The conception of mimesis, commonly rendered as "imitation", was developed within the circle of Greek culture. Initially it was connected with a cult tradition, and later was grafted on to philosophy. On the one hand, mimesis was helpful in metaphysical attempts to elucidate reality. On the other hand, mimesis referred to art. The problem of creation, however, was unknown, since neither the Greeks nor the Romans recognized the possibility that being could arise "from nothing". Creation became a philosophical problem only with Christianity. Obviously, art could not have been described in terms of creation prior to the theological and metaphysical discoveries whcih changed how philosophers could thinks about how beings have come into existence. The concept of mimesis and its application in art was also modified because of changes in the philosophical and theological context, in the theory of being, where philosophers ask: what is being? What is the structure of being? How does being come into existence?
In the classical conception of art there is no place for creativity ex nihilo in its strict metaphysical senses. This, however, does not mean that art is mere copying, because beside creation ex nihilo and copying, there is room for a kind of qualified creativity. The classical conception of art, which has in its warehouse a variety of metaphysical theories, is decidedly inclined towards mimesis conceived as creativity. Mimesis is poiesis, or reproduction. The change from mimesis to creation ex nihilo took place only when mysticism supplanted metaphysics.
The term mimesis -- which many would like to render as imitation or even as copying -- and related words such as mimema, mimoi, mimeisthai or mimeson, can be found in the works of Greek tragedians, poets, historians and early philosophers. These terms were part of ordinary language, and we would not expect them to have been connected originally with the painter's art, which we may regard as the most imitative, but rather with the triune chorus and with the actor's art. The chorus, which as its genesis in the Dionysian mysteries and rites, consisted of dance, music and song. Mimesis was first found in these three forms of art, which became autonomous only much later. Later, under the influence of Dorian culture, the art of acting developed in Sicity. An actor who would entertain the wealthy aristocracy at banquets by playing scenes from the life of the "lower classes" was called a mime.(1)
Researchers have found over 60 references to mimesis in the extant texts and fragments. On this basis, one can see how elastic the meaning of the term was. In Aeschylus' tragedy Choephoroi (560-564), Orestes advised his companions that they should imitate the Photian dialect in order to avoid recognition. In Euripides' tragedy Ekklesiazusai (544-546), Praxagora told her husband how she mimicked his way of walking. In his funeral oration, Pericles said that neighbouring states imitate the political system of Athens (Herodotus, II, 37, 1). The philosopher Democritus noted that many human arts are an imitation of the skills observed in nature (Diels, 154), and he also states that a man should either be good, or at least imitate good people (Diels, 39). According to Aeschylus, imitation is involved in painting (Istmiasthai, fr.), and according to Pindar, imitation is involved in playing the flute (Pythian Odes, 18-21). It can also be found in poetry (Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazuse, 146-172) and in sculpture (Herodotus, II, 132).(2)
As we can see, mimesis is imitation, play acting (putting on), expression, game playing and simulation. The original meaning of the term was very fluid, as are most words derived from ordinary language. This fluidity was not equivocity, since there is a common element in all these examples: a relation to the object of imitation. This object is most often a real object, although one art can also imitate another. There are various objects of imitation and various ways in which they can be imitated. Although the meaning of mimesis was refined only in the context of a philosophical system, it is clear that the identification of mimesis with copying was not part of its original meaning.(3)
Plato is the philosopher to whom is most often ascribed the view that mimesis is the same thing as copying. This is seen in the opinions of many historians of esthetics, and in translations of Plato's dialogues into other European languages. In The History of Six Concepts Wadysaw Tatarkiewicz writes: "In his later period, starting from Book X of "The Republic", [Plato] had a very radical conception of the imitation of reality by art, as a passive and faithful copying of reality."(4) In turn, in the translation of the Timaeus, we read: our world is his [his idea's] copy. It has become the standard view that according to Plato the sense world is a copy of the ideal world, perhaps because this lends itself easily to the imagination. Yet, if ideas are immaterial and the world is material, then it impossible for matter to be a copy of spirit. Let us first go back to Plato's texts in order to investigate the question in the context of his philosophical system as a whole.
Where translators often use the term copy, Plato uses three words interchangeably: apeikazia (Tim. 29C), aphomoioma (Tim.31B), or eikona (Tim.29C)(5). The root of the first term -- eikadzo -- means to make something similar, while the root of the second -- homoios --is similarity. Thus these words, including the third (eikona), mean an image of some sort. They suggest a similarity, but not more than a similarity. A similarity is not yet a copy, since a copy must have a high degree of identity, while a similarity merely approaches the original. In this case, what is the term "copy" doing here?
The word "copy" does not come from Greek, but from Latin. Initially it had a completely different meaning from the present meaning. Copia is abundant power, wealth, riches or abundance, surfeit or wealth, whether of food, property or even of words.(6) A Roman may have possessed a copia of food, villas, and as a political speaker he also possesses a wealth of words. Copia verborum is the abundance of words that a speaker has at his disposal so that he can describe the same thing in various ways, and so it involves a knowledge of expressions which are close in meaning without being identical.(7)
The current meaning of copy suggesting identity crystallized at the end of the middle ages. In the twelfth century, with the rebirth of culture after the conquests of the Normans, the first universities came into existence. Students needed written duplicates, and so the need for copies.(8) The invention of the printing press at the end of the fifteenth century made it possible to make many more copies of a text with increased precision. The presses supplied students and professors in a short time with hundreds of identical texts. The term copy then came to mean not only an abundance, but also an identity, and over time its principal meaning was that of identity. Today, when we hear the term "copy", we think primarily of an identity, but we may also think of a resemblance of something to its exemplar. There is no longer any technical difficulty in the multiplication of copies. The mistaken identification of mimesis with copy-making originates from the renaissance usage, where the term copia is imposed upon mimesis, while if only for reason of technical imperfections, mimesis could not have been copying. Where Plato employed such terms as apeikasia, aphomoioma, and eikona, he could not have had in mind copying such as we understand it today, for that would have been physically impossible.(9)
The Platonic theory of ideas appeared in the context of a discussion. On the one hand, there was post-Heraclitean variabilism and the relativism of the sophists. On the other hand, there were the Eleatics -- Parmenides had proclaimed that there exists only one, simple and unchanging being. As opposed to Heraclitus, Plato thought that some things do not change, for we possess stable concepts. Plato was opposed to the sophists in their negation of the objectivity and stability of the truth. He stated that we can provide definitions that are objectively true. As opposed to Parmenides, the disciple of Socrates thought the there were many stable, simple and unchanging beings, not merely one. The Platonic ideas are thus the objectivized and hypostasized contents of the definable general concepts that can serve as objects of scientific knowledge (episteme). The ideas are distinct from the material world grasped by the senses, which is merely an object of opinion (doxa).(10)
Plato used his theory of ideas as the ground for objectivism and stability in several domains of culture and philosophy. This affected ethics, politics, science, and reflections that later would be called metaphysical (which in Plato were elements of cosmology, ontology and dialectics). The theory of ideas was an integral part of his reflections on the origin of the world.
The ideas were the model (paradeigma) according to which the world apparent to the senses had been produced. The ideas were not by themselves sufficient for the world to come to be. It still required the demiurge, some indefinite material, and an intermediate sphere of numbers. The demiurge gazed upon the ideas and transformed matter with the help of numbers, so that the product could be as similar to his model as possible. Plato described the work of the demiurge in the Timaeus, a dialogue that was regarded in the middle ages as second only to the Bible as an authoritative source for interpreting the coming-to-be of the world.
Was the demiurge in a position to model ideas in matter so that the world would become the copy of the ideas? Would matter allow itself to be assimilated in the highest degree to ideas? Unfortunately, the answer is no. There are too many differences between the ideas and their material likenesses.
