educational value, educate the civic spirit. In turn, only perfect citizens are capable of enjoying such “correct art”.

Plato in the dialogue "Feast" writes: "The beautiful exists forever, it is not destroyed, does not increase, does not decrease. It is neither beautiful here, nor ugly there ... neither beautiful in one respect, nor ugly in another.
Before a person who knows it, the beautiful “does not appear in the form of some form, or hands, or any other part of the body, nor in the form of any speech, or any science, nor in the form of something that exists in something else in any some living being, or on earth, or in heaven, or in some other object…”
The beautiful appears here as an eternal idea, alien to the changing world of things. Such an understanding of the beautiful follows from the philosophical concept of Plato, who argued that sensible things are shadows of ideas. Ideas are the unchanging spiritual essences that make up true being.

In the Philebus dialogue, Plato claims that beauty is not inherent in living beings or pictures, it is “straight and round”, that is, the abstract beauty of the surface of the body, the form separated from the content: “... I call it beautiful not in relation to something or ... but eternally beautiful in itself, in its nature ”(Platon. 1971, p. 66).

According to Plato, beauty is not a natural property of an object. She is "supersensual" and unnatural. You can know the beautiful only being in a state of obsession, inspiration, through remembrance. immortal soul about the time when she had not yet settled into a mortal body and was in the world of ideas.
The perception of beauty is a special pleasure.
Plato reveals his understanding of the way of knowing beauty. The character of his dialogue, the wise woman Diotima, expounds the "theory of eros" (supersensible comprehension of beauty).
Eros is the mystical enthusiasm that accompanies the dialectical ascent of the soul to the idea of ​​beauty; this is philosophical love - the desire to comprehend the truth, goodness, beauty.
Plato outlines the path from the contemplation of bodily beauty (something insignificant) to the comprehension of spiritual beauty (the highest stage in the cognition of beauty is its comprehension through knowledge). According to Plato, a person learns the idea of ​​beauty only in an obsessed state (=inspiration). The eternal and immortal beginning is inherent in a mortal human being.
To approach the beautiful as an idea, it is necessary for the immortal soul to remember the time when it had not yet settled into a mortal body. Plato connected the aesthetic category of the beautiful with the philosophical categories of being and knowledge and with the ethical category of the good.

In an ideal state, he introduces the strictest censorship of art and demands the expulsion of those of his figures who do not want or cannot adapt to its requirements. Plato made no clear distinction between truth, goodness, and beauty, or between science, morality, and art. The beautiful points to the good, and the good - to the beautiful. Art cannot be separated from morality. Ethics and aesthetics are inseparable. On the one hand, this means that artists are important to society. But, on the other hand, this means that Plato cannot afford to be a supporter of the moral neutrality of art.

In relation to ideas, art as such turns out to be secondary, and even tertiary - it copies copies! Therefore, art cannot be highly valued in terms of the reproduction of truth.

The theory of art as imitation, mimesis, is linked to the demand for true reproduction. It can be imagined that artists can be inspired directly by ideas, and not only by sensible things. In this case, art becomes a kind of transmission medium for ideas. However, this, according to Plato, is rather doubtful, since the representatives of art do not have the intellectual training of philosophers. Because of this, even artists and artists inspired by ideas cannot accurately reproduce the results of their comprehension of ideas. They can rather distort ideas. That is why it is philosophers who should be responsible for the knowledge of the world of ideas, even in those cases when it comes to direct inspiration from ideas.

Poets, with all their charm, but with a very distant attitude to binding truth, must be controlled by those who have a knowledge of ideas. Such "quality control" extends not only to the arts associated with literature. It also applies to music and singing, the arts that, according to Plato, directly affect the soul. Therefore, Plato forbids both music that inflames uncontrollable passions, and music that lulls and pampers. Like other arts, music should be part of the process of educating the soul and a means of strengthening morality. Like poetry, it should contribute to the comprehension of ideas and justice, and not vulgarize and distort our thoughts and emotions.

Poetry for Plato is devoid of cognitive or moral significance: “the artisan and master is more versed in what he is talking about than the poet, and the philosopher knows better than the poet what is good, beauty, truth, therefore poets often lie and speak nonsense. But poetry has a different role: it transmits divine inspiration to its listeners, it shapes and molds their souls, and the psychological strength of its effect depends not on what it says, but on the degree of obsession with the Muses.

Poetry Plato divides into purely imitative (drama), mixed (epos) and non-imitative (lyric); arts into subject (agriculture) and imitative (painting). Poetry and the imitative arts thus acquire a special psychological function, distinct from their practical significance and the production of material objects.

The evolution of mimesis in ancient culture.

Losev.

Initially, in antiquity, there were two types of mimesis: 1) experience 2) human imitation of animals, birds, etc.

Then a third kind of mimesis appears - imitation of the appearance of an object.

Democritus was convinced that art in its broadest sense (as a productive creative activity of a person) comes from the imitation of a person by animals (weaving from imitation of a spider, house-building - to a swallow, singing - to birds, etc.).

According to the Pythagoreans, the music performed imitates at the micro level the "music of the heavenly spheres" and in this way gives people joy and pleasure.

Plato sees in many arts "imitation" of the visible world, which itself is only an imitation of the world of ideas. Therefore, from the point of view of epistemology, art is practically useless. Aristotle. Signs of imitation:

All art is based on it.

It is innate, in this way a person differs from animals and thanks to it he acquires the first knowledge.

Products of imitation cause pleasure, since when contemplating it, one has to recognize the original in it, to reason. To do this, there must be a prototype.

He sees the meaning of art in mimesis, but unlike Plato, who condemns precisely this art as "imitation of imitation", Aristotle believes that poetic mimesis is focused not so much on thoughtless copying of reality as on its "plausible" image in a probabilistic mode. In tragedy people are portrayed better than reality, in comedy they are worse.

Aesthetics of Hellenism.

The aesthetics of Hellenism found its development in Stoicism, Epicureanism, skepticism and Neoplatonism, as well as in mystical theories close to it.

Stoic school: Zeno (c. 336-264 BC), Cleanthes (331-232 BC), Chrysippus (280-208/205 BC), late -Cicero (106-43 BC), Seneca (c. 4-65) and Epictetus (c. 50-c. 138). The Stoics see art as an imitation of nature. The Stoics deal with questions of the social role of art, its nature, and other general aesthetic problems much less than questions of the form of a work of art, oratory, style, etc.

The aesthetic theory of Epicureanism was represented in the Hellenistic era by Epicurus (341-270 BC), Philodemus (beginning of the 1st century BC) and Lucretius (1st century BC). The aesthetic theory of Epicureanism reached the pinnacle of its development with Lucretius Cara. He believes that art arises from the imitation of nature. Thus, it has its origins in natural principles and the real needs of people. Lucretius imagines this as follows: People learned to imitate the ringing voice of birds with their lips long before they began to compose harmonious songs and bring pleasure to their ears. The whistling of the Zephyr in the empty stalks of reeds was the first time he taught the settlers to blow into the empty reeds of the cane. Little by little, they also learned the plaintively tender Sounds that the flute pours out from under the fingers of the singers. Art, according to Lucretius, not only delivers "pleasure". It also plays a utilitarian role. It, for example, serves as a means of disseminating knowledge about the "nature of things." Lucretius deliberately chooses the poetic form of narration. She acts as a "seasoning" for him.

Horace emphasizes the decisive role of content, demands a philosophical education from the poet. The poet, he believes, must strictly adhere to unity, simplicity, integrity, consistency, consistency in literary works. Any asymmetry, violation of harmony, mannerisms are condemned by him. Horace, further, demands sincerity from the poet. Horace characterizes the types and genres of poetry, focusing on tragedy. The canons established by him in relation to tragedy presuppose a drama of the classical type. Horace insists on the plausibility of fiction. The poet gives advice to the servants of the Muses to beware of "flatterers under the appearance of a fox."

school founder skeptics was Pyrrho (c. 365-275 BC). The science of art is impossible. Sextus criticizes the basic concepts not only of mathematics, but also of other sciences of that time and the arts: grammar, rhetoric, astronomy and music. Treatise "Against the Rhetors", where Sextus proves that rhetoric from all points of view is not an art. Rejecting the possibility of the existence of rhetoric, he thereby denies the possibility of the existence of a theory of art and aesthetics.

39. Aesthetics and Art of the 17th century (Baroque, Classicism, "Realistic" style)

Baroque

Baroque is characterized by some redundancy» (Deleuz): great emotional elation and pathetic nature of images, scale of buildings, exaggerated monumentalization of forms, dynamics of spatial construction, increased plastic expressiveness of volumes. Hence the curvilinear plans, the curves of the walls, on which, as it were, grow cornices, pediments, pilasters; small forms of architectural decoration abound: windows are decorated with various architraves, niches - with statues. The general impression of rapid movement and wealth is complemented by sculpture, murals, stucco, colored marbles and bronzes. Add to this picturesque contrasts of chiaroscuro, perspective and illusionistic effects. Also, baroque art is characterized by the antithesis of earthly and mystical, real and illusory. In most paintings, linear perception is destroyed in favor of the picturesque, it is not the drawing that begins to dominate, but the color-light relations. The ultimate expression of baroque style in music appeared in oratorios; this genre came from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The Baroque oratorio is notable for its special pomposity, striving for external effects, extraordinary splendor.

Classicism

Classicism puts forward the principle of connection majestic solemnity architectural image With reasonable clarity. Their spatial solution is distinguished by clear logic, the facade - harmony of compositional construction with proportionality of parts, architectural forms - simplicity and rigor. Strict orderliness is introduced even into nature: the masters of classicism created a system of the so-called regular park. In the fine arts of classicism, one of the main themes was the theme debt, wins public over the personal, the theme of affirming the highest ethical principles: heroism, valor, moral purity which find their artistic embodiment in images filled with sublime beauty and grandeur. Classicism opposes contradictions and imperfections of reality principle of reasonableness and severe discipline with which a person must overcome life's obstacles. According to the aesthetics of classicism, reason is the main criterion of beauty.

« Realistic" style

Artistic image arises on the basis of the artist's direct appeal to the phenomena of the real world, to all the richness of nature. Artistic generalization is achieved here by selecting the most typical images, phenomena of reality and revealing their essential features. The "realistic" method of writing contributed to the expansion of the possibilities of fine art. New genres emerged: everyday genre, still life;

Sublime Kant to a greater extent than the beautiful, attributed to the inner world of a person, believing that objects that are disproportionate to the abilities of human perception give a powerful emotional impetus to the soul. "Sublime is that, the mere possibility of thinking about which already proves the ability of the soul, exceeding any scale<внешних>feelings". Art is the most important means of penetrating into the world of the supersensible.

Hegel in "Lectures on Aesthetics" (1st ed. 1832-45) defined as the subject of aesthetics "the vast realm of the beautiful, more precisely, the field of art or, more precisely, artistic creativity" and believed that this science should be called " philosophy of art" or, more specifically, "philosophy of artistic creation." Art was understood by Hegel as one of the essential forms of self-disclosure of the absolute spirit in the act of artistic activity. Accordingly, he saw the main goal of art in the expression of truth, which, at a given level of actualization of the spirit, he practically identified with the beautiful. The beautiful was comprehended as "a sensual phenomenon, a sensual appearance of an idea." Criticizing the simplified understanding of the mimetic principle of art as imitation of the visible forms of reality, Hegel put forward not mimesis, but an ideal, by which he meant beauty in art, as the most important category of aesthetics and the subject of art.

Hegel considers art as an artistic religion, which is defined exclusively phenomenally, as the "self-consciousness" of the spirit, taken in its purely subjectivity (self-position for itself): "the spirit ... which now generates its essence, elevated above reality, from the purity of selfhood" (" Phenomenology of the Spirit). In this form, the spirit is "an absolute work of art and at the same time an equally absolute" artist ". However, such an absolute work of art, in which the work is identical to the artist, is not given in cash, as postulated by classical culture and, accordingly, E., but is the result And here Hegel will radically deconstruct the absolute of the embodied beautiful ideal, considering it only in temporally connected forms of self-contemplation of artistic individuations of "universal humanity" participating in the will and actions of the whole. spirit, manifested in the corresponding types of a work of art: epic, tragedy, comedy. They are the essential, substantial "esthesis", which, in phenomenological terms, becomes the subject of E. as a philosophy of art. E. Hegel completes the formation of European classical artistic culture, announcing the "end of art" that has already happened, which is artistically embodied in the creative individuality of Goethe, especially in the late, "classical" period.

53. The theory of basic art forms in Hegel.

All concepts of the theory of art are a concretization of the original category - the beautiful. And they are located in the sequence in which, according to Hegel, there was a change of various art forms. The main triad here consists of three art forms - symbolic, classical And romantic. The evaluation criterion is the ratio between the artistic content and its embodiment. In symbolic art, the content has not yet found an adequate form, in classical art they are in a harmonious unity, but in romantic art this unity falls apart again: the content outgrows the form. The symbolic form dominates in the East, the classical - in antiquity; romantic - in Christian Europe. Only the classics are true art. What precedes it, according to Hegel, is just pre-art, and romantic art marks the decay, the death of art: thought and reflection overtake artistic creativity, which naturally gives way to other types of spiritual activity.

