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A class assignment created by |
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I. Introduction |
C. From Apology for Raymond Sebond by Michael de Montaigne D. Sonnets by William Shakespeare IV. Suggested Responses V. Bibliography |
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This project is designed for use in conjunction with the study of Plato in a high school philosophy, world literature, or European history course. Its purpose is to challenge students’ understanding of Plato’s philosophy by having them examine sections from Renaissance texts which either reflect Platonic influence or challenge his theories of knowledge and art. The assignment will not only test their understanding of Plato, but will also demonstrate how Renaissance writers were deeply influenced by classical thought, specifically in this case by the rediscovery of Plato’s writings in Western Europe. More generally, students will see how the act of writing is an engagement with the ideas of previous generations. Before undertaking this assignment, students should have studied at least three sections from The Republic: “the allegory of the cave” (514a – 521b), “the divided line” (509d - 511e), and “theory of art” (595a - 605b). From The Symposium, students will need to have read Diotima’s speech on the nature of beauty (201d – 212c). The project may be used as an in-class exam, a take-home writing assignment, or group project. It consists of excerpts from essays by three Renaissance writers (Marisilio Ficino, Baldesar Castiglione, and Michael de Montaigne) plus two Shakespeare sonnets.
A Brief Summery of Plato’s Theory of Forms and Criticism of Art. In The Republic by Plato, Socrates sets out to construct a city, an ideal community produced as a thought experiment to demonstrate what a just community will look like. Socrates’ conversation covers an array of topics relating to the structure of this city, including the communal lives of the guardians, the restriction of each person to a single occupation, the obligation of philosophers to rule, and the strict censorship of poetry. Underlying Socrates’ discussion of these varied topics is a consistent epistemology, the theory of the forms. To Plato, true knowledge cannot be derived from studying the natural world which is a world of constant flux and change. A beautiful sunset, a good deed, and a noble action only embody their respective qualities for a brief time. The sunset fades, the good deed becomes tainted with greed, and the heroic action is diminished by fear. Plato contends that this world of generation and decay is actually an illusion. If we are to find true knowledge of reality we must develop an understanding, with the aid of dialectic, of the true unchanging forms that lie behind the qualities that appear in this world. This true reality is accessible by the intellect and not the senses and those who are able to understand this truth are philosophers. The physically beautiful person, the beautiful flower, the beautiful gesture all possess a quality of beauty which will fade and diminish with time. But behind those temporal expressions of beauty exists an eternal reality of “the beautiful” which the philosopher can understand. In The Symposium, Socrates shares with his friends at the party the wisdom of Diotima who described for him the experience of a person beholding the true form of beauty. What he’ll see is, in the first place, eternal; it doesn’t come to be or cease to be, and it doesn’t increase or diminish. In the second place, it isn’t attractive at one time but not at another, or attractive in one setting but repulsive in another…Then again, he won’t perceive beauty as a face or hands or any other physical feature, or as a piece of reasoning or knowledge, and he won’t perceive it as being anywhere else either—in something like a creature or the earth or the heavens. No, he’ll perceive it in itself and by itself, constant and eternal, and he’ll see that every other beautiful object somehow partakes of it, but in such a way that their coming to be and ceasing to be don’t increase or diminish it at all, and it remains entirely unaffected. (211a)
Socrates defines true knowledge as the intelligible – accessible by the intellect and referencing a one, or unitary entity, from which all the multiplicities of the sensible world derive their appearance. Plato best illustrates this dichotomy between the sensory and the intelligible in the famous “Allegory of the Cave” sequence from The Republic (514a-521b). The denizens of Plato’s cave are chained in the cave so that they must face a wall onto which are projected the shadows of puppets. The puppets themselves and the firelight which casts their shadows are out of their range of sight. The denizens of the cave take these shadow images to be reality and develop complex science and philosophy based upon their observations of these moving shadows. The philosopher is the one who breaks free from their shackles, realizes that what the others accept as reality is merely an illusion, and makes an ascent out of the cave to see the world illuminated by sunlight. In Plato’s analogy, the sunlit world is to the cave shadows as the true forms are to the natural word we experience through our senses. From this binary hierarchical distinction of the intelligible and sensible, Socrates then orders everything in this imaginary society, including his directive that philosophers, those with true understanding of reality, should serve as kings and direct the community according to their knowledge of the eternal forms. Prior to discussing the cave allegory, Socrates ranks four levels of knowing by dividing a line into sections, with one portion signifying the visible world, that of the eye, and the other, that of the intelligence. The first section of the line represents the shadows and reflections of things on water or smooth surfaces. The second section consists of the things themselves that cast their reflections on the reflective surfaces. “The division in respect of reality and truth or the opposite is expressed by the proportion: as is the opinable to the knowable so is the likeness to that of which it is a likeness.” (510B) The other two sections of the line constitute two aspects of the intelligible realm, with the superior from of knowledge being dialectic. Socrates equates the relationship between the reflected image and the thing it is reflecting as the same as the relationship between the entirety of the visible world (in the first two sections) and the intelligible world. If, for instance, one wants knowledge of a tree, then for a person to study trees as they are