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About beauty and love. The history of ancient aesthetics, the concept of beauty according to Plato The concept of beauty about Plato

About beauty and love. The history of ancient aesthetics, the concept of beauty according to Plato The concept of beauty about Plato

Plato (427 - 347 BC) was born on about. Aegina near Athens in an aristocratic family of the same branch as Heraclitus; named after his grandfather Aristocles (the best). Father - Ariston - from the family of Solon, one of the "seven wise men" and the first legislator of polis democracy. The atmosphere of the parental home of Aristocles absorbed all the achievements of ancient civilization and culture, was repeatedly sung by Greek poets (Anacreon etc.). Having received a complete aristocratic education, having brilliantly mastered all areas of ancient culture: he studied philosophy, rotated among the sophists fashionable at that time (he was a student of Cratyl), was successful as a lyrical and dramatic poet (he wrote elegies, tragedies, praises; the comedy he wrote was accepted for production Athenian theater; 25 of his “epigrams”, that is, in modern terminology, small lyrical poems, have come down to us), studied music, painting, gymnastics, wrestling, horseback riding (he was awarded a laurel wreath at the Isthmian and Pythian competitions). It was for his sporting success that he received the name "Plato", i.e. "broad-shouldered" (Greek platos - breadth, depth). According to another version, the name "Plato" in the meaning of "broad-browed" was already received by Plato from Socrates. By the time of the meeting with Socrates, Plato was not just a talented young man, but a person with well-formed views and a certain life position. The turning point in the fate of Plato (and European culture) was his meeting with Socrates in 497 BC. According to an Attic legend, on the night before the meeting with Plato, Socrates dreamed of a swan on his chest, which flew high with sonorous singing, and after meeting Plato, Socrates allegedly exclaimed: “Here is my swan!”. Interestingly, in the mythological system of antiquity, the Apollo bird was compared with the god of harmony, and contemporaries compared Plato with this concept. Acquaintance with Socrates left an indelible imprint on the way of life and thoughts of Plato (marking the beginning of a new life - the life of a philosopher - he burned his poetic texts, including the comedy already distributed to the actors). However, the death of the teacher was a heavy blow for Plato, both in terms of personal loss and in terms of realizing the fact that his sage was rejected by his contemporaries (after the execution of the teacher, Plato leaves Athens for a long time). Plato's biography contains information that during one of his trips, Plato was sold into slavery. Fortunately, Plato, put up for sale in his native Aegina, was recognized and bought and released in 30 minutes with silver by Annikerides, a philosopher of the Megarian school. Subsequently, Plato wanted to return this money to Annikeris, and when he refused to take it, he bought a garden on them in the suburbs of Athens, named after the local hero Academ. Academy . In this garden, Plato founded a school as special philosophical educational institution, which can be considered in the history of philosophy as the beginning of the tradition of special philosophical education. In this regard, Plato can be considered not only as an original thinker who laid down the fundamental directions of the classical type of European philosophizing, but also as the founder of the phenomenon of basic philosophical education in European culture (18, p. 782).

Central to Plato's philosophical system is the doctrine of the world of ideas, or eidos. It was developed by Plato throughout his life in the dialogues: "Phaedo", "Phaedrus", "Feast", "Parmenides", "Timaeus", "State", etc. Plato's world of ideas is a complex hierarchically ordered integrity, which is crowned, unites and completes the idea boons. All ideas are involved in the Good, therefore they are “good”. To better explain this, Plato compares the Good to the Sun, which illuminates and warms bodily things.

The meaning of Plato's theory of ideas or eidos. Rethinking the philosophical tradition that preceded him, Plato saw three heterogeneous principles at the heart of the cosmos - these are God(active start), ideas(quality start) and matter(bodily origin). The scheme of his plan: God is the “demiurge” (creator; lit.: craftsman, master), having matter - “hora” (corporeal, formless, changeable, but receptive beginning, lit.: spatiality) and “eidoses” (ideas), creates sensuous-concrete cosmos , giving it a perfect, spherical shape. The intermediary between the world of eternally identical ideas and the visible world of becoming in Plato's teaching is the "world soul". It unites the world of ideas and the world of things, including man. The soul of the world causes things to imitate ideas, and ideas to be present in things. It is the source of reason in the human soul, which makes it possible to cognize the intelligent world, the world of ideas. In general, it ensures the expediency and regularity of the cosmic system. The soul of the world is created by the Demiurge from the identical, the different and the essence (or a mixture of the identical and the different). According to the principle of sympathy (a special case of which is “like is known by like”), the identical corresponds to ideas, the other to matter, and the mixture of the identical and the different corresponds to things. At the same time, Plato endows the world of ideas with the status of true being, while matter, due to its qualitylessness and passivity, is declared non-being, and the world of sensually concrete things is declared the world of eternal becoming. It truly exists to the extent that ideas are embodied in it. It is imperfect, because the material that served to create it is imperfect, and because it exists in time. Time, according to Plato, is created together with the cosmos, it is "a moving likeness of eternity."

In general, two layers can be distinguished in the works of Plato:

One mythological- these are event-artistic paintings that personified the most complex scientific ideas of the thinker (See: the dialogue "Feast", the teachings of Diotima, the story of the birth of Eros, etc.);

Another - logical- these are the theoretical ideas of the philosopher, who at this level built and constantly supplemented the entire aesthetic concept of the world. Both layers are intertwined, one explains and reveals the other.

There are three main problems in Plato's aesthetics: the essence of the aesthetic; the concept of art and its place in public life; aesthetic education.

