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For The Sake Of The Intellect, Let Them Have Art: A Possible Reconciliation For The Value Of Mimetic Arts In The 'Republic', Breanna Liddell

Theses

This paper explores the possibility of a cohesive philosophy that recognizes both Plato’s concern about art as a moral danger in the Republic and the aesthete’s—a worthy adversary—position of art as something worth preserving. Plato understood the arts as mimêsis, or imitative and representational. Additionally, this paper suggests that Plato’s take on art extends beyond the limited realm of the performative arts that depict the misguided actions of Greek heroes and gods and how those arts positively or negatively impact the educational development of a citizen of the Republic. Rather, I assert that what he means by “art” is …