Ideas are simple, while produced things are complex. Ideas are eternal, while things are destructible. Ideas are general, things are concrete. Ideas are unchanging, while things are subject to change. Ideas can be known only by intellect, while we grasp things only by the senses. Ideas had no beginning, while things come into being and disappear. The sense world is similar to the ideas as far as that is possible (mallon homoion), but the differences are great and in every respect essential differences.(11) The platonic mimesis in the cosmological or in the ontological order was based solely on exemplar causality. Since the creator or demiurge had many possibilities open to him, and because the sphere of numbers interfered in what otherwise could have been a direct process, the mere making of copies was impossible. Exemplar causality allowed only for a certain and rather indefinable similarity. This similarity is more easily rendered by metaphors than by strict terms. It is a rather weak similarity, since there are so many essential differences. In the case of a copy of a text, the shape of the letters and the meaning of the words remains the same, while in the case of an ontological mimesis, neither the shape (which belongs only to that which is material) nor the meaning (which in turn -- as essence -- lies beyond sensible things) can belong both to the models and the things derived from the model. Things are distant reflections, not copies of ideas, and they are like shadows, not like true being.(12)
The essential differences between the ideas and their likenesses are seen as well in the order of knowledge. Truth and true knowledge (episteme) is directly concerned with the ideas, which opinion (doxa) and untruth are concerned with sensible things.(13) Thus Plato wrote: These two kinds of objects differ with respect to truth and non-truth, and the objects of opinion are to the objects of cognition, as painted likenesses are to their primary models (Republic, 510A.) Between one and the other world there is not only an ontological gulf, but also an epistemic one. Both exclude any possibility of copying. The senses (doxa) are not in a position to grasp that which the intellect (episteme) knows, so great is the difference between the natures of these faculties and between their respective objects.
Art does not create a new world. It either imitates the ideas, or that which is similar to the idea -- the sense world. It was unthinkable to the Greeks that any man could create a new reality . Human products must always refer to something. Arts such as music, poetry, dance and painting imitate the sense world. If a work of art has no visible counterpart in the sense world, this means that art is imitating ideas, beings beyond the senses. This applies to arts such as carpentry and the various crafts, called productive arts. If a particular art does not imitate the ideas themselves, but rather nature or the products of the craftsmen's arts, that art is imitative in a narrower sense.
It is rather surprising to see how Plato elevates the crafts over what today we would call the beautiful arts -- poetry, music, dance and painting. What do the latter arts imitate? Poetry, music and dance (the elements of the triune chorus) imitate customs, characters, human characters whether better or worse, adventures and deeds, while painting imitates colours and shapes.
If it is a question of the agreement of the artifact with a primary model, the craftsman is superior, whereas the imitative arts are twice or thrice removed from truth. If they imitate nature, they are twice removed (for nature itself imitates the ideas), and if they imitate craftsmanship, they are thrice removed (for craft is an imitation of an idea that has been performed by some god).(14) The small office that Plato leaves for poetry is all that permits the rehabilitation of art with respect to craft.(15)
Imitation in music primarily consists in rhythm, tone and harmony. Since human customs, characters and attitudes manifest themselves during activity, and activity is a motion that has an appropriate rhythm, sustained in a certain tonal modality and and grasped as a whole in a certain harmony. In music, one can "play" a rhythm connected with a particular character and no other, and in this way the character is imitated.(16) Dance also involves imitation, not only of characters but also of customs, adventures and deeds.(17)
Poetry in turn makes use of the the elements of music (rhythm and number), but also uses words with unconventional meanings. Plato tried to demonstrate that in many cases poets do not know about things, whence their creativity can lead the hearer into error.(18) In their works the poets imitate lower states of the soul in order to flatter the crowd, and they can never get their fill of the remembrance of sufferings and pain. The poets imitate feelings that separate us from reason and self-mastery, that which "should wither away" (Rep. 605E). Plato thought that such imitation is harmful to man, and art should rather set forth what is good. When a man is exposed to art, he should know how close to the truth is that which is presented, and furthermore that it is fitting and good. (Leges 669AB).
Painting and sculture meet almost insurmountable barriers. There is a physical and a
psychological barrier. If a painted or sculpted model is too large or too small (and the latter is
more commonly the case), then in order to achieve the proper effect, the illusion of reality, the
artist must change the objective proportions in the thing. The artist thus is engaged in a strange
but unavoidable forgery. Either it is impossible to hold to objective proportions (the model being
either too small or too large), or the preservation of true proportions leads to a different effect in
the viewer because of the deformation proper to sense perceptions.(19) In this case the artist would
not produce a likeness, but simply an illusion, and the artist would be like a sorcerer. Then he
would be far removed from truth and wisdom, and his occupation would be a childish game.(20)
Mimesis in art is even further removed from the ultimate models than is the sense world. The imitative arts have as their object something which is merely a distant likeness. The ideal of copying, even with respect to quantity (proportions, dimensions), as in painting, is unattainable in most cases for both subjective and objective reasons. In the arts of the triple chorus objects are imitated indirectly and the truth remains for the most part unknown. A faithful imitation of reality would have to be an imitation of the ideas. The ideas are the source of truth and goodness, but they lie beyond the range of the imitative arts. Either the ideas cannot be imitated in the material world, or imitation misses the mark when it has an evil or ugly object.
It seems that the Platonic mimesis is not copy-making, whether in reference to nature or in reference to art. It is essentially impossible in view of the gulf separating the sensible from the immaterial, the phenomenon and shadow from eternal being. Neither nature or art can copy the ideas, and if art imitates nature, this is not a case of copying, because both are dependent upon an immaterial exemplar. Art is not nature, but stands even lower in being than nature. If Plato speaks of mimesis, he has in mind that nature is lower than the ideas, and art is lower than nature, and that in mimesis that which is lower depends on that which is higher. Mimesis is a similarity, and a similarity is not a copy but rather a trace or vestige.(21)
Why then do some ascribe to Plato the view, at least from Book X of the Republic, that art is a faithful and passive copying of reality? It may be that Plato examined the value of all human activity under the aspect of truth, and this was the origin of his moral intellectualism, hence his severe evaluation of art as something that deforms reality, and of reality (as it is apparent to the senses) in turn as something that deforms a likeness to the ideas. Plato wanted art to be true and good, which does not mean that he thought of art as a copy of reality (for he himself gives examples of great work that departed from reality). Furthermore, he wanted some arts to be as close as possible to reality. Plato thought that in painting or sculpture, a passive and faithful copy of the model would miss the mark, because "fantasy" maintains the illusion, while fidelity deforms knowledge and perception. Those arts that are of true service in education should idealize human manners, for they serve as a model to students; these arts should not imitate reality such as it is, but as it should be. In this way mimesis in art is subordinate neither to beauty nor even to truth, but is subordinate primarily to education. Here the place of the ideas is filled by what we would today call an ideal, for art should not imitate everything that takes place in the human world, and ideas are beyond the reach of art. The ideal is above truth. Truth remains subordinate to the purposes of education, and the same applies to true speech, since he permitted lies for the the "good" of the student. Thus the criterion for the value of art was sometimes the truth, and sometimes the good. It was the good, when he wanted to depreciate that which was worse in art despite its truth, and it was the truth when he wanted to depreciate that which was more beautiful but not good. One way or the other the artist had to be active.(22)
Plato held art to be of little value because it was distant from the ideas, from the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. However, when his disciple Aristotle rejected the theory of the ideas as superfluous, art could appear in a new light.(23) On the one hand, nature stands in need of art, while on the other hand, art (poiesis) takes its place beside science (theoria) and morality (praxis) as the main sphere of specifically human activity. The realism of Aristotle's philosophy bore fruit in a realistic philosophy of art.