On the essence of the aesthetic. In the concept of aesthetic Plato includes, first of all, beautiful in itself (as separate, abstract, independent). Plato is looking for something general and specific that he does beautiful many various items, living beings and phenomena. It is an absolute foundation; neither the lyre nor the girl, beautiful in themselves, can be beautiful at all: the girl seems ugly when compared with a goddess. Nor is gold the universal basis of beauty—there is much that is undoubtedly beautiful, although it is not gold. The discussion of this category is devoted to the dialogue "Hippias the Great", in which an attempt is made to elucidate this issue. In the conversation between Socrates and Hippias, Plato notes, the question is raised, what is beautiful. Hippias says that beauty includes a beautiful girl, a beautiful mare, a beautiful lyre, and a beautiful pot. Witty posing questions, Socrates leads Hippias into a dead end: the latter has to agree that the same thing turns out to be both beautiful and ugly. Socrates forces Hippias to admit that the beautiful is not contained in precious material (a golden spoon is no more beautiful than a wooden one, for they are equally expedient), the beautiful does not result from the pleasures received “through sight and hearing”, the beautiful is not “useful”, “suitable” and etc. The meaning of this dialogue lies in the fact that beauty should not be sought in the sensual qualities of individual objects, in their relationship to human activity. From the dialogue it is also obvious that Plato seeks to find that "... what is beautiful for everyone and always" (23, - p.37). The philosopher is looking for the absolutely beautiful in his understanding of this phenomenon, for example, in the sad ending - "Beautiful is difficult" (22, p.185). According to Plato, only an idea attached to concrete things decorates them, makes them beautiful.

Plato speaks in detail about the absolutely beautiful in the dialogue "Feast". Here he gives a hierarchy of beauty: first we like physical bodies, then we move on to the concept of the body in general, then we turn to beautiful souls, and from them to the beauty of sciences, in order to finally rise to the ideal world of beauty. Truly beautiful, according to Plato, does not exist in the world of the senses, but in the world of ideas. In reality, accessible to sensory perception, diversity reigns, here everything changes and moves, there is nothing solid and true. Only one who has risen to the contemplation of the world of ideas, Plato says, will suddenly see something surprisingly beautiful in nature “... that, firstly, eternal, that is, knowing neither birth, nor death, nor growth, nor impoverishment, and secondly, in nothing - something beautiful, but in some way ugly, not once, somewhere, for someone and in comparison with something beautiful, but at another time, in another place, for another and in comparison with another, ugly. This beautiful 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 knowledge, not in something else, be it an animal, the Earth, the sky or something else, but the in itself, always uniform in itself; yet other varieties of beauty are involved in it in such a way that they arise and perish, but it does not become more or less, and it does not experience any influences ”(35, p. 38). The idea of beauty is always the same, immortal and unchanging, it is not born and does not die. It is pure beauty, true perfection. It "…. in itself, always in itself uniformly .... Starting with individual manifestations of the beautiful, it is necessary .... as if on its steps, to climb upwards for the sake of the most beautiful - from one beautiful body ... to all, from beautiful bodies to beautiful morals, and from beautiful morals to beautiful teachings, until ... you finally know what it is - beautiful ”(22 , p.142). Thus, a beautiful idea is opposed by Plato to the sensual world, it is outside of time and space, does not change.

Since beauty is of a supersensible nature, it is comprehended, according to Plato, not by feelings, but by reason. The way to comprehend the beautiful, therefore, is not artistic creativity and not the perception of artistic creations, but abstract speculation, a certain state of the intellectual. In the dialogues “Feast”, “Phaedrus”, “Phaedo”, Plato poetically describes such a state when the mind gradually ascends from single beautiful objects to generally beautiful bodies and, finally, to higher knowledge - the idea of beauty (See: 21, p. 26 ).

Let us try to trace the formation from the lowest to the highest, from the material to the ideal. At the lowest level, the world consists of individual beautiful things, designated by proper names; beauty here is appearance, it is relative. For Plato, it is obvious that there must be a higher level, closer connected with the essence, with the general: when they say "bed", they mean something more universal than listing individual beds; when it comes to the beautiful, similar, true, they mean the beautiful as such, a more general level than the beauty of the individual.

For the first time in science and culture, the problem of universals clearly posed by Plato, which prompted Plato to represent the world of “ideas”, or “forms”, standing above phenomena and objects that have reality. Universal "beauty" is created by God. Beautiful objects are imperfect and to a certain extent unreal copies of it. Plato is convinced that a thing becomes beautiful by joining the idea of beauty. He sought to overcome the distance between the world of universals and the world of concrete things.

The infinity of the number of forms, ideas, is focused by him on an even more general level, namely in good, the highest level of hierarchy and generalization. Good in Plato's aesthetics, it expresses indivisibility, indivisibility, absolute singularity, the first principle and the eternal absolute prototype. The good is not the essence, but in dignity and power it stands above the limits of the essence (See: 30, p.359). In the complex picture he built of the transition from the world of bodies to the world of ideas and then to the world of the common good, the ideal world, in turn, can be subdivided into several stages. Without going into the description of complex transitions between all these steps, we single out the main direction of the system - ascending shape design beauty from singularity, relativity to universality and universality.

The introduction of the soul to the world of ideas and its subsequent transition into earthly, real objects has a double meaning. First of all, it is the way of comprehension of the essence. The process of cognition is characterized by the exact concept of “recollection”: to recall what was in the circles of ideas means to move from opinion to knowledge - “after all, a person must comprehend (it) (truth - V.V.) in accordance with an idea that comes from many sensual perceptions, but brought together by reason. And this is a recollection of what the soul once saw when ... looked down on what we now call being, and rose to true being ”(22, p. 185). At the same time, it is also a way of materializing the ideal, essential construction of a single being. The transcendental world of universal beauty is substantially as defined as the spiritualization of separate material beautiful bodies.