This is not about the fact that art has become obsolete as a form of self-knowledge of the absolute idea. The thing is different: the world of the market is hostile to art. Art is a unique accumulator of the spiritual culture of mankind, a barometer sensitively predicting social weather, an uncompromising fighter for humanity. Hegel prematurely denied him the right to exist.

The main symbol was the image. The latter had a meaning, although he could not fully express it. This symbol with obscure content is now opposed by meaning as such in its clear understanding; a work of art becomes a carrier of a pure essence, which, however, cannot find a plastic embodiment.

The symbolic is replaced by classical art Ancient Greece. The basis of classical art is the absolute harmony of content and form. “Here art has reached its own concept to such an extent, here it brings the idea as spiritual individuality into such immediate and perfect harmony with its bodily reality, that now for the first time external existence no longer retains any independence in relation to the meaning that it should express. And vice versa, the inner content in its image, developed for contemplation, shows only itself and affirmatively correlates with itself in it. Greek art for Hegel is the real being of the ideal. Nothing more beautiful than classical art, according to Hegel, "cannot be and never will be." However, there is something higher than the beautiful manifestation of the spirit in an immediate sensible form; even if this image is created by the spirit itself as adequate to it. Rising, beauty becomes spiritual. Classical art is replaced by romantic.

Here, all content is concentrated on the inner life of the spirit, external forms again play a subordinate role. The image is canonically given, everything bodily in it serves only to reveal holiness, the depth of suffering and divine peace. We are talking about the religious art of the Middle Ages, the only subject of which was the Holy Scriptures. Strictly speaking, according to Hegel, this is no longer art.

Plato (ancient Greek Πλάτων, 428 or 427 BC, Athens - 348 or 347 BC, ibid) - ancient Greek philosopher, student of Socrates, teacher of Aristotle.

Plato is one of the greatest philosophers of ancient classics, a representative of objective idealism in philosophy and aesthetics. The philosophical heritage of Plato is great, 34 of his dialogues have come down to us. In these works, Plato devotes a significant place to the problems of music.

Plato addresses the problems of musical theory in many of his dialogues, primarily such as "State", "Laws", "Feast" , Phaedo, Timaeus. Plato's teaching on music has many different aspects. This is the doctrine of cosmic harmony and the doctrine of musical ethos, and the theory of musical education.

A documentary about the ancient Greek philosopher Plato.

One of the main problems of Plato's musical aesthetics is the belief in the cosmic significance of musical harmony. Plato expounds the doctrine of the harmony of the spheres in Timaeus. Here he develops the theory of the celestial heptachord. According to him, the relationship between the seven celestial planets corresponds to the relationships that underlie musical intervals. Here, obviously, Plato completely follows the Pythagorean aesthetics, drawing analogies between musical and cosmic harmony. From the Pythagoreans, Plato also borrows the belief in the numerical nature of musical harmony, which he develops in his other dialogue, Philebus. In general, Plato develops an idealistic idea of ​​harmony. Although it consists of a mixture of physical elements, its nature is not physical. Harmony is immortal, it does not die with the death of these elements.

"...In a tuned lyre, harmony is something invisible, incorporeal, beautiful and divine, and the lyre itself and the strings are bodies, that is, something corporeal, complex, earthly and akin to mortal ... "

However, in addition to Pythagoreanism, there are ideas in Plato's musical aesthetics that go far beyond the Pythagorean tradition. If Pythagoras and his followers reduced music to quantitative relations, to certain numerical proportions, then Plato perfectly understood that the complex and rich sphere of musical art is far from being exhausted by these relations. Therefore, in addition to measurement and calculation in music, one must rely on experience and direct feeling. According to Plato, music builds its consonances "not on the size, but on the exercise of sensitivity; the whole part of music related to cytharistics is the same, because it seeks the measure of every string set in motion by conjecture ..."

At the same time, Plato put forward high artistic criteria for evaluating musical works. "... Anyone who wants to judge sensibly about every depiction of pictorial, musical or any other art must have the following three things: first of all, knowledge of what exactly is depicted, then whether it is depicted correctly, and, thirdly, whether it is good any image is performed in words, tunes and rhythms. Of course, such an approach to the evaluation and understanding of a work of art has nothing to do with the quantitative mathematical approach to music, which was justified by the Pythagoreans. Here, the criterion of an artistic, aesthetic attitude to music, which was not taken into account by the Pythagorean theory of music, comes to the fore.

Philosophy of Plato

An analysis of Plato's texts shows that Plato did not at all expel pleasure from the sphere of music. On the contrary, he very keenly understood and felt the nature of aesthetic pleasure. Pleasure, according to him, is that which brings neither harm nor benefit, but has a goal in itself. "... Pleasure serves as a correct measure only in such things, which, although they do not bring with them benefit, truth and likeness, however, on the other hand, do not cause any harm, but are created solely for the sake of what in other cases is only concomitant, that is, for the sake of pleasantness, which can be splendidly called pleasure"...

However, while recognizing the aesthetic significance of art, Plato nevertheless opposed a purely hedonistic attitude towards art, including music. Pleasure alone cannot be the measure of musical art. In addition to pleasure, it must meet such a criterion as correctness. “So, it’s completely impossible to agree,” says Plato, “with the fact that the measure of musical art is pleasure. song, they must look, as it seems, not for the Muse that is pleasant, but for the one that is correct.

Plato and Aristotle in Raphael's fresco

Thus, Plato sought to see in music not just entertainment, but a serious and important matter. His theory of musical education is connected with this.

It is known that Plato built his system of public education on the basis of music and gymnastics. Comparison of these seemingly heterogeneous phenomena served for Plato as a means for a comprehensive, harmonious education of a person. If gymnastics affects the body, bringing up masculinity, courage and strength in a person, then music affects the soul. Therefore, the task of education is to harmoniously and expediently combine music and gymnastics. Therefore, whoever alternates gymnastic exercises with the art of music in the best possible way and presents them to the soul in due measure, we would rightly consider him to have reached perfection in the art of music and to have achieved complete harmony much more than the one who tunes the strings.

Plato believed that music lessons should be the basis of the state system of education. That is why they should be mandatory for all citizens.

Plato. "State". Book three.

The role of poetry in the education of the guards. Modes of expression, or styles of poetic art. Interdependence of musical and gymnastic education.

In a certain sense, Plato's sociological conception of music has become a commonplace. Indeed, the theory of music represents in Plato constituent part his doctrine of the state. In accordance with general ancient ideas, Plato saw music as one of the most important means of state education. This aspect of understanding music is developed in some detail in the dialogue "The State".

At the same time, music is one of the important means of any social life-building for him. With music, Plato linked his utopian hopes for the revival of the old ancient policy and the strengthening of statehood. This aspect is developed in numerous places in the Laws. Plato does not stop even before the preaching of Egyptian conservatism, if only he can benefit his ideal state: “From the beginning, apparently, the Egyptians recognized the position that we have just expressed: in the states, young people should get into the habit of engaging in beautiful body movements and beautiful songs. neither anyone else who creates all kinds of images, nor those who are engaged in the musical arts in general, were allowed to innovate and invent something other than domestic. , invigorating songs, by their very nature leading to the proper."

Socrates and Plato

These and similar arguments of Plato served as the basis for depicting him as a conservative, an opponent of all innovation and progress in art. Plato repeatedly spoke with a moral-rigoristic interpretation of music. He demanded, in the name of strengthening morality and eliminating licentiousness, all sorts of restrictions and strict regulation in the field of musical practice, up to the prohibition of certain modes or musical instruments.

In particular, Plato forbade the use of complex, multi-stringed instruments such as trigons, pectides, etc. He suggested limiting himself to the lyre and cithara for use in the city and the flute for shepherds. Similarly, Plato opposed purely instrumental music. "The playing of the flute and cithara taken separately contains something highly tasteless and worthy only of a conjurer."

Plato. "State". Book ten.

Once again about the place of poetry in an ideal state. Art as an imitation of an idea (eidos). Criticism of epic and tragedy. The poet creates ghosts, not real being. Poetry does not lend itself to the criteria of truth - measurement, counting and weighing. Imitative poetry violates spiritual harmony. The furious beginning of the soul is easier to reproduce than the rational one. Imitative poetry spoils morals and is subject to expulsion from the state. In an ideal state, only that poetry is permissible, the benefits of which are obvious.

But, calling Plato a conservative, one must not forget about the nature of the conservatism that he preached, one must also not forget that in Plato far from everything comes down to pure rigorism and crude utilitarianism. Music is understood by him not only as a means of social and political control and regulation, as it was, for example, in ancient and medieval China among the Confucians. Plato's musical thought is richer and more versatile. Along with the state-political approach to music, we find in him deep judgments about the aesthetic nature of music, about the disinterestedness and purity of musical enjoyment, about the connection of music with love and beauty. “Harmony is consonance,” we read in Plato’s dialogue “Feast”, “and consonance is a kind of agreement, and from different beginnings, as long as they are different from each other, agreement is not obtained. And agreement in all this brings musical art, which establishes, like the art of medicine, love and unanimity. Consequently, the art of music is the knowledge of love principles relating to order and rhythm "

Plato develops a similar idea in the dialogue "The State", where he argues that musical education, in addition to purely moral and social goals, should pursue the beautiful as its goal and make a person "beautiful and good" . "...This is the main educational significance of musical art: it penetrates the depths of the soul most of all and affects it most strongly, rhythm and harmony bring beauty with them, and it makes a person look good, if one is properly brought up, if not, then vice versa. Whoever has been properly brought up in this area will very sharply perceive various omissions, unfinished or natural shortcomings. His irritation or, on the contrary, pleasure will be correct; he will praise that which is beautiful, and having taken it into his soul, he will feed on it and himself will become blameless; but the ugly he will rightly condemn and hate from a young age ... " Elsewhere Plato says bluntly: the art of music "should end with love for the beautiful."

In addition, there are numerous places in Plato's dialogues where he opposes coarse, base tastes in musical art, insists on the unity of music with singing and dance, where he talks about the connection between the nature of chants and the character and age of a person. All this taken together reveals in Plato not only a social reformer, but also a demanding artist with a fine aesthetic taste and artistic flair.

It is difficult to say which of these sides in Plato's musical teaching takes precedence. It is obvious that between them, for all their seeming opposition, there is a well-known relationship: Plato acted as a social reformer, being an artist and understanding the full power of the impact of art on a person, and on the other hand, he was an artist and a critic who tried to transform social relations of ancient society.

• Poverty does not consist in a decrease in property, but in an increase in gluttony.


• Wealth corrupted the souls of people with luxury, poverty nourished them with suffering and brought them to shamelessness.


• In their disasters, people tend to blame fate, the gods, and everything else, but not themselves.


• Time takes away everything; a long series of years is able to change the name, and appearance, and character, and fate.


• Gymnastics is a healing part of medicine.


• A fool can be recognized by two signs: he talks a lot about things that are useless to him and speaks out about what he is not asked about.


• The book is a silent teacher.


• The beloved often blinds the lover.


• A very bad person who does not know anything, and does not try to find out anything. After all, it combined two vices.


• Politics is the art of living together.


• To understand what is right, to feel what is beautiful, to desire what is good—this is the goal of intelligent life.


• A wise man punishes not because a misdemeanor has been committed, but so that it is not committed in the future.


• The speech of truth is simple.


• Justice is the virtue of great souls.


• By striving for the happiness of others, we find our own.


• Close friendship happens among people who are similar to each other.


• To please in the name of virtue is fine in all cases.


• A good start is half done.


• The man who loves is more divine than the man he loves.


• God is in ourselves.

Lit.: V. Shestakov. History of musical aesthetics

I. Plato's activity proceeded in the first half of the 4th century. BC e. This is the time when the city-state (polis) of the ancient world, which was based on slavery and slaveholding relations, was going through a deep crisis. Class contradictions aggravated, the Peloponnesian War ruined agriculture, a new class of rich people arose, eclipsing and pushing aside the ancient aristocracy. In the cities, many slave owners turned into small and medium-sized free producers. A lumpen-proletariat (“rabble”, oh-los) was formed in big cities. The forms of the class struggle and the degree of consciousness of the lumpen were imperfect. In their demands and dreams, the poor went no further than transferring and transferring wealth from one hand to another. In addition to the propaganda of an egalitarian redistribution, another line in the development of social thought was the idealization of antiquity, the paternal and grandfather system. Social contradictions - extremely acute - manifested themselves in everyday life, in means of transportation, in housing, in the environment.

In the 5th century BC e., after the victory over the Persians, Athens reached the pinnacle of prosperity, power and cultural brilliance. But in the first half of the 4th century, after the failures of the Peloponnesian War, after the tyranny of the Thirty, the famous power began to decline. Slave-owning in its social basis, democracy could not overcome numerous difficulties and contradictions. Historical experience has revealed many of its shortcomings and imperfections. Constant references to them were used as a weapon in the political struggle of classes by reactionary publicists. They criticized the Athenian political system. It was not an ancient criticism slaveholding democracy and democracy as an elected government that nominated artisans, small producers and merchants to government positions.

