II.

Classical Theories

The first aesthetic theory of any scope is that of Plato, who believed that reality consists of archetypes, or forms, that are beyond the bounds of human sensation and are the models for all things that exist in human experience. The objects that human beings can experience are examples, or imitations, of those forms. The philosopher’s job is to reason from the object experienced to the reality it imitates, while the artist copies the experienced object, or uses it as a model for the work. Thus, the artist’s work is an imitation of what is itself an imitation.

Plato’s thinking had a marked ascetic strain. In his The Republic, he went so far as to banish some types of artists from his ideal society because he thought their work encouraged immorality or portrayed base characters, and that certain musical compositions caused laziness or incited people to immoderate actions.

Aristotle also spoke of art as imitation, but not in the Platonic sense. One could imitate “things as they ought to be”, he wrote, and “art partly completes what nature cannot bring to a finish”. The artist separates the form from the matter of some objects of experience, such as the human body or a tree, and imposes that form on another matter, such as canvas or marble. Thus, imitation is not just copying an original model, nor is it devising a symbol for the original; rather, it is a particular representation of an aspect of things, and each work is an imitation of the universal whole.

Aesthetics was inseparable from morality and politics for both Aristotle and Plato. The former wrote about music in his Politics, maintaining that art affects human character, and hence the social order. Because Aristotle held that happiness is the aim of life, he believed that the major function of art is to provide human satisfaction. In the Poetics, his great work on the principles of drama, Aristotle argued that tragedy stimulates the emotions of pity and fear, which he considered ordinarily morbid and unhealthy, to such an extent that by the end of the play the spectator is purged of them. This catharsis makes the audience psychologically healthier and thus more capable of happiness. Neo-Classical drama since the 17th century has been greatly influenced by Aristotle’s Poetics. The works of the French dramatists Jean-Baptiste Racine, Pierre Corneille, and Molière, in particular, advocate its doctrine of the three unities: time, place, and action. This concept dominated literary theories up to the 19th century.