It is difficult to isolate the subjective side in the complex interweaving of the ideal and the material. The subject in Plato's aesthetics is many-sided, multifaceted and multi-valued. This is also the world of the absolute idea, about which it was written above; and the world of souls, knowing the essence, spiritualizing the mortal human body; finally, it is a thinking, feeling, contemplating person. Beauty by its very nature has great charm, it is the flower of youth (See: 24, p. 495–496). One of the definitions of beauty in the Gorgias - "... beautiful for you is not the same as good, and bad is not the same as ugly" (11, p. 294) fixes the specifics of a person's contemplation of beauty. Plato's hierarchical constructions reveal the formation of aesthetic consciousness and at the same time the complex dialectics of the connection between the ideal and the material, subjective and objective. The theory of Beauty in Plato's aesthetics demonstrates a synthesis that has its own internal dialectical spring in constant transition and interaction - meaning and actual realization of the essence.

The general artistic and cosmic picture drawn by Plato contained in its structure a number of contradictions, ambiguities, and inexplicable moments. The philosopher himself felt some of them: constantly honing his theory, at the end of his life he felt more and more acutely that he was haunted by the infinity of ideas that are required to generalize the infinity of things, that it was becoming increasingly difficult for him to explain the transition from the absolutely individual and absolutely universal to more dissected “lower” layers, that the distance between the universal of beauty and individual beautiful objects turned out to be difficult to pass. But the development of these contradictions and the further development of aesthetic theory found development, first of all, in the works of Aristotle and further theoretical thought of both European and Eastern civilizations.

From the standpoint of today's realities, it can be emphasized that the philosophy of Plato, which is the foundation of not only the European philosophical tradition, but also Western culture in general, in particular the field of science and artistic creativity, genetically goes back to Plato's ideas. Platonic philosophy lies at the basis of the aesthetic concept, beyond which neither the classical philosophy of art with its basic understanding has gone. beautiful as corresponding to the standard (Chernyshevsky’s traditional expression for this line is: “The beautiful is life, that being in which we see life as it should be according to our concepts”; similarly, mass consciousness, which until today does not see tautologies in an expression like “ feminine woman"), nor modernism with its program setting to express the essence of things, etc.

Plato paid some attention to the questions understanding of art, its role and place in public life. One of the methods Plato uses to define art is to investigate its origins. However, in view of the fact that this issue is rather unclear, Plato uses two approaches (See: 9, p.32 - 33). First, he sometimes jokingly refers to the myth of Prometheus. This myth says that the gods endowed animals with fur and hair to protect them from the cold and claws to get their food and protect themselves from enemies. But with this initial distribution, man was deprived. Then Prometheus, taking care of a homeless, naked, defenseless person, stole fire from heaven, and Athena and Hephaestus had the art of making fabrics and forging iron. So the Greek myth makes it clear that "art" came into the world as a skill and as a means by which a person could satisfy his urgent needs when "nature" alone was not enough. This myth of art as the application of human skill reflects the common view of the Greeks of the time.

Another aspect of art is often put forward by Plato, especially in later dialogues, as the main one. The creator of this second side of art, Plato also calls "a kind of Prometheus" (36, p.71 - 75). This second Prometheus (historically - Pythagoras) was not only one of the creators of arithmetic and geometry, but, thanks to his research, also the initiator of the use of mathematical quantities in the service of simple practical skill. Man now has the opportunity not only to build, weave and cultivate the land, but also to weave and plow and build efficiently. He learned to count and evaluate his tools and materials, so that his power over nature and his ability to satisfy his needs became much greater than in the pre-mathematical era. Skilled labor has replaced the primitive.

Plato calls this second, "better method" of art the gift of the gods and says that it descended from heaven, surrounded by "dazzling fire." With the help of all the literary devices that the philosopher masterfully masters, Plato seeks, revealing the essence of this Pythagorean method, to give it a special importance. Thanks to him, says Plato, "everything that has ever been discovered in the field of art" saw the light. Only thanks to the observance of “... a greater and lesser measure, which is the essence of the Pythagorean method, all objects of work of masters of art become “good and beautiful” (33, p. 112). What kind of mathematics does Plato single out as the root cause of all discoveries, outstanding craftsmanship and beauty in art? Plato says that one should compare large and small with the average, or ideal, the norm, and it is precisely such a calculation in relation to the goal or the desired good that creates the difference between fruitful, effective art and random production (See: 37, C.112).

The highest art, according to Plato's definition, will be an outstanding master, state custodian of weights and measures (See: 32, C.146-147). This is a person engaged in the art of governing the state - this is a philosopher-ruler. For the philosopher devotes his time to the study of what kinds of goods are true goods, what are the true values by which the purpose of all other arts is measured. The philosopher correctly evaluates the goods of property, such as housing and clothing, bodily goods, such as health and beauty, and spiritual goods, such as wisdom, temperance, and justice.. Thus, an attempt to redefine art leads Plato to compare ordinary professions, such as agriculture, medicine, weaving, as well as the art of the poet and politician, with the art of governing the state and leading society, which requires both calculations, and knowledge, and understanding. what is good. Plato combines the idea of function with the idea of precise classification and division; in his mind, the ideal of a person is formed, possessing both wisdom and the gift of practical activity.