The Aristotelian conception of nature, and that of the Greeks in general, was completely different to that held today. Today, the way nature is commonly understood has been shaped by Descartes. Descartes regarded nature as extended matter subject to various forces that act upon it mechanically. For the Greeks, nature was something alive, for even if not all beings are animated in themselves, yet all beings are comprised within the so-called soul of the word (Plato, the later Stoics, and Plotinus). The word (fusis) comes from the verb fuomai which means to come into being, to grow. Nature was that which becomes, that which grows by itself. If it does so by itself, then it possesses within itself some principle of becoming and this principle was called soul (yuch). Nature, having in itself the principle of life, grows by itself, and this life may be vegetative (plants), vegetative and sensory (animals), and ultimately vegetative, sensory and rational (man).(24)
Aristotle notes that the reason for the identity of a being is also the reason for its having one specific action rather than another. This factor is form. As the reason for identity (as man is a man, and not a tulip), it is also the reason for the general conception of the thing, in which case it is called essence (to ti hn einai), "that which a thing that was to be", quidditas, whatness)(25), while the form as the reason for the activity proper to a given being is called "nature". When we say that a thing acts in accordance with itself, that is, with its own form, this means that it acts in accord with nature.(26) When the being is animate it acts in accord with its own soul, for its soul is then its nature.
If Aristotle says that nature acts for an end, we should not think of an end that is envisioned and lies somewhere off in the distance, as it does in the case of man's teleological activity, as for example, when we intend to study abroad in the coming year and to this end we save money. The teleological activity of nature can be understood as follows: even if the nature is not a rational being, it is still internally inclined in one rather than another direction. This internal determination, as a motive and not a term, can be called an end in a metaphysical sense.(27) The form as the principle of operation is nature as causing particular species to possess certain inclinations rather than others, and so trees do not bark, and tulips do not meow.
On the other hand, these inclinations show that beings are potentialized, that they are not fully "themselves", that if such is the internal determination to change, then this means that the realization of these inclinations, due to which potentialities will be actualized, is something that is to take place. While in our days many call for a return to nature, Aristotle says that in its primary sense, nature is not at all the primitive state from which things arise, but the final state, the state in which potencies are actualized -- nature is perfection. A being is fully itself when it actualizes its inclinations.(28)
The Greeks found confirmation of the finality of nature in the cyclicity of natural changes, both in the the macrosm and in the microcosm. The very word "cosmos" expressed wonder at the order that reigns in nature.
Yet this cyclicity of changes does not take place with the perfection of clockwork , that is, with no exceptions, but merely in most cases (hos epi polu). It may happen that in some particular cases certain actualizations do not come into effect for various reasons, the most important of which is matter itself. As potency, matter is apt to receive the activity of many acts, not merely the act of that under which it is found. A tree may fail to give fruit because someone has cut it down (matter is the reason for the destructibility of a being), or because it has been damaged by frost, etc.. A natural inclination is persistent, but its realization may encounter obstacles. In that case art may be of assistance. Art can face the inclinations of nature and lead them to actualization; it can make up for the shortcomings that nature by itself is sometimes not able to fill. For art to perform this function, however, it must first interpret the end of the inclination, and subsequently discover the fitting means that allow for filling the shortcoming.(29)
Man, who is by his nature "unfinished", is a case in point. Man by nature does not possess many skills. Nevertheless, he possesses inclinations to acquire the skills he needs. Man possesses the inclination to preserve his life, to cognize the truth, and to live in society. Yet nature itself has not equipped man with sufficient skills even for self-preservation, not to speak of any perfective capability for realizing his uniquely human inclinations. As Plato said, man is born naked and unshod. He would perish if not for art, but art does not arise from nature (from instinct).(30)
Since man differs from the other animals by his possession of reason (nous), his reason permits him to acquire skills that make up for the shortcomings of nature in a higher degree and much more broadly than would animal instinct.
Art is an ability or skill that is both acquired and directed by reason. This conception of art is by the same token broader than today's conception. Art embraces culture as a whole. If there are shortcomings in man, these should be filled, and they are filled by virtue of rational art. Art is culture, and culture is education (paideia). Skills may belong to various domains of culture (theoria, praxis, poiesis), but the process of their acquisition is poiesis, the production of fitting accustomizations or habits. The two, still rather imprecise, conceptions of art -- art as culture based on the virtues, and art as an ability to produce the things necessary to man -- would be interwoven throughout antiquity and the middle ages. What is common to both is that they make up for the shortcomings of nature, that is, they make possible the actualization of various appropriately inclined potencies. There is thus an objective need for art. Human nature always stands in need of art, whereas outside of man nature in most cases acts infallibly. By art man can lead a series of dispositions to perfection, thereby actualizing his own human nature. Mimesis in art can be viewed in the context of nature as dynamic, rather than static.(31)
When art makes up for the defects of nature, it imitates nature with respect to the way nature operates: ars imitatur naturam in sua operatione, as St. Thomas says. Medicine makes good the defects in nature when it leads the organism to health. The tailor's art makes up for our lack of footware. Apart from such arts that complete nature, there are also the "imitative arts" later to be called the the beautiful or fine arts. These include the epic, tragedy, comedy, dithyramb, playing the flute, lyre and pipes, dance and painting. What is their common character, and why are they needed?
Here it is not a question of imitating nature with a view to production (that is characteristic of the arts that complete nature), but rather, the products of the imitative arts imitate something other than themselves. It is easy to understand why we need arts that complete the defects of nature, but why do we need the imitative arts?
Aristotle pointed out that the imitative arts differ one from another with respect to the means they employ, with respect to the objects they imitate, and with respect to the manner in which they imitate. The means of imitation include word, melody, rhythm, and drawing. The object of imitation may be a character, a feeling, or an activity. The manner of imitation may differ, in that the objects of imitation are presented by means of a story (the epic), or introduced as directly active (drama).(32)
Aristotle was interested primarily in the arts that imitate man and his conduct.(33) Hence much more attention was paid to the poetic arts and music than to painting. Painting is static and cannot render the rich dynamism of human life. In keeping with the established tradition, Aristotle regarded music as one of the most mimetic arts, while painting is much less mimetic and the Stagirite paid no special attention to it. Today, on the contrary, traditional painting seems to us to be the most mimetic, while it is not readily apparent to us how or what music imitates. In their arts, the Greeks were most concerned with man as acting, and this is much better rendered by a dynamic than by a static art. Action is a certain motion or change, and this has its source in the human character and in human emotions. Thus Aristotle says simply that in rhythms and melodies we are dealing with the most realistic imitation of anger and mildness, of courage, temperance and their contraries.(34) Aristotle mentions emotions (anger) and features of character that may be virtues (temperance, courage) or vices (by excess or defect). Today the way we view mimesis has been filtered through our knowledge of copy-making, and the paradigm would be supplied by photography, but this is a very misleading approach. We constantly see that imitation is not the making of exact copies, nor are the static visual arts the proper paradigm for the imitative arts. The paradigm is rather to be found in music, although today it is much harder to have a proper sense of this, since music much earlier than painting parted ways from mimesis toward so-called "pure art". Meanwhile, if a motion has its source in a soul of a particular character and particular emotions, it is realized in a fitting rhythm and in definite tonalities. Music employs motion, rhythm and tonalities, and in this way it can imitate a certain form or personality that acts as if it is endowed with a distinct character and distinct emotions.