reflected in a pond will never yield any certain knowledge of trees. Since the tree will change appearances in the water following changes in weather and sunlight, the most one can determine about the tree is conjecture or opinion. If things of the sensory world only approximate their true essence, this poses a particular problem for the work of the artist, a person who produces likenesses of things he/she sees in the natural world. Socrates uses an example of a painter who creates an image of a couch, contrasting the painter to the craftsman who built the couch. He asks Glaucon, one of his interlocutors in the Republic, “Were you not just now saying that he (the craftsman) does not make the idea or form which we say is the real couch, the couch in itself, but only some particular couch?” (597A) What the craftsman makes, then, is not the couch as it exists in its true being, but an imperfect approximation of the real being of the couch. Socrates implies that the craftsman’s product is one generation removed from reality rather than reality itself. “He could not be said to make real being but something that resembles real being but is not that.” (597A) The evident conclusion is that anyone who examines the craftsman’s couch to understand real couch being is going to be lost. He is only studying one of a multiplicity of couches, and not understanding the true unchanging reality of the singular unitary coach being. For Socrates, when an artist produces a likeness of a couch, he fashions a thing which is now one more generation further removed from being, “a dim adumbration in comparison with reality.” (597B) “We get, then, these three couches, one, that is in nature, which I take it, we would say that God produces… and then there was one which the carpenter made...And one which the painter (made)” (597B). The painter, the craftsman, and God each produce one kind of couch. Interestingly, Socrates states that even if God makes two couches instead of one, he would still have one true or real couch from which the two couches would derive their essence and “that would be the coach that really is in and of itself, and not the other two.” (597D) What makes the imitator’s painting two generations removed from reality is that he creates his painting from studying the work of the craftsman and not God’s ideal form. Socrates explains that when one observes a couch it may appear differently depending on the perspective from which one is viewing the couch. By implication then the painter is only producing a likeness of the couch taken from one vantage point under one particular set of environmental conditions. One can’t help thinking of Monet’s impressionistic haystack paintings and how the same haystack may appear differently from painting to painting, depending on the time of day Monet was painting. The artist then only shows how the couch (or haystack) appears in one particular way, but discloses nothing of the object’s real being. Socrates asks Glaucon, “Is it an imitation of a phantasm or (an imitation) of the truth?” (598B), to which Glaucon responds that the painting is an imitation of a phantasm. Similarly, Socrates says the writer of tragedies is “three removes from the …truth.” (597E) The potentially destructive impact imitation has on the city is that it corrupts not only the mass of workers, but also the guardians. Those who are impressionable, unfortified with the antidote of truth, will be fooled into thinking that the artist’s reproduction of these “phantasms” is reality in itself and therefore will live and act not according to the standard of unchanging truth but to the shifting, changing grounds of copies of phantasms.
Read the following texts and write a one paragraph response to each, analyzing its relationship to Platonic thought.
A. From Five Questions Concerning the Mind by Marisilio Ficino Now it is asked whether the end of intelligence and will is some particular truth and goodness or universal truth and goodness. It is universal, certainly, for the following reasons. The intellect grasps a certain fullest notion of that which the philosophers call being and truth and goodness, a notion under which everything that either is or is possible is completely comprehended. That which is itself called being and truth and goodness, and which contains all things, the Peripatetics think is the common object of the human intellect, because just as the object of sense is said to be the sensible, so the object of intellect itself is the intelligible. The intelligible, moreover, comprehends all in its fullness. Again, the intellect is prompted by nature to comprehend the whole breadth of being; in its notion it perceives all, and, in the notion of all, it contemplates itself; under the concept of truth it knows all, and under the concept of the good it desires all. The peripatetics refer both of these to the concept of being, while the Platonists think that goodness is fuller than being. This question, however, clearly has no bearing on the problem in hand, and we shall for the present use these three names, that is, being and truth and goodness, as if they were synonymous… The first question appears to be whether or not the intellect can attain a clear understanding of everything which is included under being. Certainly it can. The intellect divides being into ten most universal genera, and these ten by degrees into as many subordinate genera as possible. It then arranges certain ultimate species under the subordinate genera; and finally, it places single things, without end, as it were, under the species in the manner we have described. If the intellect can comprehend being itself as a definite whole, and, as it were, divide it by degrees into all its members, diligently comparing these members in turn both to each other and to the whole, then who can deny that by nature it is able to grasp universal Being itself? Surely that which sees the form of the whole itself, and which, from any point, beholds the limits of the whole, and the gradations through which it extends, can comprehend as middle points the particular things which are included under these limits. Now, it goes without saying that since the intellect, according to the Platonists, can devise the one and the good above being and below being, how much more will it be able to run discursively through the broad whole of being! Certainly, next to the notion of being…the intellect can at its pleasure think of that which is most different from being, that is, non being. If it can go from being to that which is infinitely far from being, then how much more must it be able to run through those things which are contained under being as middle points!