The son of a well-born Athenian citizen, Plato was an opponent of democracy, its political forms, which arose under its dominance of spiritual culture, including art. But Plato was no ordinary reactionary. The ingenious mind opened his eyes to the many real shortcomings of slave-owning democracy. And today, not only a professional historian of the ancient world, but also just an inquisitive reader will read with interest Plato's judgments about the imperfection of the Athenian policy.

Plato's social and political views are inseparable from his philosophical outlook which turned out to be the first widely and deeply developed system of objective idealism in the history of philosophy, and, moreover, idealism in its essential character dialectical.

Until the end of the 5th century BC e. the main and predominant type of ancient Greek philosophical teachings was materialism: idealism as a doctrine that has developed into a conscious system did not yet exist. However, the germs of future disagreements and the future opposition of materialism to idealism arose long before Plato. They can be found already in the earliest teachings about nature and about man: in the mythological views of Thales (“everything is full of gods”); in the teachings of the Pythagoreans about the transmigration and reincarnation of souls; in the teaching of the Eleans about the opposition of certain truth, which is revealed to the mind, and unreliable opinion, which arises from the senses; V individual thoughts materialist Heraclitus (for example, in the aphorism about the all-ruling logos); in the teaching of Anaxagoras that Mind is the universal driving force; in the subjectivism of some sophists; in the Socratic denial of the knowability of nature and in Socrates' view of self-knowledge as the main task of philosophy; in the teaching of the Megarian school about "incorporeal species" or "kinds", etc.

But all this was just makings, only possibilities development of idealism, but not idealism as system of views. In the teachings of Plato, ancient Greek idealism first takes shape in worldview, opposed materialism, which as a worldview and as a system scientific statements formed earlier and clearly realized its own foundations in Leucippus and Democritus, the atomists of the late 5th and early 4th centuries. BC e.

Since that time, materialism and idealism form the already fully formed opposition of the two main directions in the development of ancient Greek philosophy, and not only ancient Greek, but also all that followed. V. I. Lenin emphasized the decisive significance of this opposition, which first appeared so sharply in the philosophy of Democritus and Plato: speaking of “circles”, or “cycles”, of the development of ideas in the history of philosophy, he considers the “circle” to be such a “circle” for ancient philosophy from Democritus to Plato and the dialectics of Heraclitus (2, 29, 321), and in "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism" he speaks of the two-thousand-year struggle between idealism and materialism as a struggle between "tendencies or lines of Plato and Democritus in philosophy" (2, /?, 131): Little is known for certain about Plato's life. At first he was a student of Socrates. After the execution of Socrates (399 BC), Plato left Athens for Megara, and from there to Cyrene - to the mathematician Theodore - and then to Egypt. At that time and even later, Egypt was considered a highly developed state. Plato got acquainted with the caste social system of Egypt. He developed an idealized image of this system later in his utopia - in the "State". Apparently, an important stage in the life of Plato was then his stay in Syracuse on the island of Sicily. At that time it was a brilliant political and cultural center of Greece. Under the Syracusan tyrant Dionysius the Elder, Plato unsuccessfully tried to intervene in the political life of Syracuse and through him to realize his plan for an ideal state structure. In 388, Plato returned to Athens, and the following year he founded a school there, which received the name "Academy" in honor of the hero Academ. Subsequently, this name began to be used to refer to the community of philosophers. In the 60s, Plato again visited Syracuse and resumed - under the successor of Dionysius Dionysius the Younger - an attempt to change and transform the political system - however, also unsuccessfully. Plato spent the last decades of his life in Athens.

II. Plato is one of the great creative minds of antiquity. His genius is multifaceted. His literary heritage belongs not only to the history of ancient philosophy, but also to the history of ancient science and ancient fiction. And not only because in his youth Plato wrote talented poems (his epigrams have come down to us), the philosopher-scientist is inseparable in Plato from the philosopher-poet. His philosophical dialogues and letters belong to the best works of ancient Greek artistic prose.

The influence exerted by his art on subsequent literature - ancient and new, from the Renaissance - up to Schelling, is also enormous.

Plato's involvement in the art of fiction was reflected in the creation and bringing to a high artistic perfection of the genre dialogue. The beginnings of this genre appeared, apparently, even before Plato. It has been suggested that in the form of a dialogue, Democritus - also a great master of ancient Greek prose - presented in a work that has not come down to us a dispute about the primacy between feelings and reason. However, the dialogical form received wide and intensive development only in Plato. A number of his dialogues are real scenes in which the participants in a philosophical dispute are placed in situations that shade their characters with extreme relief. Despite the fact that the content of the dialogue is always a philosophical conversation or a philosophical dispute, there is nothing static in the dialogic scenes that is the subject of passive contemplation. Here everything is in motion, in struggle, in a clash of minds and characters. The impression of character delineation is enhanced by the action of their language. Plato masterfully masters all the means that his rich, expressive, flexible and apt language, his enormous literary erudition, his precise and purposeful memory help him as a writer. Both he himself and his philosophical "heroes" in abundance - easily, naturally and at the same time with a sense of proportion that never leaves them - quote, always most appropriately, the sayings of epic and lyric poets, tragedians and comedians, the lapidary sayings of philosophers - poets.

The language of Plato's prose reflects another feature of Plato's thinking, which makes him a great artist of the ancient world. Plato not only thinks in images, metaphors, comparisons, comparisons. In his thinking, these images, metaphors and similitudes sometimes unfold into truly grandiose myths, parables, symbols. At the same time, Plato not only applies well-known myths, which have long become for the Greeks a means of understanding and explaining reality. Plato himself - outstanding and inspirational mythmaker. In Phaedrus, for example, he not only reveals the higher and lower principles in the composition of the human soul: rational, affective (sensual) and volitional (lustful). The struggle of these principles seems to be his myth-making

fantasy in the form of a chariot driven by a pair of winged horses and controlled by a charioteer. Charioteer - mind; good horse - strong-willed impulse; bad horse - affect (passion). Plato likens the soul to the united power of a winged pair of horses and a charioteer. This is not a mere rhetorical comparison or cold allegory. This is a detailed picture of the myth, full of movement, brilliance, unexpected and plastically expressed fantasy. Its action is both semantic and linguistic, optical and musical, intellectual and emotional.

Philosophical thought permeates all of Plato's writings, including the most artistic ones. In the "Feast", in the "Phaedra" - masterpieces of Plato's art - important aspects of Plato's teachings about "ideas", about their knowledge, about beauty, about comprehending beauty, about inspired intellectual love for beauty, etc. are captured. literary heritage Plato, there are a number of works very important for understanding Plato's philosophy, his cosmology, his dialectics, but at the same time devoid of the merits of highly artistic things, such as Phaedo, Apology of Socrates, Feast and Phaedrus. Plato created not only brilliant, full of movement and dramatic power pictures of the ideological struggle that took place in Athens in the first half of the 4th century. BC e. At the same time, he wrote works in which, despite the external dialogical form, one should see scientific treatises rather than creations of poetry. These are samples of scientific prose. In them, only individual rare sparkles of language and humor are reminiscent of the author of "Protagoras" and "Phaedo-on". organizing start, driving force these dialogues are not art, not modeling, and not a dramatic clash of characters and ideas, but strict logic and dialectics. It is a workshop where they are tested, selected and created definitions concepts, where dichotomous divisions develop, the opposites hidden in them are explored, the dynamics of these opposites and their unity are revealed. Some of these dialogues belong to the most important and profound works of Plato. Such are "Parmenides", "Sophist" - the masterpieces of Plato's dialectic. Plato also has works of a mixed kind. In them, highly artistic parts alternate with dry prose treatises. Artistic myth accompanies or precedes strictly dialectical construction. Dialogues "Feast",

"Apology of Socrates", "Phaedo", "Phaedrus", "Protagoras", "Ion", "Crito", in which Plato the poet, Plato the artist, many generations of readers and literary scholars have long been rightly recognized as first-class works of ancient artistic literature.

In these dialogues, Plato paints the image of the philosopher Socrates. The Feast masterfully depicts the eccentricities of Socrates, selfless and selfless reflection aimed at finding the truth, crafty modesty, denying itself the claim to the possession of truth, intellectual self-control and indefatigability in a philosophical conversation that lasts all night. In the same dialogue - a brilliant speech by Aristophanes and a magnificent scene of the noisy appearance of a drunken Alcibiades at the symposium.

In the Apology of Socrates, Socrates' defense speech before the court of the Athenian slave-owning democracy is reproduced. Socrates is accused of denying the gods of the fathers, recognizing some new demonic signs, indulging in excessive research and corrupting youth.

In this short work, the fearless, unshakable, self-respecting Socrates not so much defends himself as attacks. His "apologia" is a powerful and merciless denunciation of ignorance that masquerades as knowledge, the bragging of people who only imagine that they know what they so self-confidently talk about and what they teach others so presumptuously. According to Socrates' guess, the Delphic oracle recognized him, Socrates, as the wisest of all people living today, not at all because he surpasses them in his knowledge, but because, being as ignorant as all others, unlike them understands that he is ignorant, and openly admits this, without self-delusion by his own wisdom. In this work, with remarkable power, the thinker's passion for the study of truth is depicted, not weakened by any threats, by any fear of execution and death. Socrates appears in the same way in Crito, where he puts his duty as a citizen and philosopher above his own life.

In the Phaedo, Socrates, sentenced to death, conducts the last - dying - conversation with his students in prison. Sadness, anxiety, confusion, regret of students parting with the teacher, is opposed

the benevolent and affectionate calm of the philosopher, his determination to die, to fulfill the duty of obedience to the laws of the fatherland, even when these laws are unjustly applied to the innocent of violating them. The farewell conversation turns into a statement of arguments that prove the immortality of the soul; condemned to drink a goblet of poison, Socrates consoles the disciples, supports them with strength of mind and hope. The dialogue ends with the scene of the philosopher's quiet death.

In "Phaedrus", one of the masterpieces of Plato's artistic prose, Socrates' philosophical conversation with Phaedrus, who brought Socrates a speech by the fashionable and brilliant orator Lysias, is drawn. The paradoxical speech of Lysias is devoted to the question of who should be given preference: the lover or the unloving. Socrates refutes false eloquence and proves that rhetoric can only be valuable if it is based on true philosophy. From a new perspective, the meaning of inspirational, captivating love is revealed. The image of love is associated with consideration of the nature of the soul.

One of Plato's best works is Protagoras. The paradoxical opinion of Vl. Solovyov, as if this dialogue is false, as if its author is not Plato, but Aristippus, a student of Socrates, who founded the Cyrenian philosophical school, is untenable and has not received any support in the specialized literature. Protagoras is valuable as a magnificent depiction of the mental atmosphere in Socrates' contemporary Athens. The passion for philosophical enlightenment, the thirst for philosophical novelties, the philosophical curiosity of the Athenian educated society, the love for philosophical disputes, for the philosophical struggle, the variety of philosophical opinions that clashed are depicted here with breathtaking realism. The images of Socrates, Protagoras, Prodicus, Hippias stand out prominently. For Plato, all of them are not carriers and authors of abstract ideas and theories, but living people with all their peculiar features of the mind and moral character. The philosophical dispute between them is not an alternation of declarations, but a genuine struggle for the souls of young people whom Socrates and the sophists seek to make their disciples and followers.

III. In all dialogues, the reader is presented with various facets of Plato's worldview, his ideas about dialectics, about knowledge. Therefore, it is easier to understand each dialogue separately for those who imagine what Plato's teaching as a whole is.

According to this doctrine, the world of things perceived through the senses is not the world of the truly existing: sensible things continually arise and perish, change and move, there is nothing solid, perfect and true in them. And yet things are not completely separated from what truly exists, they somehow "participate" in it. Namely: everything that is truly existing in them, says Plato, sensible things owe their causes. These causes are forms of things that are not perceived by the senses, comprehended only by the mind, incorporeal and insensible. Plato calls them species and, much less frequently, ideas. Types, ideas - forms of things visible to the mind. Each class of objects of the sensory world, for example, the class of horses, in the "incorporeal world" corresponds to a certain kind, or idea - a kind of horse, the idea of ​​\u200b\u200ba horse. This kind can no longer be comprehended by the senses, like an ordinary horse, but can only be contemplated mind moreover, a mind well prepared for such comprehension. Many of Plato's contemporaries did not understand that, according to Plato's teaching, only the mind can contemplate species, and therefore objected to the Platonic hypothesis of ideas. For example, the head of the Cynic school, Antisthenes, directly mocked Plato. “This horse in front of me,” was the meaning of his objection, “I see, but I don’t see the “idea” of a horse, “horseness”, “horseness”, about which you, Plato, repeat. Plato answered him, and the meaning of his objections was as follows: “Yes, you don’t see the “idea” of a horse, but this happens only because you want and hope to see it with ordinary eyes. I say that it can only be seen with the “eyes of the mind”, with the help of the “intuition of the mind”.