Dance is also imitative, not because of tone or elevation, but in regard to rhythm, the rhythmic movements of the body, motions that correspond to, and hence imitate, various characters and emotions.(35)
A word is a conventional sign, but a concept (the meaning of the word) is not, but rather is a natural sign. For example, the word man is a conventional sign, since in other languages there are different words that correspond to it, such as czlowiek, der Mensch, homme, etc. Yet the meaning or sense behind the words is the same, and the meaning is nothing other than the concept through which we cognize. The word imitates by virtue of convention, while its meaning is imitative by nature, since it constitutes the intentional counterpart to the cognized thing. Thus the meaning of the word is the intentional counterpart to something real.(36) The poetic arts are mimetic arts, because they work with the word, and the sense of the word is mimetic by nature.
What is the purpose of mimesis? If we take a broader view view of mimesis, it appears to underlie the processes whereby man acquires knowledge and various skills. Aristotle, as opposed to Plato, did not think that the soul pre-existed, nor did he hold to the existence of ideas. Knowledge could not have arisen in man as the result of anamnesis, but must have come about in some other way. According to Aristotle, mimesis is one of the ways in which we acquire knoweldge. Man learns by imitation. We acquire skills by mimesis, as children spontaneously imitate their elders. Imitation broadens our knowledge, and often we must commit something to memory before we can begin to understand it. According to the Stagirite, the act of knowing is the highest act man is capable of. Therefore, not only cognition, but recognition as well must be accompanied by pleasure.(37) We experience pleasure when we recognize the object represented in an imitative work. This is not a question of art for art's sake, but of the fact that something can be recognized because of its mimetic character. The recognition of a likeness is an expansion of knowledge, and this is man's natural desire.(38) For this reason, the works of the mimetic arts must be pleasing by nature. Let us emphasize once again, it is not a question here of the artistic aspect, which can be shaped accord to taste, fashion, epoch or civilization, but of the natural aspect: every man by nature desires to know, and the perception of similarity is one of the chief modes of gathering knowledge. Not only do we recognize something on the basis of similarity, but also, similarity is by nature the ground upon which we create concepts. The ability to grasp similarities is at the foundations of the formation of knowledge in man.(39) The works of the mimetic arts must be pleasing precisely as insofar as they are mimetic. If we were to disregard the principle formulated by Aristotle at the beginning of the Metaphysics, this would entail very serious philosophical consequences. We would either have to resort to the Platonic approach and revert to anamnesis with the resultant angelization of man, or we would have to go in the opposite direction and negate the faculty of reason. If man possesses reason, and the reason is a blank slate, and if knowledge is acquired in stages, then recognition based on similarity must by nature cause man pleasure.(40)
In such a case is the purpose of the imitative arts solely didactic? Of course not. The imitative arts perform a unique function in man's life. Since the end is the most important cause, the cause of causes, the reason for which the other causes (efficient, material and formal) appear, then the Aristotelian conception of mimesis should be explained primarily in terms of the purpose of the imitative arts.
The matter becomes somewhat complex, because Aristotle did not present a full theory of art. His Poetics, such as it has come down to us, discusses only tragedy but is silent about other imitative arts.(41) It is not strange that throughout history there would be differing interpretations of the Aristotelian theory of art.
What is the purpose of tragedy? The Stagirite would reply that the purpose of tragedy is purification (kaqarsis) but purification from what? It is a purification from the emotions (paqhmatwn) of sympathy or pity (eleos) and fear or terror (fobos). A tragedy should evoke in the viewer sympathy and fear, in order subsequently to cleanse him of these emotions.(42) Aristotle is not taking an a priori approach in this understanding of the purpose of tragedy, but it is a characteristic of Greek tragedy. Aristotle's observations and analyses of actual tragic productions led him to see that they have this one common purpose.(43)
When we try to understand what kaqarsis is, we encounter another problem. Aristotle does not explain katharsis in his Poetics,and in his other works he speaks of it only in passing. Let us see first what he says about the emotions mentioned above. They are analyzed not in his Poetics, but in his Rhetoric -- the rhetorician must be knowledgeable about human emotions, which can be decisive of approval or disapproval. His characterization of the emotion called eleos in Greek, shows that it cannot be fully rendered by the word "pity". We have pity on one lower than ourselves, someone we do not esteem and from whom we maintain a certain distance. We might pity a beggar or a battered drunkard, but we feel distant from them. Meanwhile the Greek eleos refers to someone who is either our equal or even our better. In that case the distance disappears. In the scholastic tradition, eleos is rendered as misericordia, mercy, although on the other hand mercy is associated with its Christian religious context, which is alien to the original Greek term. All the same, perhaps it is better to speak of "mercy" rather than "pity", because if pity implies a distance, then the purpose of tragedy is unattainable. What, then, is the cause of mercy? The cause is an evil that is either contrary to natural desire, is unexpected, or is undeserved, as when an innocent man who has done only good suffers misfortune. The last mentioned is the most worthy of mercy, for one who suffers deservedly, who has chosen evil and suffers for his choice, does not elicit mercy. The only exception is when the fault is already somehow a punishment in itself, while if someone benefits from his choice of evil, this evokes a feeling of indignation. Indignation, then, would be the opposite of mercy.
Mercy itself can arise spontaneously, but by upbringing it can be raised to a virtue. Even before Christianity, the Romans already spoke of misericordia as the highest virtue, and so Cicero spoke of Caesar.
Toward whom do we feel mercy? We don't feel mercy toward every man, for we must leave out our very selves and our immediate family, who are in a certain sense a "part" of ourselves. When we are afflicted by an evil we feel may feel pain or terror, but not mercy.
Not everyone is capable of feeling mercy. The proud are certain of their own happiness and think that no evil can befall them. The cowardly as well, who have experienced many misfortunes, are not in a condition to see the sufferings of others. Those who are best predisposed to mercy are those who are neither proud nor cowardly. They can treat an evil that has undeservedly befallen another as their own, because they reckon that such an evil could reach them as well.(44)
Fear (fobos) is caused by an impending evil, or by the mere imagining of an impending misfortune. The only one who does not feel fear is he who thinks that no evil can befall him, or he who is indifferent because he has experienced so much misfortune. When the evil is so great that it lies outside our power, then it is not fear that arises, but despair and resignation. Fear, then, is evoked by an evil (or the imagination of an evil) that we think can be overcome.(45)
It is easy to see the connection between mercy and fear. If an evil that has befallen someone is the cause of mercy, then the appearance of mercy requires that we must regard the evil as one that could also befall us. Since it could befall us, it must evoke fear. This evokes mercy, which fills us with fear.(46)
The aim of tragedy is to evoke feelings in us and then to purify us of them. Kaqarsis would be liberation from these feelings. Unfortunately, Aristotle did not go into detail about the various ways to explain the meaning of kaqarsis, so we could resort to the various ways in which kaqarsis functioned in Greek culture, beginning with religious kaqarsis.(47) We may also consider the moral and metaphysical context of the Stagirite's system as a whole: tragedy serves to restore faith in the good and in the cosmic order despite impending evil. The tragic hero is afflicted by an evil as a result of a so-called tragic fault, a fault resulting not so much from bad will as from ignorance. Such a misfortune could also befall the viewer, and so he feels mercy and also fear. The viewer, however, knows what the tragic hero does not know. When the hero comes to understand his fault he is enlightened, as it were, and then harmony and order are restored. The feelings elicited are no longer necessary and are "purged". The intellect and its act of recognition play a primary role in this process.(48)
What is mimesis in tragedy, according to this conception of tragedy? If the end purpose of tragedy as an imitative art is cleansing, then it is neither truth or realism in a strict sense. Plato regarded truth as the end purpose of art. He had to diminish the value of art because in art he saw too many departures from the truth. The Greeks regarded truth is the domain of science (episthmh), while art concerns what could credibly happen but could be otherwise.(49) Therefore it is difficult to find scientific truth in tragedy. On the other hand, Aristotle clearly thought that the probable, even though merely probable, is still an important part of human life. In morality and art we are dealing with probability.(50) Tragedy is the imitation of human moral attititudes, and these attitudes are subject to variation and may vary according to the things which are their objects. If, then, the end of tragedy is a kaqarsis of feelings of mercy and fear, then the other elements of tragedy in and of themselves cannot be "realistic" for reality's sake, because that is not the end purpose of tragedy. In order to lead to purification, a tragedy must be properly constructed, and "departures from reality" are then not only permitted, but essential. Notwithstanding this, mimesis is preserved. How can this be explained?
