"Theory of Art" or "Plato, you tease."

Saturday afternoon and I'm reading Plato. Yea, I'm nerding it up.

I guess I better off by stating the following: The only two books that I got my money out of from York were both from first year classes.

The first was my psychology text book, there's so much interesting bullshit in there, as well as fun terminology that you can sling at your friends when they're being complete assholes such as, "You're such a passive-aggressive" and "That's transference, man."

The second “that was money well spent” book was my copy of The Republic of Plato. There's something comforting about reading The Republic for me. You always know that Socrates has the answers. Or rather, will ask the leading questions so you can get to the answers of the questions he postulates. Plato, I heart u heavily.

I hadn’t in my studies of Plato ever gotten to book ten, but I will surely go over it in detail when I get the chance for it deals with a subject very close to me. I write. Half of my double major is English, the other Creative Writing. I have days when ask myself the questions “Why the hell do I write these stories?” and I didn’t know that they were addressed in The Republic. I love this line, “So the poet too, as artist, will be beautifully ill-informed about the subjects of his poetry.” Yep. That’s me, y0.

What I didn’t expect was Marcus’ response, as well some others in class, that Plato is against poetry in his creation of a Platonic society. I can see how what Plato writes might seem almost anti-poetry, but we have to remember one major paradox: Plato creates his entire “manual” for the platonic society in a way that it cannot be done without utilizing poetry. Look at the allegory of the cave, look at the descriptions of… well… anything Plato has Socrates discuss.

I find it interesting that this text is included in the course pack because I have always been interested in the Plato’s use of Socrates in The Republic. For those of you that didn’t know, Plato takes Socrates as his heroine/mouthpiece and has him discuss various subjects in the Republic. In the section we had to read for class the subject at hand is Art. Throughout the entirety of the text we have Plato writing a very complex version of slash/fan fiction. How interesting is that?

Umm… What else. The main questions that come out of the read we were assigned from The Republic are “What is Art?” and “What is Art in relation to the object it depicts?” What does Plato give us? A shit load that can be broken down into:

"Art is removed thrice from form. Art is the ghost of the real."

That’s what he said to me anyway and if we go back to the Cave… (*collective groan from the readership* Yes, the Cave has been beaten to death, I know, but bear with me.) if we go back to the Cave and we draw parallel between the shadows on the wall and art as ghosts of the real, what purpose then does Art serve? Doesn’t Art then become the catalyst for our own exploration and discovery of the real? Art then cannot be useless, art can be revelatory, it can be inspiring, but more often than not, sadly, it can be disposable.