But why did Plato think that the idea is incorporeal, that it cannot be seen with the help of sensory vision? He thought so because the idea - general for all objects she embraces. There are many horses in the sensible world, but the idea of ​​a horse in the intelligible world is a certain integrity, and, as such integrity, it is only one. This idea is what anyone makes a sensually perceived horse just a horse, and nothing else. But what is common to many objects - so Plato thought - cannot be revealed by the senses. By its nature, it insubstantial, beyond in relation to everything sensible. It is accessible only to the mind.

Since Plato separated what is contemplated by the senses from what is contemplated by the mind, transferred “intelligible” objects to some “heavenly”, in his own words, area, then later the term “idea”, which originally meant only the form or cause of sensible things contemplated by the mind, became denote being perfect, insensible and even supersensible. The hypothesis of forms, or ideas comprehended by the mind, became the teaching of philosophical idealism.

At the same time, the train of thought of Plato was as follows. In relation to sensible things, their types (ideas) are at the same time their causes And samples, according to which these things were created, and goals, to which the beings of the sensible world aspire, and, finally, concepts about the general basis of the things of each class or rank. Only ideas, according to Plato, constitute the true being.

However, in order to explain observed phenomena and perceived things, it is not enough, as Plato thought, to assume the existence of species or ideas alone. For sensible things are transitory, changeable, devoid of true existence. Their qualities must already be conditioned not only by being, but in some way also by non-being. It follows that in addition to being, non-being must also exist, and, moreover, there must exist "no less" than being. Plato identifies this non-existence with matter. While being is always identical with itself, non-being is other compared with being, in other words - the area of ​​incessant change, emergence, birth and death, movement. Due to the existence of matter, or non-existence, there is, according to Plato's explanation, a multitude of sensible things. Matter, which Plato likens to “mother”, “nurse”, takes into its bosom a form (idea) and turns the unity and integrity of each species comprehended by the mind, each idea into a multitude of sensible things separated from each other in space.

This doctrine opposed atomistic materialism Leucippus and Democritus, who was an older contemporary of Plato. Even before Plato, atomists argued that non-being exists no less than being. But at the same time, they identified their being (forms, ideas) with atoms, considered them to be corporeal (although comprehended by the mind), and by non-existence they understood emptiness empty space in which atoms move.

On the contrary, Plato's being - incorporeal, non-mothersscarlet, kinds comprehended by the mind, and matter - non-existence. At the same time, for Plato, types (ideas) are more important than matter; the concept of non-being already assumes - as its condition - being: non-being is also being, but only being is different in relation to the given,

According to the view set forth in the Phaedrus, the seat of ideas is the "heavenly region." “... This area is occupied by a colorless, formless, intangible essence, truly existing, visible only to the helmsman of the soul - the mind ...” (“Phaedrus” 247 C).

Only the imperfection of our way of thinking, as Plato thinks, inspires us with the idea that ideas are in some kind of space - just as sensible things seem to us to be separate from each other and located in space. Such a view of the spatial localization of ideas is an illusion, and the source of this illusion, according to Plato, is matter, by which Plato understands a hardly probable kind of space comprehended by some kind of “illegal” reasoning, or the reason for the isolation, distance from each other of individual things of the sensible peace. Looking at this kind of space, we fall into an illusion: we are “as if we are dreaming and believe that everything that exists must inevitably be in some place and occupy some space, and that which is neither on earth nor in heaven, it’s as if it doesn’t exist” (“Timaeus” 25B).

But this view, according to Plato, is erroneous. It is precisely because of this erroneous view that we, says Plato, “even upon awakening cannot definitely express the truth, distinguishing all these and related ideas from non-dreaming, really existing nature” (ibid., 52 G).

Thus, only in an improper, and, moreover, in an extremely inaccurate, sense, definitions of space, time and number can be applied to the ideas of Plato. In the strict sense of the concept, Platonic ideas are completely transcendent, inexpressible in any images of sensory experience, in any categories of number, space and time.

The doctrine is obviously idealism, since in it the true essence of sensible things is declared to be causes that are devoid of sensible properties, not subject to sensual conditions, comprehended only by the mind - in a word, ideal. However, this is not subjective, but objective idealism. Types (ideas) of Plato first of all being, but not concepts our mind, and they exist on their own, regardless of the subject, from his consciousness and knowledge.

Plato contrasts the objective idealism he defends with contemporary materialism - the teachings of Democritus, whom Plato, however, does not mention anywhere by name, as well as the teachings of the Cynics, who, to Plato's indignation, argued that there is and can exist only that which allows the possibility of touching eebe, feeling, and which did not distinguish the body from its essence.

But Plato's objective idealism is not entirely consistent. Plato's teaching is multifaceted, complex and contradictory. It is a whole range of different points of view and their shades. Among them, objective idealism is the prevailing view, most characteristic of Plato, but not the only one. Dualism invades the objectively idealistic basis of Plato's system of views, the doctrine of opposites. souls And body. The body is considered, in agreement with the Orphics and the Pythagoreans, as a dungeon of the soul, and the soul is considered as an immortal entity of heavenly origin that has taken root in a bodily shell. Plato captured this brightly idealistic and even mystical view of the nature of the soul in two dialogues - in the Phaedrus and in the Phaedo. In the first of them, in the form of a myth, the otherworldly origin of the soul, its “winged” nature, the struggle of the rational beginning of the soul and the feelings controlled by this beginning with base beginnings, the instillation of fallen souls into a bodily form, their fall to Earth, their doom to redemptive reincarnations are drawn in the form of a myth. The Phaedo sets out the arguments by which Socrates tries to prove the immortal nature of the soul.

Plato's understanding of the nature of the soul is also connected with the myth of the nature of the soul. knowledge. Even under the burden of the body on Earth, far from the heavenly realm, the soul keeps true knowledge. This is a remembrance of the insensible being that she contemplated before her arrival on Earth and before her imprisonment in the body. The area of ​​ideas represents, according to Plato, a system similar to a pyramid: at the top of the pyramid, above knowledge and truth, in strength and dignity - above the limits of essence - there is an idea good. The mind, rising in knowledge to ideas, can hardly touch it. The idea of ​​the good, by its very nature, goes beyond the limits of mere cognition: it imparts to objects not only the ability to be recognizable, by and ability exist And get essence from it.

The doctrine of the idea of ​​good informs Plato's doctrine of being and of the world character teleological teachings, i.e., teachings about the expedient orientation of all phenomena and processes of the world. The good is declared not only the supreme cause being, but together purpose.

On the basis of his doctrine of being and non-being, Plato built his doctrine of sensory world. This world, according to Plato's thought, is the "middle" between the world of incorporeal species (ideas) and the world of non-existence, or matter, crushing the unity of ideas into many things separated from each other by space.

According to Plato, the things of the sensible world are not non-existence. They have something of being. But everything that in sensible things is from being, they owe not to matter, but to ideas - as their causes and models. On the other hand, if there were no matter, or non-existence, sensible things could not exist, because there are many sensible things, and the condition for the existence of many is matter. Since sensible things are the offspring of not only ideas, but also non-existence, they do not have true existence in this sense either. opposite ideas or views. Plato sharply characterizes this opposition. Ideas are eternal, do not arise and do not perish, are unchanging, identical to themselves, irrelevant, do not depend on the conditions of space and time. They belong to all the signs by which the predecessor of Plato, the Elean Parmenides, determined his - one, eternal, motionless - truly existing being.

On the contrary, the world of sensible things, as Plato understands it, is the world of Heraclitus: it is the world of eternal emergence and death, the world of “being”, and not being, the world of movement and variability that does not stop for a moment; in it all things and all properties are relative, transient, fluid, dependent on the conditions of space and time.

IV. Such is Plato's doctrine of being. From what has been said, it is clear that Plato presents being not as homogeneous. Being is "hierarchical", consists of various "layers", or "areas", of unequal value and unequal reality. The difference between these areas being corresponds and difference of genera knowledge. The highest kind of being - ideas - is knowledge through intuition, i.e., directly through genetic discretion. The intuition that Plato means here is not intuition. feelings and intuition mind. The senses see only imperfect sensible likenesses of ideas; the ideas themselves are seen only by the pure, prepared for this contemplation. them, to which contemplation is not mixed feelings.

The second, lower in comparison with ideas, kind of being - objects mathematical knowledge. Mathematical subjects are related to both ideas and sensible things. Like ideas, they are immutable, do not depend in their essence on the individual objects that represent them in the sensible world. They are comprehended by the mind, but not through intuition mind as ideas, but through reflections. But at the same time, mathematicians are forced to use, in developing their proofs, separate images of figures drawn with the help of imagination.

The third kind, or, more precisely, the third degree, realities are sensible things, an imperfect area of ​​eternal becoming, genesis and death. Sensible things cannot be the subject of certain knowledge, but only opinions.- Finally, the fourth - the lowest - kind of being - display sensible things, except for their reflection on the surface of shiny objects or on the surface of water. These reflections, or images, of things are comprehended through imagination.

According to Plato, neither opinion nor imagination gives true, reliable knowledge. Like sensible objects themselves, opinions are constantly changing. In order to rise to knowledge, opinions must be bound together in unity or identity. This connection is produced by the activity of the soul itself. The soul stores the memory of the truths that it contemplated in the realm of truly existing ideas - even before its fall to Earth and before its imprisonment in a body shell. There is knowledge and remembrance, And connection remembered truths. Due to the connection of all the knowledge potentially inherent in the soul and stored by it in the depths of memory, the soul, starting with any one link, can move on to all subsequent ones and thus embrace everything, so long as it does not get tired of research.

Thinking about mathematical subjects occupies the middle ground between true knowledge and opinion. Geometry belongs to the sciences that “seem to be dreaming about beings”: these sciences, according to Plato, cannot see things “in reality”, because, using assumptions (hypotheses), they leave their assumptions motionless and cannot give them a basis.

But there is a science which, in the right way, takes conjectures back to the very beginning. This science is dialectics. The doctrine of dialectics Plato expounded most fully in the dialogues "Parmenides" and "Sophist". The Phaedrus also gives an idea of ​​the Platonic understanding of dialectics.

Although in the doctrine of ideas, Plato, following the Eleatics, defined truly existing being as identical and unchanging, in the dialogues "Sophist" and "Parmenides" he proves that the highest kinds of beings, namely being, movement, rest, identity and change, can only be conceived in such a way that each of them both is and is not, and is equal to itself and not equal, and is identical to itself and passes into something else in relation to itself. At the same time, in the "Sophist" the doctrine of the five higher kinds of beings develops, and in the "Parmenides" - the doctrine of the one and many. Plato proves that being, insofar as it is considered by itself, is one, eternal, identical, unchanging, motionless, inactive and not subject to suffering. But the same being, insofar as it is considered through the other in relation to itself, contains difference, is changeable, mobile and subject to suffering. Therefore, according to the full definition, being must necessarily be characterized by opposite properties: it is one and many, eternal and transient, unchangeable and changeable, rests and does not rest, moves and does not move, acts and does not act, suffers and does not suffer.

However, opposite characteristics can, according to Plato, be combined only for opinion, that is, for the lowest type of knowledge. The mind discerns in what respect the object must be conceived as identical and in what - as different, in what - as one and in what - as multiple, etc. Therefore, unlike opinion, the mind does not perceive combining opposites in the same way.

And yet, the awareness of opposites in the objects studied is - as Plato claims - necessary condition for inducing the soul to reflection. The art of provoking inquiry and reflection by discovering the contradictions lurking in ordinary, too hastily formed opinions, is what Plato calls the art of dialectics. This art, the master and luminary of which Plato depicts Socrates, Plato likens to the art of a midwife. It does not find the truth by itself, but, by discovering contradictions in current opinions, it contributes, contributes to its search. This, so to speak, is a negative concept of dialectics, the doctrine of the identification of contradictions as a mere negative condition for finding truth.

However, along with this understanding of dialectics, Plato distinguishes another concept of dialectics. This is a positive method of cognition, leading from the conscious contradictions of imaginary and imperfect knowledge to the supreme comprehension of the truly existing. While geometry, using hypotheses, cannot give their foundations, dialectics gives these foundations, elevates hypotheses to their very beginning. Understood in this - new - sense (which, of course, is very far from modern), dialectics is characterized by Plato as a method of moving from given assumptions to their higher and higher grounds, until, finally, the investigating mind reaches the highest ground. - no longer assumed and not reducible to anything higher. This ascent of the mind is for Plato a movement that takes place only in the realm of thinking, estranged from everything sensible.

However, the insensible ascent along the steps of the mind to the unsupposed higher foundation is only the first half of the path. Having reached from assumption to assumption to the unintended beginning of everything that lies at the limit of comprehension, “touching” this beginning and adhering to what is in contact with it, the mind, according to Plato’s explanation, begins the second half of its journey. Namely, it again descends to the initial - lower - concepts. However, in this descent, he no longer touches anything sensible: he deals only with species, through species, for species, and ends with species.