It is relatively easy to explain, for if mimesis is not the making of copies, then reality must be treated as the material of art, and not something that art must duplicate. Thus in many passages of his Poetics Aristotle associates mimesis with a departure from reality. He says that art presents reality not merely as it is, but as it should be or as people say it is. (1460b10) He also states that art presents what can happen according either probably or necessarily (1451a37); that certain elements are selected from reality in view of their likelihood (1451b30); and that one must present them according to imitation and not reality. Although art involves possibility, likelihood, necessity, obligation, credibility rather than reality as such, nevertheless art involves imitation. Does the notion of mimesis or imitation become meaningless, if art is so far removed from reality? The problem is intriguing. It must be examined first from the point of view of what is being imitated, and then from the point of view of the end purpose of the imitation.
Aristotle's conception of mimesis is integrally joined with his conception of nature, and in particular with this conception of being. Being is not only that which is in act, but also that which is in potency, since change could not otherwise be explained, as change is the actualization of potency. Wood is in potency both to being a chest, a table, or a cabinet. In such a case the imitation of reality may concern not only that which is actual, but also that which is in potency, for reality is potentialized. That which is in potency sooner or later is actualized.(51) The most frequent basis for those arts that make up for the shortcomings of nature is that they "artificially" actualize a potency, which due to certain obstacles cannot be actualized. However, while the arts that complete nature actualize this potency, there is a different situation in the mimetic arts. When Aristotle speaks of real potency, what he has in mind is a potency that sooner or later will be realized, but this is with respect to the species, for the species lasts forever, while at any moment the concrete individual may be destroyed. If this is so, it is then clear why Aristotle says that poetry is not history, that history speaks of events that have taken place and concerns particulars, while poetry concerns that which is general. Hence poetry is more philosophical than history.(52) "Poetic" events could take place, although history testifies that at a given moment they had not taken place . Yet in the perspective of the species, if the events are in potency, then they will happen, and this is what the poetic grasps. Since the species corresponds to our intellectual conception under the form of the universal, for the same reason poetry, although it concerns individual things and matters, is, as it were, universal. To be universal, then, means to happen sooner or later, and so it may happen to any concrete individual, although this is not necessary but only probable.(53)
Artistic imitation differs from history in that it does not concern itself with facts as such, and it differs from science in that it is not based on the necessary, but on the likely. Let us remember that Aristotle's analysis concerns dramatic mimesis, a mimesis connected with human action, and different scenarios may be played out in human action, to speak in today's language. If its object is human conduct, it is in a certain sense a reality, that is, a given activity is not merely likely or probable, but "ought" to take place. If it is already taking place, then something else must be necessary (in terms of hypothetical or conditional necessity).(54)
We see that the object of imitation is very elastic, but not to the point of being arbitrary. Such is the nature of reality: it is both composite and potential; it is concrete but is also an apt basis for making generalizations. All this is involved in mimesis, and so mimesis can serve as appropriate material for art. Yet how the matter is arranged depends upon the end purpose, that is, upon the reason for the mimesis. Here the mimicked reality will be subject to further reworking.
If tragedy is intended to purify us of feelings of mercy and fear, it must first evoke those feelings. Many factors are involved in the evocation of these feelings, and these factors are logically interconnected. The most important is the story (muqos), the pattern of events. This pattern or arrangement of events is the most difficult element of tragedy, and it must be such as to evoke mercy and fear. Next, the characters and emotions must fit the pattern of events, for they both are at the source of the likelihood of a particular action rather than some other. To these are added the particular figures, and these are best drawn from mythology, as they are known to all. In the action and in the production, the principle upon which the whole work depends is the end purpose. The other causes, which may be reduced to the reality mimicked, are ordered to the end. It is the end, and not the truth, that determines what is fitting. Paradoxically, even if the playwright selects an actual event or historical figure, the value of the work is not based on factuality, but on the work's purposeful construction. Authentic facts as such are the domain of history. If certain facts are appropriate in a work of art, it is on mimetic grounds, that is, those facts are likely, or hypothetically necessary.
Other elements of the tragedy must be correlated with the pattern of events and the characters. These elements include action, language, spectacle, song, diction, thought and decoration. A courageous character should not express the thoughts of a coward, nor should an eloquent man stammer. In this connection, when particular figures come on scene, if they have been selected because they are known to the viewers as having a certain character and within the context of the particular story, then some events of their life or some personal traits may be radically reworked, because the criterion for their selection is not the truth, but the purpose of the work. Likewise, if what people commonly say about reality is more appropriate to the work of art than reality such as it is, then the good author composes his work out of what people say rather that the way things are. The "reality" of mimetic art is reconstructed. This is mimesis, because reality is the source, whether it is reality as concrete, changing and the realm of the unpredictable, or reality as the ground of general concepts, stable and true.
Moreover, the work is directed to the spectator, and the spectator must be convinced, otherwise it cannot evoke the intended emotions in him. On this account, the artist must take into account how both the material and the entire construction of the work are appropriate for the viewer. Then it may result in a situation where something which in objective terms is impossible with respect to the dramatical construction and even more so with respect to the viewer, may still be accepted as credible. Aristotle does not hesitate to say that a credible thing that is impossible is better than a possible thing that is unconvincing to the spectator. If mimesis is treated as mere copying, then such a position would be untenable, but then, mimesis is not at all copying. Unfortunately, beginning with Plato up to the present, we find critics who search for the inevitable inaccuracies and lapses that can be encountered in the works of most great artist, such Plato in his critiques of Homer. This approach, however, shows that such critics lack the ability to properly differentiate science, history and art. Not only did Aristotle avoid this mistake, but he did better, explaining why the artist has the right to various "abuses" or "shortcomings." As a realist, he showed that mimesis is not the same as naturalism or realism. On the other hand, the idealists demand realism of mimesis, just as untalented artists try to justify the defects in their work by an appeal to realism, which is a peculiar paradox.(55)
If mimesis has purification for its purpose, then art cannot be supplanted by science or morality. Art allows for a "painless" interiorization of the reality that surrounds us, while at the same time it allows our spirit to engage in rational and ordered activity. There are aspects of reality in the broad sense, and of our personal lives, which are outside the range or field of interest of the other domains of culture. These aspects must also be ordered, and this happen through art.