It is quite obvious that Plato's versatile reasoning about art relates to an area far from aesthetic art in our modern understanding, but at the same time, the Platonic principles of aesthetic theory that developed in the era of his activity are visible in them.

Plato - Philosopher Dr. Greece, teacher of Aristotle and student of Socrates, mathematician, born 427 BC. e. in a family of wealthy aristocrats from Athens. Having received a comprehensive upbringing corresponding to the status of his parents, Plato was engaged in painting, wrote tragedies, epigrams, comedies, participated as a wrestler in Greek games, even receiving an award. Plato's doctrine of beauty

Around 408, the young Plato meets Socrates, who is talking and lecturing to the youth in Athens. After talking with the philosopher, he becomes a student of Socrates, later becoming a friend. Eight years of friendship between Plato and Socrates will end rather sadly: Socrates will be sentenced to death, and Plato will embark on a 12-year journey. There he continued his education, listening to other philosophers of Asia Minor and Egypt, in the same place, in Egypt, he received initiation, stopping at the third stage, which gives clarity of mind and dominance over the essence of man.

Soon Plato goes to southern Italy, where he meets the Pythagoreans. Studying from the manuscript of Pythagoras, he borrows from him the ideas and plan of the system, then Plato, returning to Athens in 387, founds the philosophical Academy.

The Academy hosted various activities divided in two directions: a wide and a narrow circle of listeners. Attention at the academy was also paid to other sciences: mathematics, geometry, astronomy, literature, they studied the sciences of natural science, as well as the legislation of ancient states. The students at the academy lived strictly: they slept little, meditated in silence, tried to lead an ascetic image, living with pure thoughts. Plato's doctrine of the beautiful Many wise and talented people came out of the academy, who have become famous to this day. (For example, Aristotle is a direct student of Plato). Here, in the Academy, Plato was buried in 347.

Plato's writings were popular for a long time, laying the foundation for the emergence and development of many branches of philosophy. He is credited with 34 works, it is known that most (24) of them were the true works of Plato, while the rest were written in a dialogue form with his teacher Socrates. The first collected works of Plato were compiled by the philologist Aristophanes of Byzantium in the 3rd century BC. Plato's original texts have not survived to modern times. The most ancient copies of the works are considered copies on Egyptian papyri.

In the scientific life of Europe, the works of Plato began to be used only in the 15th century, after the translation of all his works into Latin by the Italian Christian philosopher Ficino Marsilio.

427-347 BC

The birthday of Plato, who during his lifetime was called “divine” for his wisdom, according to legend, is 7 targelion (May 21), a holiday on which, according to ancient Greek mythology, the god Apollo was born. The year of birth in various sources is indicated as 429 - 427 BC. Plato was born in Athens in the midst of the ruthless Peloponnesian Wars that preceded the collapse of Greece. His family was noble, ancient, of royal origin, with strong aristocratic traditions. His father came from the family of the last Athenian king Kodra, and his mother - from the family of the legislator Solon. Plato received a comprehensive education, which corresponded to the ideas of classical antiquity about a perfect, ideal person, combining the physical beauty of an impeccable body and inner, moral nobility. The young man was engaged in painting, composed tragedies, graceful epigrams, comedies, participated as a wrestler in the Isthmian Greek games and even received an award there. He gave himself up to a life without frills, but also without harshness, surrounded by young people of his class, beloved by his many friends. But this serene life suddenly comes to an end.

In 408, Plato meets Socrates, a sage and philosopher, in Athens, who was talking with young people in the gardens of the Academy. His speech concerned the just and the unjust, he spoke about the true, the good and the beautiful. Shocked by the meeting with Socrates, Plato burns everything that he had previously composed, calling for help from the god of fire Hephaestus himself. From that moment on, a new period of his life began for Plato. It is noteworthy that before meeting with Plato, Socrates saw in a dream, on his knees, a young swan, which, flapping its wings, took off with a wondrous cry. The swan is a bird dedicated to Apollo. Plato's doctrine of beauty. The dream of Socrates is a premonition of Plato's apprenticeship and their future friendship. Plato found in the person of Socrates a teacher, to whom he remained faithful all his life and whom he glorified in his writings, becoming a poetic chronicler of his life. Socrates gave Plato what he lacked so much: a firm belief in the existence of truth and the highest values of life, which are known through communion with goodness and beauty. the hard way internal self-improvement. Eight years after Plato became a student of Socrates, the latter was sentenced to death; calmly drinking a cup of poison, he died, surrounded by his disciples. The bright image of Socrates, dying for the truth and talking at his death hour with his disciples about the immortality of the soul, was imprinted in the mind of Plato, as the most beautiful of spectacles and as the brightest of all mysteries.

Left without a teacher, Plato went on a journey that lasted 12 years. He listened to many philosophers of Asia Minor, from there he went to Egypt, where he received initiation. He did not reach, like Pythagoras, the highest step, but stopped at the third, which gives a person complete clarity of mind and perfect dominance over soul and body. Plato then traveled to southern Italy to meet the Pythagoreans. He bought one of the Master's manuscripts worth its weight in gold. Acquainted with the esoteric tradition of Pythagoras from the original source, Plato took from him the main ideas and the very plan of his system. Returning to Athens in 387, Plato founded a philosophical school - the Academy. Following the example of the Pythagorean school, classes at the Academy were of two types: more general, for a wide range of students, and special, for a narrow circle of initiates. Much attention was paid to mathematics and, in particular, geometry, as the science of the most beautiful mental figures, as well as astronomy. In addition, they were engaged in literature, studied the legislation of different states, natural sciences. The academy lived in strict communities of an ascetic type, the students slept little, awake and meditating in silence. They arranged joint meals, abstaining from meat, which excites strong sensual passions, eating vegetables, fruits, milk; trying to live with pure thoughts. Many talented philosophers, famous Attic orators and statesmen came out of the walls of the Academy. The great Aristotle was a direct student of Plato.