In the dialogue "Phileb", the method of reverse movement, or descent from the concept taken before the study to lower concepts, is associated in Plato with the method checks assumptions or hypotheses. This verification consists in the fact that dialectics considers the consequences arising from accepted start, and examines whether they agree or disagree with each other.

However, to achieve the highest goal of knowledge - the direct contemplation of truly existing ideas - can only be chosen by a few, "the best", brought up in a special way and prepared for this contemplation. The "Philosopher" of Plato is not just a researcher of truth, going from ignorance to knowledge. This is an explorer belonging to a special social category or class, who knows where his ascent is heading and what can be expected from him. The "philosopher" of Plato is sure that the goal of his efforts is achievable, that the ideas of goodness, truth, beauty are truly existing realities. But these realities are only the pinnacle of reality. Plato's world is hierarchical. Such is not only being in him - such is he in the social sense. The contemplation of the truly existing is the lot of only the elect: those who are prepared, educated and, in this sense, the “best”. In the ideal society that Plato dreams about, these "best" are the rulers of the state, philosophers. They are sharply opposed to the "lower" class, and the entire hierarchy of the three "higher" classes - "philosophers" (rulers), "guardians" (warriors) and artisans - implies as a matter of course the basis of the class slaves producers of material products and performers of all works shameful for the "freeborn". In the "State" there is no speech about the function of slaves, but in his last dialogue - in the "Laws" - Plato characterizes it.

The vital, social and, at the same time, personal basis of Plato's idealism lies in the deep discrepancy between the Greek reality contemporary to Plato and the fact that would like find and see in it a philosopher. The hierarchy of classes that existed in Greek society and the way of social and political life did not satisfy Plato. The Athenian state was ruled by a slave-owning democracy, but by no means "philosophers" - in the Platonic sense of the term. Plato's attempt to persuade the Syracusan ruler Dionysius the Elder on the path of building a state approaching the Platonic ideal ended in complete failure - both under Dionysius himself and under his successor. After repeated failures, Plato was forced to abandon political activity and confine himself to an ideological struggle. The result of the transfer of the struggle to the realm of ideas was The State, a vast and maturely considered treatise in which the idealism of philosophy and the theory of knowledge is an inseparable whole with social utopia. Like any utopia, "States 0 * Plato is at the same time a transformation of reality in dreams in the direction desired by the philosopher, i.e., criticism of this reality, and - at the same time - reflection this very reality, reproduction the actual relations that exist in it. Plato's idealism is, as it were, a philosophical trial of the world, society, man and his art - a trial from the point of view of a writer who has experienced not only the collapse of his political, cultural, aesthetic ideals, but also observing the beginning of the decomposition of the socio-political order he hates - Athenian democracy. In this system, Plato saw - through the eyes of the enemy - some of its real shortcomings and subjected them to scathing criticism. Plato depicts in his dialogues (including in the "State") not only what is expected, but also what exists, reflects historically real social relations.

However, Plato is not only reproduces them, he idealizes them. WITH From this point of view, Plato's very idealism is a reflection of a certain feature, or facet, of reality. This is a mystified, exaggerated image of the sharp separation of mental labor from physical labor raised to the power of categories and forms of being itself. This separation followed from the social relations of the slave-owning society and was one of the remarkable phenomena in the life of the ancient policy.

In this society, a doctrine of the idea was bound to appear - if not Platonic, then close to it in meaning. In a society where physical bonded and hired labor was considered obscene for the "freeborn" and where the norm of behavior of the "freeborn" was not industriousness, but "leisure", that is, voluntary engagement in affairs corresponding to his position - military, political, economic, as well as the free use of leisure for intellectual creativity, science as its highest goal had a "theory" in the ancient sense of the word, that is, a contemplative and speculative comprehension of reality. Speculative nature in Greece of the classical period had even those sciences that, according to modern consciousness, are inherently directly related to experiment: physics and biology. The ancient Greeks were excellent observers in terms of accuracy, attention and ingenuity. In the field of astronomy, physics, and comparative anatomy, they left a number of the most valuable descriptions, measurements, and classifications to subsequent centuries. Based on observations and on their intellectual insight, they were also able to create amazing in depth, in anticipation of the truth and in a sense of reality. hypotheses. But the Greeks were much weaker in experiment. They were not yet able to create artificial technical conditions for the occurrence of observed phenomena - conditions under which the very physical environment and the deliberate, planned activity of the researcher provides an unambiguous, accurate and reliable answer to the question posed in the study. Therefore, not only their mathematics and astronomy, but also their physics and physiology are largely speculative, theoretical, contemplative. The Greeks were far from the view of Francis Bacon, who demanded from science that she be able to "torture" nature, that she be able to use force, and, moreover, under special conditions created by the researcher herself, to wrest secrets from her and force her to serve the interests and power of man.

For the same reason, in the concepts of the ancient Greeks about knowledge- not only in Socrates, as Plato portrayed him, but also among the Eleans, not only in Plato, but later in Aristotle's teaching on the higher axioms of science - the desire to reduce the basic concepts and axioms of science to principles and concepts that do not depend on the senses is extremely strong experience, having its ultimate foundation, as it were, in the nature of the mind itself.

These tendencies merged in Plato's philosophy into one channel and formed a single stream idealism. In the doctrine of the idea as a truly existing reality, in the doctrine of the philosopher as the true ruler of society, and in the doctrine of the mind as the supreme leader and ruler of the human soul, the worldview is brought to extreme expression, created not only by the deep disappointment of the thinker with modern reality disobedient to his mind. , but also reflected the separation of mental labor from physical labor, characteristic of modern Plato's society.

V. What has been said here about Plato characterizes the highest theoretical foundations of his philosophy: the doctrine of being and knowledge. On these foundations, Plato built the entire structure of his doctrine: the doctrine of the world, and the doctrine of man, and the doctrine of the state. On them he built his own aesthetics: own concept of wonderful and about art. Its concept is revealed in a number of Plato's dialogues. Its important features are revealed in the Feast and in the Phaedrus.

The difference between appearance and essence, between being and being, Plato extends to all subjects of study, including beautiful. In dialogues concerning the problem of the beautiful, he explains that he is not talking about the fact that only Seems beautiful, and not just that It happens beautiful, but that indeed there is beautiful; here the subject of study is beautiful in itself, essence beauty, independent of its temporary, relative, accidental and changeable manifestations. The posing of the question is clarified in the dialogue "Hippias the Greater". It depicts a dispute about beauty between Socrates, representing the point of view of Plato himself, and the sophist Hippias. The sophist is depicted as a person who does not understand the very essence of the Platonic formulation of the question. To the question put to him by Socrates, “what is beautiful?” Hippias naively answers, naming the first example of beauty that came to his mind. Beautiful is a beautiful girl, Hippias answers. But Socrates easily forces Hippias to admit that anyone who answers the question about the essence of the beautiful only "by simply pointing to this or that object of the sensible world, must understand that this object will certainly turn out to be not unconditionally beautiful, even not beautiful at all in comparison with what - any other object superior to it in the respect in which the first was recognized as beautiful.

In the course of the dialogue, it becomes clear that the question is not about relatively beautiful things, but about undoubtedly beauty, which alone imparts to individual things the quality of beauty. “I ask you,” Socrates explains to Hippias, “about that beauty that makes beautiful everything that it touches, both stone, and tree, and man, and deity, and every deed, and every knowledge” (Hip. B .292). We are talking about such a beautiful thing that “never, nowhere and no one could seem ugly”, about “what is beautiful for everyone and always” (ibid., 291 D; 291 E).

Beautiful - it turns out from what follows - there can be neither useful, neither suitable. The beautiful cannot be useful, since the useful is always useful in someor relation and, therefore, cannot be irrelative.

But beauty cannot be suitable. For what is appropriate is that which makes a thing only seem beautiful. But the beautiful that Plato has in mind is not merely apparent. Plato is looking for what is really beautiful. The subject of his research is beauty being, and not just a beautiful view. It is, teaches the Platonic Socrates Hippias, “about such a beautiful thing that makes something be beautiful - whether it will seem so or not” (ibid., 294 BC). And in the dialogue "Phaedo" Plato directly states: "I begin, assuming as a basis that there is beauty in itself, and good, and great, and everything else" ("Phaedo" 100B).

The nature of this beauty is revealed in the Philebus and the Phaedo. But Plato gave the most complete and vivid characterization of the "beautiful in itself" in "Feast". In this work, the definition of beauty is put into the mouth of the wise Mantinean woman Diotima, who instructs Socrates regarding the demon Eros, its origin and its properties.

Already in The Republic, Plato explained that only those who, through a long exercise, gradually prepared their mind for such contemplation, can contemplate truly existing ideas with the mind. For the unprepared, this contemplation would be blinding. The “Feast” depicts the contemplation of someone who has already undergone the necessary education: “Who, properly guided, has reached such a degree of knowledge of love, he ... will suddenly see something surprisingly beautiful in nature ...” (“Feast” 210 E). Such a contemplative of the beautiful will see “something, firstly, eternal, that is, knowing neither birth nor death, nor growth, nor impoverishment, and secondly, not in something beautiful, but in something ugly, not when -somewhere, somewhere, for someone and in comparison with something beautiful, and at another time, in another place, for another and in comparison with another ugly ”(ibid., 211 A). But this is not enough. The beautiful is not only unconditional and irrelevant. It is transcendent in relation to everything sensible, to everything separately existing or dependent on separately existing. “This beauty will appear to him not in the form of some face, hands or other part of the body, not in the form of some kind of speech or science, not in something else, be it an animal, earth, sky or something else .. .” (ibid., 211 AB).

These explanations give a number of important features of the Platonic concept of the beautiful: its objectivity, irrelevance, unconditionality, universality, independence from all particular objects, independence from all sensual properties. The Platonic beauty is the "view" or "idea" in the specifically Platonic philosophical sense concepts, i.e., truly existing, supersensible, irrelevant being, comprehended not by feelings, but only by reason alone. This beautiful is the supersensible cause and pattern of all beautiful sensible things, the unconditional source of their reality and of everything that is called beautiful in these things.

In this sense, the idea of ​​beauty is sharply opposed by Plato to its reflections and similarities in the world of sensible things. Sensual beautiful things - bodies, statues, buildings - are by their nature necessarily changeable and transient, there are many of them, there is nothing solid, stable and identical in them. The inevitable continuous variability of beautiful sensual things, their non-identity is emphasized in the Phaedo. In this dialogue, Socrates asks Cebeth: “What can you say about many beautiful objects: about people, horses, dresses, and others like that, or about equals, laudable and all of the same name? Do they exist equally, or do they not agree with themselves or with each other, and never, under any guise, one might say, remain the same? “Never remain the same,” agrees Kebet (Phaedo 78 E).

Against, idea beauty, that is, the truly existing beauty, beautiful in itself, is not subject to any change: this is the eternal form, always identical to itself. “Beautiful in itself, existing in itself,” asks Socrates, “since it exists, is it subject to any change? Or does each of the things that exist, homogeneous in itself, continue to be the same and in the same way, never being subject to any change? “It is necessary in the same way and in the same way, Socrates,” answers Kebet” (ibid., 78 D).

As an idea, the beautiful is an essence, not only sensuously imperceptible, but even devoid of a sensuously visible form and in this sense formless. Thus, the beautiful is not only understood as objectively existing, but at the same time it is proclaimed only intelligible beyond sensual contemplation. It is not the perception of the senses, not sensual contemplation, but the extrasensory intellectual vision of the beautiful (intellectual intuition) that is proclaimed to be the organ of aesthetic cognition.

From this justification of aesthetics, a number of difficulties and a number of new problems arose for Plato. The more Plato insisted on ideal - supersensible- the nature of beauty, the more difficult it was for him to explain how this supersensible beauty should be the subject of our human knowledge.

Having sharpened the opposition of both worlds - the intelligible, the supersensible and the perceived by the senses, Plato himself softens this opposite. Between the two worlds, he sees not only the opposite, but also the connection. The profound difference between the beautiful as an idea and all sensible things to which the definition of beautiful could be applied is not, however, a perfect separation of the two worlds. According to Plato, as already mentioned, the world of sensible things still stands in some relation to the world of ideas. Each thing of the sensible world is "participated" not only in matter, but at the same time in the idea: it is an imperfect, distorted reflection or semblance of an idea. The sensual world of Plato is the world becoming, in which things occupy a "middle" position between non-being and being.

But from this it followed that a person, as a being of the sensual world, can be closer to being or non-being - depending on which side of the soul - the mind or sensual desire - prevails in him. Involved in both worlds - being and non-being, a person can, depending on the direction and direction of his actions, either strengthen the side involved in being, rise to the true being, strengthen and strengthen the rational principle in himself, or sink and become heavier, yield to sensual desires, to suppress in oneself the beginning of the mind and truly rational knowledge.