Art as mimetic with respect to its final cause adjusts man's activity to the order of the cosmos as a whole, and the cosmos is tied together by love for the Unmoved Mover. This love first moves the stars, and then the other spheres as far as the sublunary world. The love of the end is rational, because the end itself is reason (noesis noeseos noesis) and only it can be seen only by reason (the stars are intelligences). Human creativity flows out of love for the end, and at the same time the end lies at the basis of rationality. Art, then, is a work of the reason. As a work of the reason it imitates the supreme intelligible unity of the first cause, though by the mediation of plurality. If plurality is to imitate unity, it must exist intelligibly, and so it must be organized harmoniously. This is the function of art.(56)
Plotinus' system of emanation is the last synthesis of hellenistic culture, a synthesis of great philosophical originality. At its foundations we could probably find motifs drawn from oriental religions. Emanation is one such motif, bringing into a unity a holistic vision of reality. Emanation was typical of solar religions such as the Persian Parsees, with whom Plotinus was acquainted from his role in Caesar Gordian's expedition against the Persians. This time, it was not Greek myths, but eastern ones that were subjected to a rationalization, and these rationalized myths filled some of the gaps in the philosophical systems of Plato, Aristotle and the stoics. Plato's theory of how the world came to be was more mythological than philosophical. Aristotle's theory generally assumed that the world was without a beginning, and the stoic theory was intertwined with a materialistic pantheism. The theory of emanation allowed for a unification of the philosophical vision of reality, and in its various forms it has become the most influential theory even to this day.(57)
In a simplified version, the system may be described as follows: the primary source may be compared to the sun; from this source particular hypostases are emanated in their turn, until the final term where emanation ends, where that which has been emanated can no longer emanate anything else. At that point there is a great return to the sources: that which has come to existence, returns to that from which it arose. This is the downward path (proodos) and the upward path (epistrofh), a successive emanation and a successive return. Plotinus' system is a great pantheistic vision, and only Christian creationism was able to contend with it.
While in Aristotle's metaphysics we find only a weak exposition of mimesis, although it did play some role, mimesis is omnipresent in Plotinus' system of emanation. Each hypostasis is a mimesis of its source. Thus it is not strange that Plotinus employed an intricate and nuanced terminology to explain in order to explain mimetic relations. We find terms that variously correspond to similarity, image, appearance, shape, mental image, figure, trace, and shadow (indalma, mimhma, icnos, omoiwsis, omoiotes, eikwn, eidwlon, skia, mimhsis, omoiwma, omoeidhs).(58)
Everything must be involve mimesis, because all things in their proper turn originate from something higher, and by the same token each thing must bear upon itself some mark of its origin. The differentiation of the types of mimesis is drawn from the variety of emanata.(59) Plotinus differs from Plato, and indeed from Greek philosophy as a whole, because he includes matter in the chain of origination, and he differs from Aristotle in including form in this chain. The efficient and final cause are ultimately the same -- the first source is at the same time the end.
At the summit is found the original One, which is neither material, nor spiritual, nor even a being. It is beyond being. From it emanates Spirit-Intellect, whose object is being. The soul emanates from Intellect, and the material world emanates from soul. Each of the hypostases contains a trace, similarity, shape, and image of that from which it takes its origin, a higher hypostasis. Thus Intellect is similar to the primal One, Soul is similar to Intellect, and the world is similar to Soul.(60)
The process of emanation is a necessary process. It results from the nature of the good: that which is good, to be good must spread, and so the original One as Good must emanate. In such measure as each succeeding hypostasis imitates the goodness of the source, it also emanates until its power is ultimately exhausted in matter.
The process of emanation is an effect of contemplation. Plotinus eliminated the Demiurge by assigning a power of efficient causality to contemplation as such. Ideas as the primary exemplars do not exist in any mythological pleroma, but quite simply in Intellect. The intellect contains the ideas within itself, and it generates ideas when it is engaged in contemplation. The soul, however, is partly immersed in the world that it has emanated, and in part it is beyond the world -- it participates in the life of Intellect. The soul, as it were, "stands out" beyond the world. Everything that has an origin in something else is a mimesis of its origin, and it is a degradation of its source. At the same time, as it is similar to its source, it is a thread along which a return to the source will come about. Because of similarity, the whole universe is permeated with sympathy, and on this account the universe is also a cosmos, that is, an ordered whole.(61)
Plato disparaged the imitative arts on ontological, epistemological and pedagogical grounds. The main point to his objection was that these arts are an imitation of something which itself is an imitation. These arts are then the weakest kind of being, far removed from truth and appealing to what is lowest in man. The only possibility for rehabilitating art was through the conception of divine madness (mania), although such mania belongs to the mythological order rather than to the philosophical order. Plato overlooked other possibilities, for example, that the artist might know the ideas and in their light he might create works of the imitative arts. This would have been a sufficient answer to the objection that imitation was too distant from its object. Plotinus was the first to fall upon an idea that would be a milestone for the history of art and of culture: the artist has an ability to contemplate the original exemplars of all things. From this moment on, art is no longer merely an imitation of the world of nature, but of the ideas themselves.(62)
Thus the statue of Zeus by Pheidias is not the result of selecting the best human features, but an effect materialized in marble of his contemplation of the idea of the Greek god.(63) Plato, however, could not voice a similar view, because the human soul (the reason) during its earthly sojourn does not know the ideas, but only reminds itself of them. The soul (reason) has seen the ideas before its entry into the body, and perhaps after leaving the body some souls may see the ideas again. In the present state, however, the ideas are merely recalled (anamnesis). These conceptions are modified in Plotinus' system -- cognition is no longer anamnesis, and the soul in its present state, including the soul of the artist, is capable of contemplating the original exemplars.
According to Plotinus, man is not a condemned soul lodged in the body for some past fault, though this was the opinion of Plato and the cult of Orpheus, but rather the soul is the result of a necessary emanation. The soul's ontic structure is unique, because it contains both an earthly element (the body, vivified by the soul) and a superterrestrial element -- the intellect. The intellect is not completely immersed in matter, but "stands out" beyond it, and the soul can wander about the higher regions of being. The human intellect was never entirely cast down to earthly life, and so Plotinus could say -- and this sounds very sublime today -- that there is no need to rise to the level of the gods, because our intellect has never left the heights, and so the gods themselves may come to us.(64) It is only a question of purifying our life of the body and senses, so that the intellect might see the ideas and man might even experience a unique hypernoetic (superveridical) ecstasy and join with the original One. All this can be accomplished in the present life.
Thus both the sage (philosopher) and the artist can contemplate the ideas. Since there are few sages, acts of pure contemplation are very rare, and most people live the life of the senses. In this state of affairs, the masses need art to remind them that they are not of this world, that this world is only a mimesis of the higher world.(65)
As the artist contemplates the original divine exemplars, the models for the entire world of nature, he can create a beauty higher than the beauty of nature, but if he focuses on nature as such, then his work will not even be as beautiful as nature.(66)
The mimesis of a higher beauty, and both nature and art share this mimesis, is neither duplication not creativity for its own sake.(67) The original exemplars or models are the paradigm of being and beauty, and any departure from them is a sign of degradation, while any approach to them increases being and beauty. Harmony plays a special role here, and Plotinus adds to harmony simplicity of form and of color. Harmony is the property of domains of the imitative arts such as painting, sculpture, dance, pantomime, and in many cases these start from a sensible model rather than from an idea. This harmony, however, is an imitation of the simplicity of the ideas and so it also can lead one to "the other world."(68)
Since all beings procede in stages from the original One, Plotinus does not disparage the sensible world to the same degree as does Plato. In mimesis he accents the similarity and relatedness of the various hypostases to their source. This is the reason why his "mimological" terminology is so highly developed. All things come from the original One and return to it. That which originates from another is similar to it, and being similar, it can return. Art is a mimesis not of the world, but of the ideas. It is lower than philosophy, but is necessary to all who are not philosophers, because it reminds them that man is not from this world. It reminds them of this when it imitates the higher beauty, even if it does this by means of sense images.
Yet if the end of art is to invoke higher beauty, then according to Plotinus, that beauty must be joined with the Good for two reasons. Beauty can be either not attractive enough, or too attractive. The Good is the cause of attraction and should temper the attractiveness of beauty. Without the good, the work of art is too entwined in sensuality and does not raise the soul high enough.(69)
Plotinus' system of emanation is then also the most mimetic system, for everything arises by way of emanation, and as emanated it is similar to its source to such a degree that it can return there. Yet this system is, more than anything else, the artistic construction of an inspired mind, in which facts play a merely instrumental role. Just as emanation is necessary, so mimesis is necessary, the former on account of an excess of the good, and the latter on account of a desire to return to the good of all that originates from the good. We should emphasize Plotinus' conviction that mimesis is not something external added on to art, but is an essential part of the process. In turn, the superintelligibility of the original One is the reason for the inadequacy of most attempts at expressing in words what the original One is; such formulations are usually negative, and if positive, they are metaphorical. In this way, Plotinus' neoplatonism unintentionally opens for art (the raw material for art being metaphor) a way leading to the First Principle of all things, a way that is above philosophy. This step would be taken not by him, but by his successors.
