In this chapter Savater talks about beauty and pleasure, and discusses some of Plato’s ideas about this subject, the one that caught my attention the most was the one about Plato’s distrust towards artists, towards their influence on the masses, to their capacity to produce pleasure .
He finds this so unacceptable because for him the one who controls the pleasure mechanisms in the society controls in a certain level the education of his citizens; and artists great fault is teaching the wrong lessons, is making up fantasies who then everyone takes as truth, is fighting morals and truth. Plato can’t conceive this influence could be use in a good way, because it is impossible to deny its existence, he never sees it as something that could unify people, that could make a united front against ignorance and gain sympathy to philosophy, which as he says, is not as amusing as art
I also want to point out that even though art does influence us, the effect they produce in us changes according to each person, art is subjective as well as our own interpretation of it. And whereas to follow or not the “teachings” an artist is giving us is our decision, we have free will for a reason. Artists are not demons.
Monday, October 19, 2009
The Shiver of Beauty
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It’s true Mariana. Artist may control a level of education in society because they also control in some extent the pleasure they receive. This can happen but what I really think is that people have the final decision. People who are driven out by the pleasure and don’t use reason by itself will be mislead throughout a wrong path. What really a matter is don’t let pleasure take control over you. You should make decisions without letting pleasure decide for you.
ReplyDeleteI think just like you. Plato sees art as a threat to what he values the most and perceives as the basic element for the improvement of a society. It could be that Plato's perception of art is that of manipulation or guidance from pleasure, and he stays on a position where he prefers reasoning, logic processes instead of sensations he can't control maybe? maybe he was too scared to be dominated by sensations because from what I have seen from people I know is that they achieve their goals more because of what they feel than which what they reason. (hint: Plato could have been rejecting his physical pleasures)
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Mariana, I think that artists somehow could change other peoples mind, but the one's that accept or deny the change of mind are us. We are the one's, that after looking a piece of art or something, consider the final decision about changing in mind or not. Great blog post!
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