This elevation, possible for man, to the truly existing is based, according to Plato's view, on the nature of the human soul - on its immortality, on its participation in the world of ideas, and also on the nature of the sensible world itself. “... Every human soul,” says Plato through the mouth of Socrates in the Phaedrus, “by its nature was a contemplator of the truly existing” (“Phaedrus” 249 E). Once upon a time, even before its incorporation into the earthly body shell, the soul was in "heavenly" places, which, according to

Plato, “none of the local poets has ever sung, and will never sing them properly” (ibid., 247 C). There, carried away by the circular movement of the sky, the soul during this revolution “contemplates justice itself, contemplates prudence, contemplates knowledge, not that knowledge, which is characteristic of the emergence, and not that which changes depending on the changes of what we now call being, but that is real knowledge, which is in true being.

And now, it turns out that once - in "heavenly" places - the knowledge acquired by the soul, according to Plato, can't die or be completely lost. It cannot perish even after the soul descends to Earth and takes on a shell here, “which we now call the body and cannot throw off like snails their house” (ibid., 247 DE; 250 C). Impressions, passions, desires of the sensory world only bury, like sand, the knowledge acquired forever by the soul, but cannot eradicate or destroy it. The soul always has the possibility of restoring the knowledge of the truly existing, acquired in the supersensible world. The means of this restoration is Plato's "recollection".

But although knowledge is inherent in the soul from the very beginning, this does not mean that the soul at all times possesses the truth in completely finished. In order for the potential possession of knowledge to turn into actual possession, it is necessary, according to Plato, a long and hard way education souls. But of all the possible ways of educating the soul, of approaching the actual possession of its inherent knowledge, one way is of particular advantage. This way is consistent contemplation beautiful.

Although, according to Plato, all things of the sensible world are involved in the world of truly existing, or ideas, but not all of them are involved in it. to the same extent. Of all the things that exist in the sensible world, only lovely things. With all the untruth of sensory impressions, however, there is one kind of them, which, according to Plato, is more than all others capable of inducing the soul to strive for the truly existing. This is the class beautiful sensual things.

In the Philebus dialogue, Plato even considers it possible to admit that some of the "unmixed" pleasures may be true. “Such are,” Socrates says in this dialogue, “the pleasures caused by beautiful colors, beautiful colors, very many smells, sounds, and everything in which the lack is not noticeable and is not associated with suffering” (“Phileb” 41 B).

The truly existing world of Plato is the world of beautiful plastic forms visible to the mind. And as a stage preparing for this contemplation, Plato has the sensual world - the world of forms perceived by the senses.

For those who are able to comprehend the image of the very existence through the sensual form, sensual beauty acts irresistibly and powerfully. Speaking in his dialogues about this action of hers, Plato, as it were, forgets about his own idealism and gives images of the mighty impressive power of beauty and art - images full of psychological realism.

In admiration for beauty, Plato sees the beginning of the growth of the soul. A person capable of admiring the beautiful, “at the sight of a divine face, an exact likeness of that beauty, or a perfect body, first trembles, seized with fear ... then he looks at him with reverence, as if he were a god” (“Phaedrus” 251 A).

Plato depicts the effect of beauty on the soul, developing the myth about the winged nature of the soul, like a bird, and about the “germination” of its wings when contemplating the beautiful (ibid., 251). The philosophical and - accordingly - the aesthetic meaning of the myth about the wing and about the amorous fury of the soul, developed by Plato in the Phaedrus, is revealed from a new side in the Feast. In this dialogue dedicated to the praise of the demon of love Eros, this demon appears as a mythical image of the middle position of a person - between being and non-existence, as well as a philosopher - between knowledge and ignorance.

The philosophical meaning of the myth of Eros is that love for the beautiful is no longer seen simply as a state of languor and fury, as it is depicted in the Phaedus, but as an ascent, as a movement of the knower from ignorance to knowledge, from non-existent to true -existing, from non-existence to being. In striving for the beautiful, Plato sees something much more than simple sensual attraction. If the sensible world - and in it man - oscillates between being and non-being and is the offspring of both of them, then love for the beautiful is an aspiration that can strengthen in a person that side with which he is involved in being. Plato understands love for the beautiful as the growth of the soul, as the approach of a person to the truly existing, as the ascent of the soul along the steps of an ever-increasing reality, an ever-growing being, as an increase in creative productive power.

There is love for beauty way, climb, for not all beautiful things are equally beautiful, and not all deserve equal love. At the initial stage of the "erotic" ascent, there appears some single beautiful body - one of the many bodies of the sensible world. But whoever chooses such a body as the object of his desire, must later see that the beauty of an individual person, no matter what body it may belong to, is akin to the beauty of every other. Whoever notices this should become a fan of all beautiful bodies in general.

At the next stage of the "erotic" ascent, preference must be given no longer to the bodily, but to spiritual beauty. preferring spiritual beauty no longer contemplates the beauty of the body, but “the beauty of daily affairs and customs” (“Feast” 210 C). From this contemplation, he is convinced that "everything beautiful is related", and "will consider the beauty of the body as something insignificant" (ibid.).

An even higher stage of the "erotic" ascent to the beautiful is formed by the comprehension of beauty. knowledge.

Finally, having strengthened himself in this kind of cognition, the philosopher, ascending the steps of the "erotic" ascent, reaches the contemplation beautiful in yourself or kind, idea of ​​beauty. At this limit of "erotic" knowledge, the eyes of the contemplator discover unconditional and irrelevant beauty, not dependent on the conditions of space and time, not depleting, identical to itself, unchanging, not arising and not dying.

Thus, the contemplation of true-existing beauty, as Plato understands it, can only come as a result of a long and difficult education or ascent of the soul along the steps of "erotic" initiation.

But although the contemplation of truly existing beauty can only be the result of a long and difficult preparation, at a certain moment and at a certain stage of preparation this contemplation opens straightaway, comes like sudden discretion supersensible true-existing beauty. Diotima directly tells Socrates that the perception of the idea of ​​beauty, or that for which all previous labors were accomplished, is like a sudden illumination of the mind by a kind of beauty (ibid., 210 B).

All of the above is given by Plato in the form of a myth. If we express the meaning of this doctrine in terms of philosophy i.ger- rii of knowledge, then it means that the truly existing beauty is seen intuition.

This intuition is not intuition feelings and the intuition of the mind, otherwise - the contemplation of the beautiful with the mind alone, without the auxiliary means of sensuality and imagination. Both in being and in cognition, the beautiful is declared by Plato to be an essence transcendent sensual world, - ideal, comprehended only by the mind. !

VI. So far, we have only discussed the idea beautiful and of the relation of this idea to its sensible counterparts in nature and in man. But among the things called beautiful, there are not only beautiful bodies and souls People. Works are also called beautiful art. Aesthetics is not only a philosophy of beauty, but also philosophy, or art theory. This is how the subject of aesthetics was understood and is understood in modern times. Moreover, starting with Kant and Hegel, the idealistic aesthetics of modern times completely reduced the aesthetic problem to the problem of beauty in art.

Plato put the question quite differently. His aesthetics is least of all a "philosophy of art." The transcendent nature of Platonic idealism, the opposition of the idea to phenomena, the truly existing (but transcendent in relation to everything sensual) to the non-existent, the real to the apparent, fundamentally ruled out the possibility of a high appreciation of art, deeply rooted in the world of sensual nature. Moreover, these features excluded the possibility of a view according to which the subject of aesthetics is art. Aesthetics of Plato - mythologized ontology beauty, that is, the doctrine of the being of beauty, and not the philosophy of art. By virtue of the initial premises of the teachings of Plato, the beautiful is taken out in him beyond the boundaries of art, placed high above art - in the realm of being beyond the world, barely discernible by the thought of a person, as long as he remains a sensual person.

But the inconsistency of Plato's worldview also affected the issue of art. The reasons rooted in the social life of contemporary Greek society, and many of his personal properties, caused Plato's attention to the question of art.

In the political and cultural life of Greece, in the system of education of the free class of ancient society, the role of art, its impact on the formation of people's worldview was so great, so tangible and obvious that not a single publicist, not a single thinker who discussed the burning issues of our time could not ignore the problem of art, that is, the question of which art, on what part society, with what degree hobbies, with what results, forms the structure of their feelings and thoughts, influences their behavior.

But Plato also had a special - personal - reason to put art in the field of his attention, to make it one of the important problems of his philosophy. Plato was himself a first-class artist, a brilliant prose writer, a master of dialogic form, a most knowledgeable connoisseur of all art. As a result of his artistic talent and aesthetic erudition, Plato, more than anyone else of his contemporary philosophers, was able to raise the question of the socio-political significance of art in a society such as ancient Greek, and especially Athenian. Let from the point of view of Plato's idealistic theory of being, art, rooted in the sensual world, seemed to be something insignificant, and its images - far from true reality and unworthy of philosophical analysis. But from the point of view of the social theory of education, it grew to the size of a major, and, moreover, topical problem. In contemporary art, Plato saw one of the means by which Athenian democracy brought up a type of person. In this type, Plato could by no means recognize his ideal. At the same time, the idea of ​​the educational role of art raised a question of essential importance for Plato. Plato's aesthetics had to move from the doctrine of beauty as an "idea" to the doctrine of art. It was supposed to raise the question of creativity, of a work of art, of the relation of images of art to reality, and of its social - educational - effect on the citizens of the policy.

Some of these questions Plato considers in one of his most mature works - in "State >>. Plato's view of the images of art is determined by the idealism of his worldview. If sensually perceived things are imperfect and distorted reflections of truly existing ideas, then the images of art, according to Plato, are even less perfect. They are reflections of reflections, shadows of shadows, imitation of imitation. In art, therefore, there is no truth. Artists only imagine that they know what they depict in their works: the actions of heroes, commanders, generals, gods. And yet the action of art is powerful. Works of art do not and cannot give true knowledge, but act on feelings and behavior. Musical modes can, for example, instill self-control, courage, discipline in young people or relax these qualities that are necessary for them. Therefore, the state must exercise strict control over the educational action of art: prohibit harmful art and allow only that which is consistent with the tasks of education. Discussing these issues in the "State", Plato outlines the classification of the genres of poetry, defines the signs of epic, lyrical and dramatic poetry. These studies paved the way for the classification of genres, which was developed by Aristotle from other than Plato's philosophical and aesthetic positions.

In Iona, we are talking about two main types of creativity: the creativity of an artist who creates a work of art for the first time, and the creativity performing artist, conveying the idea to the audience and listeners so that the work is imprinted in them. Plato occupies, firstly, the question of the source of primary creativity that generates the work, and secondly, the question of the possibility deliberate And conscious learning creativity. This last question leads to the question of the rational or irrational nature of artistic creation.

Already sophistical enlightenment put forward as one of the central problems the problem of learning. The lifeblood of sophistry in the 5th c. form the diverse needs generated by the evolving judicial and political institutions of the city-state. New forms of class political struggle—the broad development of property disputes and claims, struggle in the courts, the raising of political issues that agitated society in the people’s assembly, the practice of constant denunciations and accusations directed against political opponents and carried out through democratic political institutions—brought to life the flourishing of the judiciary and political eloquence. At the same time, these phenomena raised questions of political education and training with hitherto unknown acuteness. A public teacher of eloquence, a mentor in political, and not only in political sciences alone, is one of the most characteristic and most noticeable figures of a democratic Greek city already in the 5th century. Initially, this phenomenon arose in the Greek cities of Sicily and Southern Italy, which advanced along the path of democratization. But little time has passed since the emergence of the Sicilian schools of rhetoric, and now Athens is becoming a place of activity for new teachers. The new art is promoted in spectacular competitions, in paradoxical disputes, through demonstrative reports and lectures, in paid courses opened by the newly-minted mentors of political skill and all kinds of other wisdom.

The theoretical and pedagogical premise of sophistical practice was the idea that teaching new political knowledge and skills not only Maybe, but also necessary. Not only in advertising, in the bragging of disciples, which some sophists practiced - for which they were ridiculed and indignant by conservative and skeptical contemporaries - but also in the serious speeches of the most gifted and thoughtful of them breathes true confidence in the ability to teach others. , in the ability to convey to students the basics of their skill and art. In the images of the sophists, distorted by partiality or tendentiousness, inscribed by the hand of their political and ideological opponents, a careful look reveals the features of a serious and quite sincere enthusiasm for pedagogical activity. Such people as Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias not only knew a lot and were able to do a lot. They could not act if they were not convinced that the art that was their gift could be communicated to others through rational, learnable and mastery methods.

The Sophists' belief in the possibility of teaching political art extended to art artists. There were many elements of artistry, artistic action and charm in sophistry. The Sophist captivated listeners and students not only with the art of his logical conclusions, but no less with the art of capturing them - in speech, in the word. The original connection between sophistry and rhetoric easily led to the fact that the premise of the possibility of learning political art could be turned into a premise of the possibility of learning artistic skill.