Plato died in 347, according to legend, on the day of his birth. The burial was performed at the Academy, there was no more dear place for him. Throughout his life, Plato's soul was agitated by high moral goals, one of which was the ideal of the revival of Greece. This passion, purified by inspired thought, forced the philosopher to repeatedly attempt to influence politics with wisdom. Three times (in 389-387, 368 and 363) he tried to implement his ideas of building a state in Syracuse, but each time he was rejected by ignorant and power-hungry rulers. The legacy of the Great Philosopher is represented by 23 genuine dialogues, one speech called "Apology of Socrates", 22 dialogues attributed to Plato and 13 letters. In the dialogues of Plato, his outstanding literary talent manifested itself, he makes a whole revolution in the manner of philosophical presentation. No one before him so figuratively and vividly showed the movement of human thought, going from error to truth, in the form of a dramatic dialogue of struggling ideas, opposing beliefs. Dialogues of the early period (399 - 387) are devoted to clarifying moral issues (what is virtue, goodness, courage, respect for laws, love for the motherland, etc.), as Socrates liked to do. Plato's doctrine of beauty. Later, Plato begins to expound his own ideas developed in the Academy he founded. Most famous work this period: "State", "Phaedo", "Phileb", "Feast", "Timaeus". And, finally, in the 50s of the 4th century, Plato wrote a huge work “Laws”, in which he tries to present a state system that is accessible to real human understanding and real human forces.

Plato is the first philosopher in Europe who laid the foundations of objective idealism and developed it in its entirety. Plato's world is a beautiful, material cosmos, which has gathered many singularities into one inseparable whole, controlled by laws that are outside of it. These are the most general regularities that make up a special supracosmic world called by Plato the world of ideas. Ideas determine the life of the material world, they are beautiful eternal patterns, according to which the multitude of things formed from infinite matter is built. Matter itself cannot produce anything. She is only a nurse, accepting into her bosom emanations coming from ideas. The power of penetrating, radiant light emanating from ideas revives the dark material mass, gives it one or another visible form. The highest idea is the highest good, identical to absolute beauty, this is, according to Plato, the beginning of all beginnings, the father, a skilled craftsman who creates the visible heavenly and human earthly world according to the most wise, beautiful laws. But once created the physical world is subject to decay, deformation and aging. So let's, says Plato, contemplate in our thoughts this magnificent, kind and beautiful world of ideas and at least mentally, step by step, imagine the ladder of human spiritual perfection, which will lead to the knowledge of a higher idea. The goal of improving man, his advancement on the path to the highest good is also served by the state, built on the principles of division of labor, strict hierarchy and the strictest observance of laws. Because knowledge and implementation of higher ideas and is possible only with the help of philosophy, then Plato puts philosophers at the head of his state. Two other categories of free citizens of the Platonic state are warriors (guards) and artisans and landowners. Each grade must be strictly limited to the performance of its duties and must refrain from interfering with the functions of other grades. Belonging to one of the categories is not a perpetuated principle of the modern caste state, but is determined by the abilities and development of a person.

The ideas of Plato, like no other European philosopher, did not cease to excite mankind for many centuries. His teaching has become the cornerstone of many philosophical movements. Until now, his books attract many people like a magical source, remembering that the main thing is not just to master this wisdom, but to always strive for it.

Passions are the enemies of peace, but without them there would be neither art nor science in this world, and everyone would doze off naked on a heap of his own dung.