We are familiar with the use of terms such as create, creation, and creativity in a religious context, but they also occur in philosophical and artistic discourse. Thus not only do we say that God created the world, but also the artist created the work. To create (in the primary sense of the term) is to call into being something which previously was not, and to call it not out of something, but "out of nothing." If it is creatio, then it is ex nihilo.
In the Greek, Hellenistic and Roman tradition, it was inconceivable that something could arise out of nothing. This was regarded as an evident contradiction, because ex nihilo nihil fit -- from nothing comes nothing.(70) A coming-into-being must always be from something. That something was either eternally existing matter, which was Plato's position, or the eternally existing world, as Aristotle held, or the highest principle -- the original One, from which constantly new forms of being came forth, and this was the position of Plotinus. It was not only difficult to understand, but even difficult to imagine, how something could arise from nothing.
It is common knowledge that the new conception of the coming to being of the world appears in western culture with the development of Christianity. The passages of the Old Testament which speak of creation found their way into intense philosophical and theological disputes, in particular the words of Genesis I, 1: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. He did not make them out of another material, nor did he emanate them, but he created them.(71) Since this formula is found in the Sacred Scriptures, it has the status of a dogma that must be believed. Yet what is the content of that belief? One must at least understand what one believes. The basic desire to understand immediately opens the field for philosophy.(72)
It is interesting that the dogma of creation, although it comes from the Old Testament, was not interpreted in a strictly creationist sense in the Jewish tradition under the influence of hellenism. The hellenist Jews acknowledged that the world was indeed created, but some such as Philo the Jew said that it was created by an Angel rather than by God. Some even rejected the dogma, such as Pseudo-Philo, and others were less interested in the metaphysical aspect of creation, and more in the chronological aspect, asking what happened on each of the seven days of creation.(73) Only in Christianity did the conception of creation acquire the philosophical precision necessary to distinguish creation from reproduction and emanation. The Christian reception of Greek philosophy clearly played an important role in this. Although Greek philosophy was associated with a diametrically opposed image of the world, man and God, it nevertheless provided Christianity with scientific methods for knowing reality.(74)
The theory of creation, the common heritage of all Christians, found its fullest and most consistent elaboration in the system of Saint Thomas Aquinas. He did not start from religious premises known by revelation, but philosophical, rational and empirical knowledge acquired by way of natural cognition.(75)
Creation can be variously interpreted, depending primarily upon the conception of being. If one accepts the Aristotelian conception of being, then creation would at most be a kind of transformation of pre-existing material. Given the Plotinian theory of being, creation is at most emanation. For creation really to be creation, and not transformation or emanation, a new conception of being is necessary. We encounter such a new conception of being for the first time in the work of Saint Thomas Aquinas.(76)
Aquinas was the first to provide an exposition of that element in being that is the reason for the fact of being, the reason for reality, without which there would be nothing. Although the Arabs had already drawn attention to this element, they were unable to perceive its full authentic role, perhaps on account of an excessive attachment to the positions of Aristotle. Thomas Aquinas discovered that anything is a being when it simply EXISTS. It is this existence, not the form or the unity, which is the most important reason of being, and without existence there is nothing. About two millenia had to pass before philosophers perceived something so obvious. Existence is the first and the basic act that decides the fact of being and the perfection of anything. While in Aristotle's theory matter had been treated as potency and form as act, Thomas found it necessary to revise this theory: form is act in relation to matter, but form is potency in relation to existence; existence is the act of acts, for a being is actually a being only when it exists.(77)
If to be a being means to exist, then we are faced with the question: what is the reason why a particular being possesses existence? Does it owe this existence merely to itself? No being directly known to use possesses the reason for its being within itself. The beings of our experience do not exist on their own account, and at any moment they may cease to exist. They must possess a reason for existence beyond themselves. The existence of each being is contingent, unnecessary, and so if a particular being does exist, then the reason for its existence must lie beyond itself in another being to whose essence 'to-exist' belongs. Only such a being does not need a reason for existence beyond itself (existence is his essence), and only such a being can bestow existence, that is, CREATE. This being is the Absolute, called God in religious language.(78) The existence of all other beings originates from the Absolute.(79) Hence the power of creation conceived as the bestowment of existence is something that cannot be transmitted to another. No being created by God can further create anything, and so no other being can bestow existence. In order for a being to bestow existence, existence must belong to that being's essence, but this is impossible, because there is only one Absolute, while other beings must be composed of essence and existence as different elements.(80) In this way, the existential conception of being prevents any confusion of creationism with emanationism.
Are the remaining elements of being, such as matter and form, created or not? It turns out that they also must be created. Matter conceived as pure potency is not in itself a being, but only an element of being. Likewise form, although it is act in relation to matter, is merely a part of being. For matter and form as part of being to be parts of real being, they must be found under actual existence. Neither matter nor form are anything prior to being, as something that already was and to which existence comes afterward. If there is a being, then immediately it is in its entirety, as composed of matter and form, under actual existence. Form and matter also must be created by the Absolute. These parts cannot be regarded as independent of each other in reality. They are not beings by themselves, but components of a being.
The Absolute is also the exemplar cause for each created being in particular, since there are only concrete beings, but there are no general beings. Every being is a distinct being possessing a reason for its existence and its content (identity) in the Absolute.(81) God is also the final cause for all creatures. Every being that is subject to change acts for an end-good designated by its nature. This nature is created by God, hence the end-good-perfection of each being presupposes an ultimate reference to the Creator.(82) Creatio then means that the Absolute is at the same time the efficient, exemplar, and final cause of all beings.(83)
How, then, should we understand the formulation "ex nihilo"? As Thomas explains, it has at least two meanings. The first, from nothing, is not in the sense of a material cause, as a chest is built of wood, and being from nothing, as if nothing itself were a kind of matter. Ex nihilo designates a negation of any material cause: matter did not exist prior to being. The second sense of ex nihilo designates an imagined sequence, not an instance of causation. It designates a succession, since dawn is not the cause of the midday, although midday comes out of the morning (ex mane). However, the sequence of the morning and the midday is real, while in the case of creation, the sequence is merely in the imagination: before being there was non-being, that is, nothing was. Our language, as it is based on real changes, is not capable of rendering the essence of creation positively and to the end, and so in order to understand, we must resort to a negation.(84)
No being, with the exception of God, possesses its reason for existence in itself. Each being must be created by God. It does not matter that the coming into existence of beings involves various changes, because these changes themselves are beings without independent existence, and so they have their reason for existence in God.(85)
Creation is not a composition from pre-existing elements, because there were no such elements prior to creation. As an act of God, an act of an absolutely simple, immaterial and infinitely perfect being, creation is devoid of all motion.(86) At the same time, God's creative power cannot be transmitted to any other being, because this power comes from his infinite perfection, while all created beings are composed (of matter, form and existence, or of form and existence) and limited. They cannot be in a disposition to create, nor can they be an instrument of creation. Thomas firmly rejects the attempts of the Arab and Jewish philosophers influenced by neoplatonism to take the responsibility away for creation from God and assign it to some angel or hypostasis. Only God can create, and if some affirm that someone else can create, that is an abuse of the word creation, which is something other than emanatio.(87)
Creation differs from emanation further in that the former is the result of an act of free will (created beings do not at all have to exist, as is evident from our daily experience), while the latter is a something necessary, since it was held that self-diffusion belongs to the essence of the good.(88) Meanwhile, the Absolute as infinite Good is not found in a relation of necessity to anything and does not need to create anything in order to confirm the Good. If he creates, it is only because he wills to create.(89) Furthermore, if the being created by the Absolute is rational, if in that being the principles of identity, which lie at the foundations of rational thought, find realization, then the Absolute himself is identified with Intellect; Intellect is not merely some lower hypostasis, as in emanation theory.(90) Finally, in emanationism, both the original One and indeed every hypostasis is in a certain a material cause of that which arises from it, while in creationism God is in no sense a material cause of the beings created by him.(91) If the Absolute were such a material cause, then creation would no longer be creation, and the inevitable result would be the position of panentheism: the world would be in some way a part of God. Meanwhile God is completely transcendent to the world. Beings are not created out of God but by his power. God can create, for his perfection is boundless, and only a boundless perfection is capable of calling to existence something that did not exist. Greek philosophy and neoplatonism, which remained under the influence of Greek philosophy, had no positive conception of infinite perfection, but only such perfection allows for creativity in the full sense.(92)
It is only in the context of the new theory of being that we may see what creatio is and how it differs from poihsis and from emanation. In a non-existential theory of being, one cannot develop a theory of creation as creation. Hence the employment of this term will always be misleading in the context of other metaphysical system, not to speak of other ontologies, and creation will be interpreted either simply as production or as emanation, but not as creation.