B. From The Book of the Courtier by Baldesar Castiglione Therefore the lover who is intent only on physical beauty loses all this good and happiness as soon as the women he loves by her absence leaves his eyes deprived of their splendor and, consequently, his soul widowed of its good. For, since her beauty is far away, there is no influx of affection to warm his heart as it did when she was there, and so the openings of his body become arid and dry; yet the memory of her beauty still stirs the powers of his soul a little, so that they seek to pour those spirits forth. Although their paths are blocked and there is no exit for them, they still strive to depart, and thus tormented and enclosed they begin to price the soul and cause it to suffer bitterly, as children do when the teeth begin to grow through their tender gums. This causes the tears, the sighs, the anguish and the torments of lovers, because the soul is in constant pain and turmoil and almost raging in fury until its cherished beauty appears once more; and then suddenly it is calmed and breathes again, and wholly absorbed it draws strength from the delicious food before it and wishes never to part from such a ravishing vision. Therefore, to escape the torment caused by absence and to enjoy beauty without suffering, with the help of reason the courtier should turn his desire completely away from the body to beauty alone. He should contemplate beauty as far as he is able in its own simplicity and purity, create it in his imagination as an abstraction distinct from any material form, and thus make it lovely and dear to his soul, and enjoy it here always, day and night and in every time and place, without fear of ever losing it; and he will always remember that the body is something altogether distinct from beauty, whose perfection it diminishes rather than enhances. In this way the courtier of ours who is no longer young will put himself out of reach of the anguish and distress invariably experienced by the young in the form of jealousy, suspicion, disdain, anger, despair and a certain tempestuous fury that occasionally leads them so much astray that some not only beat the women they love but take their own lives. He will do no injury to the husband, father, brothers or family of the lady he loves; he will cause her no shame; he will not be found sometimes to drag his eyes away and curb his tongue for fear of revealing his desires to others; or to endure suffering when they part or during her absence. For he will always carry the treasure that is so precious to him safe in his heart; and by the power of his imagination he will also make her beauty far more lovely than it is in reality.
C. From Apology for Raymond Sebond by Michael de Montaigne Let us then consider for the moment man alone, without outside assistance, armed solely with his own weapons, and deprived of divine grace and knowledge, which is his whole honor, his strength, and the foundation of his being. Let us see how much presence he has in this fine array. Let him help me to understand, by the force of his reason, on what foundations he has built these great advantages that he thinks he has over other creatures. Who has persuaded him that that admirable motion of the celestial vault, the eternal light of those torches rolling so proudly above his head, the fearful movements of that infinite sea, were established and have lasted so many centuries for his convenience and his service? Is it possible to imagine anything so ridiculous as that this miserable and puny creature, who is not even master of himself, exposed to the attacks of all things, should call himself master and emperor to himself of being the only one in this great edifice who has the capacity to recognize its beauty and its parts, the only one who can give thanks for it to the architect and keep an account of the receipts and expenses of the world? Who has sealed him this privilege? Let him show us his letters patent for this great and splendid charge.
D. Sonnets by William Shakespeare 63 Against my love shall be as I am now,
65 Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor
boundless sea,
The excerpts from Ficino and Castiglione both reveal a direct influence of Plato’s thought. The Ficino text is derived from ideas present in both the allegory of the cave and Diotima’s speech. Ficino states that the human mind endowed with reason can elevate itself to understand the one, unitary source of all being from which all the multiplicities in the phenomenal world are derived. Castiglione also takes his ideas from Plato’s Symposium. He contrasts love of physical beauty – which is only temporary – with a love of transcendent, eternal beauty. Montaigne, a skeptic, questions the presumptuousness of human beings to know and understand the universe, refuting the possibility of Plato’s philosopher kings to attain knowledge of eternal truth. Shakespeare, in his sonnets, laments that the young man’s beauty will fade with time. Instead of following Diotima’s advice, Shakespeare inverts Plato’s theory of art and declares that through the poet’s words the beauty of the young man may attain immortality. For Shakespeare, poetry and art instead of pulling us further away from truth are vehicles for understanding transcendent beauty.
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