In his dialogues, Plato often and willingly speaks of beauty and pays much attention to its definition. Reasoning about beauty and various approaches to defining its manifestations can be found in many dialogues, such as Phaedrus, Philebus, and the State. One of the early dialogues, Hyppius the Greater, is entirely devoted to the analysis of the concept of beauty, and here Plato already concludes that beauty cannot be reduced to the beauty of individual objects, but something in common is manifested in all beautiful objects. What this commonality is, however, remains uncertain. Undoubtedly, the dialogue "Feast" is the pinnacle of discussions about beauty. In it, beauty turns out to be directly connected with love, passionate aspiration - including philosophy as a love for wisdom. It immediately becomes clear that Plato's understanding of both beauty and love is very specific. Beauty is not for him a by-product or concomitant property of love itself or its object. It reflects his very essence. And love - which is finally affirmed in the speech of Socrates, which completes the dimensional series of speeches about love - is not love for the individual (although this is also present in Plato in the speech of Aristophanes, who tells the famous myth of halves seeking each other). Love as a reckless, unconscious attraction is also rejected by Plato. Love is love for the perfect, in itself, or found in the individual, but not for the individual as such. To concentrate not only on one beautiful body, but even on one beautiful soul or one of the beautiful sciences, love has no right. It is good to be faithful to a friend, but love cannot find its true object in the individual and must continue to strive for it until it reaches its limit. In the speech of Socrates from the "Feast", Plato with rapid speed makes a transition in reasoning from love to good, from good to immortality, and from immortality to beauty, the theme of which in previous speeches passed only in passing. What connects these concepts for Plato? Love is defined as the desire not just for some object, but for an object that represents a certain good, i.e. love is the pursuit of goodness. And not just for good, but for the eternal possession of good. Love is always a desire also for immortality. And beauty turns out to be necessary condition without which this infinite constancy in the possession of the good cannot be achieved. If for a mortal man immortality is achievable only by producing something that will survive a changeable body (from procreation at the lowest level, to artistic creativity, military exploits, legislative regulations, and, finally, philosophical thought - at the highest), then to give birth and produce into the world, according to Plato, both the body and the soul can only be in the beautiful - in the presence of the ugly, both the body and the soul darken and shrink and cannot give birth to proper offspring. Ugliness prevents birth - and hence immortality. And this is not surprising - after all, in ugliness for Plato, as well as for the entire ancient tradition, there is no main condition for being: order, harmony. The ugly is impermanent and accidental, it is the result of a deviation from the rule, a defect in form, a violation of regularity, and, therefore, is a lack of being, and an ugly thing is a thing that does not fully exist. To understand the meaning of beauty in Plato's teachings, one must turn to his views on the structure of being and the action of cognition, since the concept of beauty is not just an element of the Platonic system, but its all-encompassing definition. According to Plato, the world has order due to eternal and unchanging ideal archetypes, imperfect copies of which are material things. Thanks to these ideal forms, the material world exists as an ordered cosmos, and not as chaos. Thanks to them, we are able to know the world - to recognize similar things, to observe similarities. This is the basis of the Platonic concept of knowledge as recollection: we have already seen pure, unclouded ideas - therefore we are able to recognize material things like them. Most likely, the reasoning of Plato and the entire Socratic school should have come precisely from the property of knowledge to generalize, to bring under a single genus. Our knowledge depends on the general, in any subject we know the general and do not know the individual, that which absolutely distinguishes one subject from others and is not subject to any definition. But since the basis of true cognition could not be something non-existent (otherwise cognition would be false), then this general must necessarily exist - before all individual things. Thus, Plato creates the basis of any metaphysical concept that reveals the extraphysical foundations of the physical world. It is at this point that Plato makes that mental move that was perceived by European thought for millennia and was criticized only in modern times. Plato believes that knowledge in any case is knowledge of order and the foundations of this order are in being itself. Otherwise, the physical world would be complete chaos - and this chaos does not exist due to the existence of ideas. We are able to see order and are not meaningless beings because our soul is involved in the world of ideas. The tendency to see order is inherent in our mind because it participates in the world of order. And sometimes the coincidence of the order of things that we observe with this inclination of ours cannot but arouse pleasure and admiration in us, especially because we have no reason to expect this coincidence from things (our soul, shackled in a material body, could hardly count on such a gift in disordered and coarse matter). Plato correlates this pleasure with the concept of beauty. Beauty in things is thus a reminder of an idea, an ontological concept, evidence of true being. Beauty is the greatest correspondence to the idea, its best likeness, and since the idea is the essence of the thing, then beauty is the greatest correspondence to the essence, that is, perfection. Ideas, as ideal forms, are in themselves the most beautiful (which would have been impossible in the modern European tradition, where beauty was ultimately defined as the mere manifestation of an idea). As the true essence of things, ideas are the truth of the world. They are the foundations of being, the foundations of order in the world, they give form to chaotic matter, they create the cosmos from chaos, they are good in the highest sense of the word: the giver of being. This means that the more a thing resembles its idea, that is, the more beautiful it is, the closer it is to truth and goodness. Thus, beauty is an essential attribute of truth and goodness, and beauty observed in material things is the most direct path to true knowledge, while true knowledge is the path to Good. Therefore, for Plato there is no doubt about the closeness of love to beauty and love to wisdom (philosophy). True knowledge can begin with the admiration of beautiful bodies - after all, they resemble an idea, and not just some idea like the famous “pregnancy” and “horseness”, which served as the subject of ancient criticism of Plato, but the most important of the ideas, beauty as such, i.e. beauty itself. e. the speculative and unsurpassed beauty of truth itself.

In the 5th and 4th centuries. BC. There were 3 main problems:

The essence of the aesthetic; - the place of art in public life; - aesthetic education.

In the dialogue Hippias the Greater, Plato searches for the essence of the beautiful, combining it with the useful. Universal beauty was created by God. He writes about this in the diologist "Feast". He shares different levels of perception of beauty.

Stage 1, where a beautiful beginning is found, impulsive aesthetic admiration, physical perfection, body type (not self-sufficient, changes with age);

Stage 2: the level of spiritual beauty of a person (the beautiful is not stable);

Stage 3: literature and arts, sciences and arts (experience, coverage of human knowledge);

Stage 4: the highest sphere of good (wisdom). All spheres are connected at one point.

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 addition, Plato likens the Divine principle to a magnet and directs any human actions. The shadow of reality is a divine shadow - the artist's creations are a shadow of shadows. In the field of aesthetic education, Plato shares the sweet Muse and the orderly Muse. Strives to filter works according to the principle of educational value.

In Dr. In Greece, the arts had a strong educational value (in Sparta, soldiers cannot listen to music, only epic ballads), music softens men. The theater must be removed, considered a spectacle of gladiator fights. Plato divides society into a crowd, warriors, sages. And each caste requires its own art. In Plato's dialogue "Ion Socrates" an interpretation of artistic creativity is given. At the moment of the creative act, the artist is driven by divine power. The artist is the conductor of higher worlds. But his role is dual in this: he listens to the orderly or sweet muse (Apollo and Dionysius). Plato introduces the concept of "measure", it is dictated by the inner nature. Another category is "harmony", it is close to the concepts - measure, symmetry, proportions. From the initially divergent, harmony was born (low and high tones - harmony is born). It is about the contrast of the connection of opposites. In Plato, truth is not available to imitators of art, and a non-imitator of art is involved in true knowledge (music, dance, poetry). Plato understood the restoration of the world of the ancient policy (city, state) as a common good. The purpose of the state is the restoration of integrity (consists of everything - people, space, etc.). He believed that art (sculpture, tragedy) unites people, recreates the integrity of society. Plato wanted a real synthesis of art with practical forms of social life.