In Plato's Protagoras, the famous sophist directly states that “for a person who is at least somewhat educated, it is very important to know a lot about poetry - this means understanding what the poets said, judging what is right in their creations and what is not, and being able to disassemble and give it an explanation, if anyone asks” (Prot. 338 E - 339 A). But the antagonist Protagoras Socrates admits that military and political prowess are inextricably linked with skill in the art of the word.

But if the art of eloquence is so closely connected with the mastery of the artistic word, then the question of the possibility learning art acquired great importance, moreover, not only theoretical, but also practical. In Plato's eyes, this question concerned the very foundations of the social and political structure of society.

Recognition of the possibility of teaching art, artistic skill, meant for Plato the reduction of art to the degree specialties, professions, crafts. This recognition, in other words, led to the assertion of the well-known aesthetic democracy.

But this conclusion seemed to Plato unacceptable and unacceptable in the society that the philosopher would like to see instead of the society that existed in reality. Plato's political views legitimized the sharpest, most carefully regulated division of labor for the lower classes, but all the more strongly excluded any craft specialization for the "freeborn" who belonged to the upper class.

In the same Protagora, Socrates, trying to find out the motives for which Hippocrates wants to study with Protagoras, who arrived in Athens, justifies Hippocrates' intention with only one thing: Hippocrates assumes, as Socrates guesses, that studying with the famous foreign sophist will be not professional. Rather, it will be like learning from a cytharist, or a literacy teacher, or from someone who teaches wrestling. “After all, for each of these cases,” says Socrates, “you did not study as a profession in order to become an artisan, but as an exercise, as befits an independent inhabitant and a free person” (ibid., 312B).

According to Plato, teaching the art to a “freeborn” person is possible and permissible only for the purposes of enlightened dilettantism and in detail, not exceeding what is required by a connoisseur belonging to the free class in order to express a competent and authoritative judgment.

It is characteristic that, at the same time, Plato does not at all deny the existence of professional training in art, or even the actual possibility of such training for people of the lower classes. He only denies the usefulness and expediency of such training for people. free. Plato seeks to emphasize and preserve the line separating free people from people attached - by virtue of their lower social position - to one or another profession. And since he is inclined to see the advantage of the “best” in enjoying works of art, he strives to expel professional art training from the system of education of these “best”, i.e. free. This view is common to the theorists of the slave-owning class of ancient Greece. Subsequently, following Plato, it will be developed in the VIII book of his "Politics" by Aristotle.

But Plato is not only a utopian, teacher and publicist of the slave class. Besides, and above all, he philosopher. Directed against the sophists and inspired by the class point of view, the doctrine of the inadmissibility of vocational training of free citizens in the arts, Plato wants to justify how the doctrine philosophical. It must be derived from the higher premises of the doctrine of being and knowledge; the theory of creativity must be developed from the transcendent principles of the theory of ideas.

This task of philosophical substantiation of the theory of creativity was carried out by Plato in the dialogues "Ion" and "Phaedrus".

The famous rhapsodist, performer of Homer's poems, Ion, is shown in the dialogue of the same name as a representative of the understanding of artistic creativity that is widespread in wide circles. According to this understanding, creativity - both the primary creativity of the artist-poet, and the art of performing his works - is a kind of knowledge, or conscious skill, passed on to others through learning. In Jonah, it is mainly about the art of performance. Rhapsod Ion sees in himself not just a performer, but at the same time knowing and understanding interpreter the arts of Homer, an expert in all the occupations and arts of which Homer speaks and which are portrayed on a par with Homer and other poets.

Against this personal conceit, which at the same time represents a theoretical conviction, Plato puts forward arguments drawn from the facts of artistic specialization. Under the blows of the dialectic of Socrates, the rhapsodist is forced to confess that of all the poets he knows well, in fact, only Homer. If, argues Socrates, the creativity of the artist and performer were identical with knowledge and was conditioned learning, then, given the essential integrity and unity of all the arts (an integrity recognized in full by Ion), the ability of an artist to make a competent judgment about art would not be conditioned by specialization and would not be limited by anything. “Have you seen,” asks Socrates, “at least someone who would be in the part of Polygnotus, the son of Aglaofontos, strong to show that he writes well and what he doesn’t, but with respect to other painters he could not” (“Ion » 533 A).

Summarizing this reasoning, Socrates easily forces Ion to agree that neither in playing the flute or on the cithara, nor in the art of rhapsody "can one ever find such a person who would be able to talk about Olympus, or about Famira, or Orpheus, or about Phemius, the Ithacaian rhapsode, but regarding Jon of Ephesus, he would be perplexed and could not say anything about what he sings well and what he does not ”(ibid., 533 BC).

However, the facts seem to contradict the persuasiveness of Socrates' reasoning. Without objecting to Socrates's argument on the merits, Ion counterposes to him the data of his own experience: only about Homer can he speak well and with ease.

So, through the mouths of Socrates and Ion, Plato formulates and puts a contradiction to be resolved. Or creativity is based on rational knowledge, understanding, clarity of conscious interpretation - and then the creativity of artistic interpretation cannot be limited by the framework of specialization: then the artist, easily oriented in any one form or issue of his art, must also orient himself in all others. Or, the ability of the artist in a confident orientation is limited to one special area - and then it is obvious that the basis of creativity is not the clear light of intellectual understanding common to all, not knowledge, not learning, but something else that does not depend on either understanding or understanding. from knowledge, not from learning.

It is quite obvious that the contradiction of creativity - in the form in which Plato formulated it - imaginary. IN Based on this contradiction, it is easy to detect a confusion of concepts. Plato clearly replaces the issue under discussion with another. concept creativity he replaces the concept of the artist's ability to critical judgment about art. Plato pretends to ask? creativity, but in fact he is asking about something else. He asks how a person who has matured to the ability to judge, evaluate and judge in relation to one artist or one work of art, can be deprived of this ability in another case, in relation to another artist or other work of art. Substituting, thus, the ability to judge creativity in place of creativity, Plato could easily present it as an absurd idea about the rational and educable nature of the creative act. He opposes the opinion he refutes about the rational nature of creativity, referring to everyday observation, the professional limitations of the performer. Thus, the character of artistic creation, which was comprehended and open to learning, was rejected. Developing this idea, it was possible to imagine creativity already in the form of some inspiration, going beyond the limits of ordinary skill, not based on experience and training, and the source of this influx is attributed to powerful higher forces external to man.

To all this, Plato added an argument pointing to the difference between artistic creativity in the proper sense and related technical knowledge and skills. Very often, as Plato thinks, creativity is confused with a certain technical or formal dexterity, which is one from the conditions of creativity, but not yet forming creativity itself. It is on this confusion that, according to Plato, the erroneous idea of ​​the possibility learning creativity. Here, the possibility of learning certain technical actions is mistaken for the possibility of learning the art itself - as creativity.

Plato establishes this distinction in the Phaedrus. “If someone came to Sophocles and Euripides,” Plato argues, “and began to tell them that he can compose very long tragic dialogues on insignificant plots and very short ones on important plots and, at will, can write dialogues in a pitiful tone and vice versa , in a terrifying and formidable tone, and everything of the same kind, and believes, teaching this, to pass on to others the art of composing tragedies ”(Phaedrus 268 C), then, according to Plato, Sophocles and Euripides would have acted like this with such a person , as a musician would do if he met a person who considers himself an expert in harmony only on the basis that he knows how to tune a string to the highest or lowest tone. “My dearest,” such a master of music would say, “of course, and this is necessary for a person who is going to become a connoisseur of harmony, but it is quite possible that a person who adheres to your way of thinking does not understand harmony a bit; you have the necessary preparatory information on harmony; but by no means knowledge of harmony” (ibid., 268 E).

But not otherwise than this musician would answer, according to Plato, Sophocles: “And Sophocles would say that he who claims to be an expert in preliminary information regarding tragedy possesses precisely this information, but does not yet know the art of composing tragedies” (ibid., 268 DE; 269 A).

However, rejecting the idea of ​​a rationally cognizable basis for the creative act, Plato did not want to be content with just negative result. If the source of creativity cannot be the knowledge, understanding and study communicated to others, then what is creativity? And how can the still undetermined cause of creativity be the basis of the already established fact of artistic specialization, that is, of that special giftedness, which, opening before the artist one area of ​​art, as if blocking his way to all the rest?

Apparently, with the aim of once and for all to exclude from the artistic education of "free-born" citizens any professional training in art, Plato developed in "Jonah" mystical theory of art. Not embarrassed by the fact that his theory of creativity entered into a certain contradiction with his own doctrine of the rational cognition of ideas, Plato proclaimed the act of artistic creation an act illogical. Plato recognized the source and cause of creativity in art obsession, special kind inspiration, communicated to the artist by the highest and by nature not accessible to either appeal or any conscious influence of divine forces. “Not by virtue of art,” Socrates teaches Jonah, “and not by virtue of knowledge, you say what you say about Homer, but by virtue of God’s will and obsession” (“Ion” 536 C). And elsewhere in the same dialogue, Socrates says that all epic poets do not act through art, but “being divinely inspired? possessed, they produce all these beautiful creations, and good songwriters in the same way” (ibid., 533 E).

Plato strongly emphasizes illogical the essence of artistic inspiration, a state of special insanity, heightened emotional energy, when the ordinary mind goes out and alogical forces dominate the human mind: when they are seized by harmony and rhythm, they become bacchantes and obsessed; Bacchantes, in a moment of possession, draw honey and milk from rivers, but in their right mind they do not scoop, and the same happens with the soul of meli poets, as they themselves testify.

The poets say that they fly like bees and bring us their songs collected from honey-bearing springs in the gardens and groves of the Muses. And they tell the truth: a poet is a light, winged and sacred being; he can create no earlier than he becomes inspired and frenzied and there is no more reason in him; and as long as a person has this property, no one is able to create and broadcast” (ibid., 534 AB).

As in his refutation of the rational nature of the creative act, so in explaining the doctrine of possession as the source and condition of creativity, Plato creates only the appearance of persuasiveness. As in the first case, it relies on the substitution of one concept for another. Through the mouth of Socrates, Plato undertook to prove that creativity is an illogical act of possession. In reality, however, he proves something completely different: not the irrational nature of creativity, but the necessity empathy for the performing artist, the need for "objectification", "co-present" fantasy, endowing the images of fiction with life, reality. To the question, important for art and for the theory of creativity, about the essence of artistic “reincarnation” into the depicted, or “feeling”, Plato answers with an unrelated statement that the creative act is an act of illogical “obsession”. It is in this direction that the question that Socrates asks Jonah is directed: “Every time, how do you manage to perform the epic and you especially amaze the audience when you sing, how Odysseus jumps on the threshold, opening up to suitors, and pours arrows under his feet, or how Achilles rushed on Hector, or something pitiful about Andromache, about Hecub or about Priam - whether in your mind then or outside yourself, so that your soul, in a burst of inspiration, seems that it is also where the events of which you speak are taking place - in Ithaca, in Troy, or anywhere else?" ("Ion" 535 BC).

The confusion of completely different concepts - artistic truth in the image and illogical obsession, "co-present" imagination and frenzied inspiration - in one obscure and unexplained concept - "to be outside oneself" - comes out especially sharply at the point in the dialogue where Plato tries to prove that the enthusiasm of the imagination by the “empathetic” scenes that he reproduces with his art, from the point of view of common realistic sense, should appear as something completely illogical and even not without comicality. “So, Ion,” Socrates pesters his interlocutor, “should we say that the person who, dressed in colorful clothes and wearing a golden crown, begins to cry in the midst of sacrifices and festivities, without losing anything from his attire, is in his right mind? , or will he feel fear, being among more than twenty thousand friendly people, when no one robs or offends him? (ibid., 535 D).

Thus, in the ability of works of art to act on people, to "infect" them with those feelings and affects that are captured in the work by the author and transmitted to the public by the performer, Plato sees the basis for the assertion that the artistic act is irrational, and its source is the action of otherworldly divine forces.

As is usually the case, the philosopher's idealistic delusion is not just an absurd fiction, but has its own epistemological root. Such a root for Plato turned out to be the actual duality of the act of performance, the combination of opposites in it. On the one hand, the performer conveys to his listener, the viewer, the image and intention of the author. In this sense, he is a performer copyright will, transmitter copyright visions of life. But on the other hand, to convey this vision, to bring to the consciousness of the public the author's will, the performer can only With with the help of the funds provided to him personal understanding and interpretation personal passion and personal excitement. Their direction and result can never ei literally coincide with the vision of the world of the author, e his emotional mood, with his volitional orientation. Therefore, any performance is always interpretation, not may not be an interpretation. The identity of the author's work and the performance transmission is impossible.

In this unity of opposites, which forms the living fabric of the performer's creativity, Plato put forward and emphasized only one side: the complete passivity of the performer, his lack of will, the rejection of his own activity, the extinction of his own mind, the self-giving of the artist-performer to the dictates of someone else's and higher will. Plato proclaimed the obedience of the performer to the illogical influx as a condition for the fidelity of the transmission.

