Philosophy of the Arts

Aristotle Poetics

“Poetry” is literature

-includes dream (tragedies)

-Tragedy imitates and represents actions people do (serious, possible), events

Formulation

1. idacticism

6 Elements of Tragety

• plot (sequence of action)

• thought (thoughts of people performing actions, what motivates them)

• style (rhyme, rhythm, etc)

• character (moral characters)

• lyric poetry (songs)

• spectacle (props, costumes, the visual)

Importance order

-plot

-character

-thought

-style

-lyric poetry

-spectacle

Tragedies express universals rather than particulars

Form of Plot

• complete (no outside events)

• whole (beginning, middle, end)

• of a certain magnitude (take place in a single day)

• unity (no sub plots)

Plots

• Simple

• Complex (involves recognition and/or reversal) (transition from ignorance to knowledge..oedipus)

Tragedy should arouse fear and pity and affect a katharsis (release emotions, get rid of them)of these emotions.

• Purging

• perfection/purification

  (you learn how to react after witnessing the characters in the events of the play)

Hamartia

“mistake, tragic flaw”

Deeds done

with knowledge

without knowledge, but later recognizes it

without knowledge, but recognition right before

with knowledge, but character fails to follow through

--

Airistotle 2678,10, 11, 13, 14Plato's Republic

Theory of Forms

True reality

1. Transcendent world of the forms (perfect, higher world-other realms, heaven, etc)

(form of bed: ideal bedness itself)

(form of good) (form of beauty)

2. Worlds:

physical

empirical

(physical bed)

The carpenters, makers. They look to #1.

3. Art

Painters, artists.

Dangers of art:

Morally (appeals to emotions)(reason should control life)

Teaches wrong lessons how to live life.

Not true reality

Theory of Recollection: between lives, soul exists in 1-3 between lives and during.

Mimetic Theories

Mimesis:“imitation” “representation” ( star wars theme) (dog bark with violin sounds in show)

“resemblance” (sensory likeness)

Representation

• Illusion (mimetic resemblance)

• Conventions (symbolism, resemblance, unimportant)..need knowledge, such as paintings for sait, countries, etc)

Over all, you need some resemblance and some conventions.

“seeing as”

(duck/rabit picture)

You have to see the simularities between the work of art and the thing that is represented.

“seeing in” (you see the object of the rose in the picture) (clouds, see pictures in the clouds..clouds are coincidence...paintings are on purpose)

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General notes

Old of

Art:

1. human skill or technique

2. the product of such a skill or technique (man made)

Art as objective versus art of subjective

must define/ Identify art

must evaluate art (good or bad)

interpreting art

Expressive Theory of Art

Romanticism (18-19^th Century)

1. Tolstoy

• Art is the contagion of feelng. Expresses and evokes emotion to audience. They're contagious. Expresses bad emotions is bad art. Expresses good emotions is good art. Form of communication. No special knowledge required to audience. Should have good morals.

2. Croce and Collingwood

• ratonal/conceptual thought, on the other hand intuition(grasp some fact that there is something there) (croce), imagination (collingwood).

4 Stages of Mental Processes

1. immediate sense perception (eyes) (you feel emotions unconsciously “psychical expression” or physical symptoms)

2. become aware of objects as unique things (via intuition)(Conscious apprehension of emotion-imagination)

(rational thought used to classify and generalize is..3 and 4)

3. we use rational thought to identify the practical purposes/uses of things.

4. Rational thought to identify morally appropriate purposes of things.