5. The work of Velazquez and the artistic culture of Spain in the 17th century.
Character. features: (religious, mythological, courtier (alive)
Everyday (genre) Spanish painting received the most vivid expression in the work of the young Velasquez. He was fond of caravagism, characterized by the stiffness (for Spain) of genre painting - the inhabitants of the social bottom.
"The Old Cook", "Two Young Men at the Table", "Water Carrier", "Christ in the House of Martha and Mary". Later becomes a painter at Philip's court. In the gallery of portraits created by Velazquez, images of royal jesters occupy a special place. In the 1640s he executed portraits of the dwarf Diego de Acedo. nicknamed El Primo (cousin), El Bobo (fool) and the dwarf Sebastiano Mora. He paints ugly, sometimes stump-like figures of jesters and dwarfs, their sick faces, marked with the stamp of degeneration. But the artist does not want to humiliate those depicted. They evoke a feeling of acute pity. AT late period Creativity Velasquez created portraits mainly of representatives of the royal house. In 1657, an acute in its own way was written psychological characteristics portrait of the aging Philip IV. With objectivity, Velazquez portrayed the Spanish infantes in a number of children's and women's portraits. Meninas (1656) The painting Meninas (in Portuguese, menina is a young aristocratic girl who was a lady-in-waiting with the Spanish infantas) takes us to a spacious palace room. To the left of the large canvas, Velazquez depicted himself at the moment when he paints a portrait of the royal couple. The king and queen themselves are not represented in the picture, the viewer sees only their vague reflection in the mirror. Little Infanta Margarita, surrounded by ladies-in-waiting and dwarfs, is called upon to entertain her parents during the tiring hours of the session.

Spinners (1657). The spinners themselves are depicted in the foreground in the semi-darkness of a modest tapestry workshop. Everything here is simple and unadorned - this is the working environment of a dim room with balls and scraps of thread scattered across the floor. In the depths, on a platform flooded with the rays of the sun, there are smartly dressed court ladies who are examining a magnificent tapestry hung on the wall. These two planes of the picture are in complex interaction. Reality here is opposed to the dream, the Labor of idleness.

Jusepe Ribera is an artist of a pronounced dramatic plan. He was attracted by the theme of martyrdom, human suffering. Paintings depicting the martyrdom of various Catholic saints were widespread in Baroque painting. "Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew". Huseppe Ribera is fond of caravaggism, the themes of his paintings are historical, ancient, religious. "Lame" - a genre image, the artist gave the most acute expression of the problems of reality. "Diogenes", "St. Agnes", "St. Jerome", "The Penitent Magdalene", "St. Christopher with the Young Christ, "Jacob's Dream".

Main customers Zurbarana there were various Spanish monasteries, and the master himself most often depicted scenes from the life of holy monks. " Miracle of St. Hugo.""Visit to St. Bonaventure by Thomas Aquinas”, “Vision to St. Pedro Nolasco of the Crucified Peter”. The portrait in the work of Zurbaran is portraits of certain persons (usually monks) and images of the saints of the Catholic Church, “St. Lawrence”, The most famous portraits of Zurbaran are the portraits of the theologian Jerome Perez (c. 1633) and the doctor of the University of Salamanca (c. 1658-1660). "Adoration of the Magi", "Life of Bonaventure", still lifes in the style of Caravaggio.

Francisco Bartalameo Isteban Murillo realism, religion is alive (completes the golden age Spanish is alive (genre painting children, little beggars, a boy with a dog, melon eaters, a fruit seller) 11 pictures about St. Diego. Mary's Christmas.

Thus, in the dialogue "Hippias the Greater"
all concepts known before Plato are refuted
tion of the beautiful. Plato denies, first of all,
that the beautiful is a concrete physical thing,
that the beautiful is something suitable, expedient
different (Socrates), that the beautiful is sensual
pleasure (sophists). True, refuting
existing opinions about the nature of beauty,
Plato does not give his positive definition
beauty. However, based on the negative definition
beauty, we can conclude that if beautiful
something not a physical thing, not useful, not something,
pleasurable, it is something more
broad in content
essence, idea.

What is Plato's positive definition
beautiful? In this area in Plato's aesthetics
two trends collide. One comes from pif-
mountaineism and is associated with attempts to restore pi-
Fagorean understanding of beauty as a definition
fixed mathematical proportion. This is understood
niye is contained in the dialogues "Timaeus" and "Phileb".

The Timaeus (31 s) speaks of proportional
ness as a natural and beautiful connection fi-
physical bodies. In accordance with the Pythagorean es-
tetics Plato establishes the dependence of the beauty
honeycombs on magnitude, order and measure. In dialogue
"Phileb" establishes the dependence of beauty on
proportional mixing of elements. "Every
mixture, if it is not involved in any way
measure and proportionality, inevitably destroys his own
integral parts, and above all yourself ... Here are those
now the power of good has been transferred with us into nature
red, for moderation and proportion are everywhere
becomes beauty and virtue" ("Phileb"
64 e). From Pythagoreanism in Plato and the idea
about the beauty of geometric bodies, of which he speaks
both in the Timaeus and the Philebus.