One of the arguments in favor of his theory, Plato considered that this theory, as it seemed to him, explained the phenomenon of specific artistic talent, extremely mysterious in the eyes of most people. If, as Plato thinks, the source of creativity outside of the artist's intellect, and creativity itself is only a kind of illogical obsession, then the reasons why one artist turns out to be a master in one kind of art, and another in another, are least of all to be sought in some special qualities of giftedness, fantasy, feeling, mind or in development of all these qualities. It is not training, not the will to perfection or to mastery, that makes a man an artist, but only the incomprehensible choice of divine power that has settled on him. This choice does not change either the mind or the character of a person, but only temporarily endows him with artistic power, and, moreover, always only in one, strictly defined respect. That is why it seems understandable why an artist, remarkable in one area of ​​art, turns out to be completely insignificant and weak in another. “You owns,” Socrates Jonah teaches, “Homer. When someone sings the works of another poet, you sleep and do not find what to say, but when the song of this poet of yours is sung, you immediately wake up, your soul dances, and you do not at all find it difficult what to say. After all, what you say about Homer is not from skill and knowledge, but from divine determination and obsession; just as the Corybants sensitively listen only to the melody emanating from the god they are obsessed with, and for this melody they have enough body movements and words, but they don’t even think about others, so you, Ion, when someone remembers Homer, you know what to say, but in other poets you find it difficult. And the reason why you ask me why you know about Homer, but not about the rest - the reason here is that not by training, but by divine determination, you are a skillful praiser of Homer ”(“ Ion ”536 BD). Since poets create not by virtue of art, but by virtue of obsession, then everyone is able to create well only what the muse excites him to: “one is praises, another is laudatory songs, that is dance, this is epics, and one is iambic , and in other genera, each of them is bad ”(ibid., 534 BC).

Plato considered the poetic fate of Tinnich the Chalcidian to be a convincing confirmation of his thought. According to Plato, this poet “never produced any other poem worth mentioning, except for that paean that everyone sings, almost the most beautiful of all songs and, as he himself says, a find of muses. Here, it seems to me, - adds Plato, - God showed us most of all, so that we would not doubt that they do not have a human property and those beautiful creations do not come from people, but divine and from the gods, poets are nothing more than , like interpreters of the gods, obsessed with whoever is in power. To show this, God deliberately sang the most beautiful song through the worst poet” (ibid., 534 E - 535 A).

One of important differences the doctrine of possession, as it is presented in the Phaedrus, is that the theory of possession is clearly connected here with the central teaching of Platonic idealism - with the theory of ideas. aesthetic obsession is considered here as a path leading from the imperfections of the sensible world to the perfection of the truly existing being. According to Plato's thought, a person who is receptive to beauty belongs to that small number of people who, unlike the majority, who have forgotten the world of true being that they once contemplated, keep memories of it.

Three the thoughts contained in Plato's teaching about creativity as an obsession were repeated and reproduced by idealist aesthetics of subsequent times: about the supersensible source of creativity, about the illogical nature of artistic inspiration, and that the basis of aesthetic talent is not so much in a positive specific talent, in the features of intellectual and emotional organization of the artist, how much in a purely negative condition, in his ability to switch off from " practical attitude to reality, in the absence of practical interest.

This idea appears most clearly in the Phaedrus: this dialogue develops the thesis of alogical obsession, of inspired fury, bestowed from above, as the basis of creativity. The concept of "obsession" and "fury" extends to the ability to art. “Inspiration and fury emanating from the Muses, embracing a tender and pure soul, awakens it and brings it into a Bacchic state, which is poured out in songs and in all other creativity, adorns the countless deeds of antiquity and educates offspring. Who, - Plato continues, - approaches the gates of poetry without the frenzy sent by the Muses, being convinced that he will become a suitable poet only thanks to craft training, he is an imperfect poet, and the creativity of such a sane poet is overshadowed by the creativity of a frenzied poet ”(Phaedrus 244 E -245 A).

The theory of creativity developed by Plato and untenable in its illogical content is undoubtedly connected with Plato's socio-political worldview. The activity of higher art is separated by Plato from handicraft art, from training, from rational methods of thinking and artistic action. Art thus ascends to a higher sphere, and the artist becomes higher on the social ladder than a professional master, who rather belongs to the class, or category, of artisans. The ability for artistic intuition turns into a sign that determines the place of the artist in the social hierarchy. The art of artisans is recognized and preserved, but is assessed as "imperfect", as the lowest kind of art.

As in any major construction of idealistic thought, in Plato's theory a dash or edge of truth can be singled out. Only this dash is immensely exaggerated by Plato, blown up into a kind of mystical absolute.

The edge of truth lies in the correctly noted “contagious effect of art, in its amazing ability to capture people, to master their feelings, thoughts and will with the power of an almost irresistible forced suggestion. Plato's exaggeration is obvious. The dialectic of artistic perception is always a unity states w action, not only passive and unconscious subordination artist, but meaningful act of understanding, interpretation, judgment, approval or bewilderment, acceptance or rejection. In this dialectic, Plato single-sidedly singled out and illuminated only one - passive - side of the act of perception. But he illuminated it brilliantly, with his inherent philosophical force and insight, with amazing artistic relief. In Jonah and in Phaedra, vivid images are given of the captivating and inspiring (“suggestive”) power of works of great art. With all the features of individual types of art, with all the difference between the work of the author, performer and viewer or listener, art, Plato argues, in general united. Its unity lies in the power of artistic suggestion, in the irresistibility of imprinting. This force unites all people involved in art and all special types of art into an integral and essentially single phenomenon. In Iona, the captivating power of art is likened to the ability of a magnet to communicate the magnetic property of attraction not only to iron objects immediately close to it, but, through them, to distant bodies. “To talk well about Homer,” Socrates Jonah teaches, “this is not an art with you, as I just spoke about, but a divine power that moves you, as in that stone that Euripides called a magnet, and the people call Heracles. The fact is, Socrates further explains, that this same stone not only pulls the iron rings, but also puts force into the rings so that they can do the same thing as the stone: pull other rings, so that sometimes a large chain of iron hangs. iron rings pulling each other, so that their strength depends on that stone. It is the same with the Muse - she herself makes people inspired by God, and through these inspired ones a chain of other enthusiastic ones is hung ”(“ Ion ”533 DE).

The reduction of creativity to “obsession” and to hypnotic impressionability erased the boundaries between the creativity of the artist, the creativity of the performer (actor, rhapsodist, musician) and the creativity of the viewer, listener, reader: both the artist, the performer, and the viewer equally “admire” the muse, as it was understood in the original sense of the word "rapture", meaning "abduction", "capture". At the same time, specific differences between the work of the author, the intermediary performer and the recipient of the work were ignored. On the other hand, the idea was emphasized of the essential unity of creativity - understood as susceptibility to artistic suggestions or impressions.

In Plato's aesthetics, the idea of ​​the captivating power of art is inextricably linked with the hypothesis of a transcendent source of creativity, with the theory of ideas. Not all subsequent idealists considered this connection necessary and true. Some of them abandoned the idea of ​​a superhuman, otherworldly source of creative inspiration. But, rejecting the transcendent, otherworldly premise of Platonism, they reproduced Plato's thoughts about contagious inspiring effect of art. In the aesthetics of, for example, Leo Tolstoy, we will not find the Platonic metaphysics of ideas, but we will find in it an idea reminiscent of Plato, according to which the main property and main sign of true art is the ability of its works to capture, or, in Tolstoy's terminology, "infect" people. feelings embedded in these works. And in the same way, in the sociological aesthetics of J. M. Guyot, who was influenced by Plato, the Platonic assimilation of the action of art to the power of a magnet turned into the idea of ​​social sympathy, or "moral induction" achieved by the means of art. Like Plato, like Tolstoy, Guyot's attention in the phenomena of art is attracted primarily by that side, as a result of which a person experiencing the action of art becomes infected with this action and submits to the force of emotional suggestion emanating from it.

The second idea of ​​the Platonic theory of creativity, which undoubtedly reflects, albeit with an idealistic perversion and exaggeration, the real feature of artistic practice, is the idea inspiration, as a necessary condition for creative action. In the aesthetics of Plato himself, inspiration is incorrectly and one-sidedly characterized as a state of unconscious and illogical efficiency, unaware of its own foundations and its own nature, taking possession of a person not through the mind, but through feeling. This illogical characterization of inspiration as an ecstatic state bordering on frenzy was reinforced and developed by the Neoplatonists.

However, in itself the idea of ​​inspiration as one of the conditions for creativity is not connected by any necessity with an illogical interpretation of the creative act. With the release of the doctrine of inspiration from the illogical foundations on which it arose in Plato in the image of a lover, in the image of creative languor and creative passion, a completely real observation could be revealed as their true real basis. This observation, this “line” of truth, unduly inflated by the idealist and mystic Plato, is the extreme concentration discovered by him, the reduction to one point of all the forces of the mind, imagination, memory, feeling and will that characterize every true act of great art.

Plato, without suspecting it himself, showed, despite all the delusions of his teaching about ideas and about the "demonic" source of creativity, that in art no real accomplishment is possible without the complete dedication of the artist, without his ability to devote himself wholeheartedly to the task he set himself, without inspiration in their work, reaching to complete self-forgetfulness. In an artistic act, Plato revealed not only the concentration of vision, but also that extreme intensity of animation, the tension of spiritual forces, without which the images of art will not have their effect, leaving the audience of spectators and listeners indifferent and cold. In this discovery lies the real meaning of the Platonic doctrine of inspiration.

But taken in this sense, the concept of "inspiration" has very little in common with Plato's illogical mysticism. The real concept of artistic inspiration leaves all rights to reason, to intellect, to consciousness. It excludes the idea of ​​a supersensible, otherworldly origin of the inspiration so necessary for the artist. It is that "disposition of the soul to the living perception of impressions" and to the "consideration of concepts", in which A. S. Pushkin saw the clear, rational and real essence of poetic inspiration.

Plan:

Introductionpage 1-4

Plato's speech against the poetspage 4-12

Defense of poets by Aristotlepp. 12-18

Conclusionpage 19

Bibliographypage 20

Introduction

In the political and cultural life of Greece, the role of art was so great and obvious that the whole system of education of the ruling class of ancient society was based on it. Plato and Aristotle, who discussed in such detail all the burning issues of our time, of course, could not ignore the question of what kind of art, on what part of society, how and with what result it acts, how it forms the feelings and thoughts of people, affects their morality. , political consciousness, behavior. Plato himself was an extremely gifted person in an artistic sense - a great master of word and dialogic form, a first-class artist and an unsurpassed erudite. The merit of Plato is also great in the fact that he was one of the first to see in art a means of educating a certain type of person. The modern type did not correspond to Plato's ideal, and in his dialogues he created a new doctrine, partly rooted in various eras of pre-Platonic Greece, but on the whole always striving towards an "ideal" future, where a new "ideal" person should live in an "ideal" state, brought up by means of "ideal" art.

As a student of Socrates, Plato largely follows his aesthetics, but goes much further. The merit of Socrates is that he emphasized the connection between the aesthetic and the ethical, the moral and the good. His ideal is a wonderful person. For Plato, art is already becoming a criterion of morality, social structure, political well-being in the state and, at the same time, an instrument of justice, for everything must obey her.

Thus, the main trend is outlined in line with which the aesthetic teaching of Plato develops - art as a means of education and influence on social and political life.

What could fill the leisure of all those who had free time (even those engaged in some kind of productive activity)? Of course, art, but art organized in a certain way, designed to influence the minds of people in such a way that the structure of their feelings and thoughts corresponded to the ideal of the ancient slave-owning policy. And this means that the question of art could not but appear in Platonic times as a directly political question. 1

Aristotle ascribes to art the function of restoring spiritual balance . Getting acquainted with the creation of art (for example, a musical or dramatic work), we can restore harmony and peace in ourselves and, ultimately, ennoble our mind (spirit). So there are two interpretations:

in the sense that it helps us "let off steam". Experiencing the drama with its heroes, villains and great feelings, we free ourselves from repressed passions and uncontrollable emotions, acquire harmony and continue our life in accordance with the ideal of a balanced "golden mean". This is a therapeutic interpretation in the spirit of medical therapy based on the doctrine of fluids. Those with exceptionally strong and intense experiences can be freed from them with the help of art and, therefore, experience a kind of spiritual bloodletting. (And those who have too weak feelings can emotionally strengthen them).

Art is a catharsis in the sense that we, as human beings, are purified and educated through our exposure to art. The main thing here is not getting rid of some emotions (as in the case of spiritual bloodletting!), but that with the help of our experiences we ennoble our mind (spirit). Here our goal is, therefore, personal improvement that goes beyond the ordinary.

According to Aristotle, art for the person who experiences the work of art is a good (or end) in itself. For an artist or entertainer, the creative process can also be a good thing in and of itself. At the same time, the creative process ends with the creation of a work of art. Consequently, the creative process is predetermined by a goal that is outside the process itself.

Aristotle is famous for his work "Poetics" . In it he discusses, among other things, the classical condition that drama must be characterized by the requirement of unity of action, time and place. 2