Along with this concept in Plato's dialogues
there is another, more original concept
tion that goes beyond the Pythagorean aesthetics"

ki. It is most fully developed in the dialogue "Feast".
“Who, being instructed on the path of love, will be in the right
in the right order to contemplate the beautiful, he who has achieved
at the end of this path, he suddenly sees something surprising
truly beautiful by nature ... something, firstly,
eternal, that is, knowing neither birth, nor death, nor
growth, nor impoverishment, and secondly, not in something
red, but somehow ugly, not sometime, somewhere,
for someone and compared to something beautiful, but
at another time, in another place, for another and compare
ugly with others. It's beautiful
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 knowledge,
not in something else, be it animal, earth, sky
or something else, but in itself, always in the very
uniform to oneself; yet other varieties
beautiful are involved in it in such a way that
they arise and perish, but it does not become even more
more, not less, and it does not use any influences
tortures” (“Feast” 210 e-211 b).

This specifically Platonic understanding
beauty has an undoubtedly idealistic character
rakter. The beautiful is understood by him as something abso-
fierce and unchanging, that is, as an "eternal idea", and in
the same time as an object of love, as something that is possible
can only be known through eros.

In The Feast, Plato draws a kind of ladder
beauty. With the help of eros, a person ascends from the edge
honeycomb of individual bodies to the beauty of the body in general, and from
him from physical, bodily beauty to beauty
ideal, spiritual. Having comprehended a higher, du-
spiritual beauty, a man inspired by eros,
rises even higher - to the beauty of morals and laws, and then - to the beauty of pure knowledge. So about-
at once Plato reveals the movement of the human
knowledge from the lower bodily beauty to the beauty of the highest
neck, absolute.

With this metaphysics of the beautiful is connected
about inspiration. In the dialogue "Ion" Plato develops
gives a mystical concept of creativity, speaking of
poetic inspiration. The artist creates in
standing obsession, inspiration. “A poet is a being
into the lung, winged and sacred; and he can

write only when you become inspired and
frenzied and there will be no more reason in him;
and while a person has this gift, he is not capable of your
to speak and prophesy" ("Ion" 534 c).

Speaking of poetic inspiration, Plato
compares with a magnet and iron rings-
mi attached to it. closest to the magnet
the ring is a poet, the next ring is a rhapsodist,
performing the work, subsequent rings -
listeners. The magnet represents the deity
or muse.

Thus Plato irrationally
interprets the process of poetic creation,
at the same time, he emphasizes its contagious effect
action. It should be noted that this doctrine of inspiration
nii Plato applied only to poetry, while
in other arts, especially in painting and
sculpture, he urgently demanded training,
niya, technical skill.

Along with a detailed study of
beauty in the aesthetics of Plato contains a peculiar
naya arising from general principles his philosophy
fii concept of artistic creativity. Character-
terno that, following the tradition of ancient classics,
Plato recognizes art as imitation, mimesi-
catfish In "Laws" he explicitly says that mimesis
underlies music, poetry and drama. "What ca-
sings of musical art, because everyone agrees
it is believed that all creatures related to it are
imitation and reproduction. Is it not with this
Will all poets, listeners and actors agree? ("Per-
horses" 668 p.). And all the more imitative art
The property is painting and sculpture. From this
we can conclude that Plato saw in imitation
the essence of art.

However, developing the general ancient theory of mime
sis, Plato developed a purely idealistic
version of this teaching. According to him, art
imitates only the world of sensible things. And
this imitation is not absolutely adequate
and true, but only weak and inferior
the brilliance of the absolute beauty of eternal ideas.

Plato develops this concept in Book X

"States". Here Plato analyzes the relationship
the artist's approach to truth. In his opinion, the essence
yut: 1) eternal ideas; 2) their implementation; 3) play
conducting these incarnations - imitations that are
already the third reflection of the truth. This thought
Plato explains by the example of the bench. According to him
words, there are three types of bench (like any
things in general): the true creator of her idea is
God; imitating this idea, the craftsman builds
bench, and the painter who paints the bench is
is already the second imitator in order, according to
how much he imitates "imitation", depicts
no longer the essence of a thing, but its visible image. Poet-
mu in relation to the bench the painter, according to
Plato, deserves the name not "artist and creator
tsa”, but “an imitator of what they produce”. "Know-
chit, imitative art is far from reality
value. That's why, it seems to me, it can
reproduce anything: after all, it is only
slightly touches any thing, and then it comes out
only a ghostly representation of it. For example, hu-
the worker will draw us a shoemaker, a carpenter,
many masters, but he himself does not understand anything in
these crafts. However, if he is a good artist,
then, having drawn a carpenter and from afar showing his de-
tyam or people not very smart, he can introduce them
misleading and they will take it for real
carpenter" ("State" 598 p.).

As can be seen from this text, the theory of mimesis
Plato served not only as an explanation of the essence
art, but also proof of its weakness,
imperfections, cognitive and aesthetic
inferiority. For art is an imitation
not to eternal and unchanging ideas, but to transient
sensible, changeable and untrue sensible things. Since real things themselves are co-
piami ideas, then art, imitating the sensual
world, is a copy of copies, a shadow of shadows.
On this basis, Plato presented to art
strict requirements and even rejected some
types and genres of art, considering them harmful,
spinning youth and deceiving people

dey appearance, illusion. In this sense, Plato
criticizes painting when it turns into photography
kusnichestvo, in simple entertainment.