` If every being is created by God, and God is its exemplar, efficient and final cause, then each being must bear a mark of its origin. God is infinite in his perfection, but the derived and limited perfection of every other being is an imitation of the perfection of God himself.(93)
Let us examine this problem first under the aspect of the mode of divine cognition.(94) God possesses the idea of each thing he has created, of each thing and not of its species, because the species is only necessary in the human mode of cognition.(95) If we were to regard the divine ideas as we regard ideas or concepts in our own intellect, we would have to negate the absolute simplicity of God. Our ideas are distinct from us, but there is no such differentiation in God who is absolutely simple. How, then, can we reconcile the plurality of ideas with the simplicity of the Absolute? It was this difficulty that compelled Plotinus to locate the original One higher than Intellect, for the original One cannot contain any composition, and such composition seems to be contained by the cognizing Intellect. In turn, in the case of Aristotle, the highest principle could be treated as Nous, but only because nothing proceded from it. Nous thinks itself exclusively.(96) Plato had located the ideas in the Pleroma, but not in the Demiurge or in the Idea of the Good. The question remains: how can we reconcile the absolute simplicity of God with God as Intellect containing the ideas of the things he has created? Does not creationism somehow disturb the absolute simplicity of the First Being?
The solution Thomas found to this is strikingly original and consistent. His solution was made possible by creationism. If we acknowledge that God in his simplicity is infinitely perfect and that every being has its origin from God, then every limited perfection participates in the infinite perfection. It is not the case that God exists as infinite perfection in isolation and that various other othings as finite perfections exist in their own isolation. Other things are derivative in relation to God, which suggests participation, and totally dependent upon him: without God they would not exist in any respect. Thus they must somehow imitate God, but God's infinite perfection allows for an infinite number of possible ways in which he may be imitated. God in knowing himself can know every being that originates from him, knowing these beings through himself, not through any ideas distinct from himself, for every being that derives from God is merely an "aspective" imitation of God. Unlike man, God does not need to go outside himself in order to know, because man knows beings which already exist, but God himself constitutes the reason for all beings. Furthermore God does not need to possess any exemplar ideas along the lines of the ideas man possesses, because every being originates from God and imitates him. God, in seeing himself, sees all the various possible ways in which his own being could be imitated. Such is the specific character of the divine creative cognition.(97)
God, insofar as he is infinite, can be imitated in an infinite number of ways, although not all these ways must be realized, since the creative act is a free act. The beings created by God are hierarchical and analogical. They are hierarchical in the sense that they imitate God in various degrees, better or worse. They are analogical in the sense that each being is a distinct being. The beings that imitate God to the greatest degree, and these are beings that possess reason and will, are called images and likenesses of God (they are also called persons, from the Greek prosopon and the latin persona, which terms designated a mask or image), while inanimate beings and those that possess merely vegetative life, or sensation but without freedom or understanding, are not images of God, but still point to their cause, and so are called traces of God (vestigium Dei).(98) Being is analogical because each being, as it originates as an individual from God, also imitates God as an individual, not merely according to some general schematic. Otherwise, we would be dealing with univocity rather than analogy. The consequence would be that creation would be identical with emanation, and being would be reduced to thought. God's creative thought is concrete, because only concrete things have real existence.(99)
As created, each being is immediately caused by the Absolute, and so exists according to the measure and love of the Absolute. In Plotinus' theory every successive hypostasis is somehow a falling to a lower level in relation to the previous hypostasis, while only Intellect has an immediate connection with the original One. Furthermore a thing imitates the hypostasis that immediately precedes it, while in Thomas' theory a thing always imitates God as its immediate source of being. In turn, Thomas differs from Plato and the Arab philosophers in emphasizing that each being refers to God as an individual rather than as a species.
On the one hand, Thomas' metaphysics of mimesis constructed on the existential conception of being gives a true unity to reality as a whole. On the other hand, it allows us to preserve the essential differentiation of beings, thus protecting us against pantheism and panentheism. The world is neither God nor a part of God, but it is created by God. As created, it imitates its Creator in many ways, since the measure of the act of being of each contingent being is the degree to which it imitates the Absolute Being. There is no perfection that is not an imitation of God's perfection. In the creationist conception of how being came to be, mimesis is decidedly analogical.(100)
While in the conceptions of Plato and Plotinus, art could be an imitation of how the world came to be, and so the artist himself was apparently made into a god, in the existential-creationist vision of reality this is impossible. Only God can create, and as there is but one God, one can only conceive of creation in only one way, as a divine act. There is no grey area of middle opinions here. No contingent being is in a position to create anything.
Although man is created "in the image and likeness" of God, he is a contingent being. The man who is an artist is not capable of creating in the strictly metaphysical sense. The artist indeed does create something in the derivative sense of "create", but not in the same sense as God creates. The difference between the artist and God is essential in many respects.(101)
The artist, as a contingent being, does not possess his existence by essence, and so also he is not capable of giving existence to anything, even in his most magnificent work. Every work produced by the artist exists by virtue of the existence of the material from which it was made, while the meaning of the work depends upon the acts of the person who perceives it. The most beautiful sculpure of Pheidias or Rodin would not exist without marble. The sculptures exist with the existence of the marble. In turn, if there were no one to view these works, they would be mere chunks of marble, Zeus or the Thinker.(102)
The artist, as he does not create existence, does not create the matter from which the work arises. Matter is already found ready in nature, and even if it requires preparation for the sake of the work, as pigments must be prepared, all such transformations of matter presuppose at the start that the artist must use some raw material. The work of art, then, is not ex nihilo, but from pre-existent material.(103)
The artist as such is not the exemplar cause of his work. The exemplar is found in his cognitive faculties (the imagination, the intellect), and the exemplar comes forth from these faculties. The exemplar, then, cannot be identified with the artist nor with his faculties. The poet's verse is not the poet, nor is it his imaginative faculty, but it is found in his imagination or his Intellect. If the exemplar cause is not the artist, then it does not participate in his essence (a verse is not humanity), but it is simply found within the artist.(104) Neither is the artist the final cause of his work. The work may be done for someone else. Furthermore, the work is intended to be viewed or listened to by another, and so it is not for its own sake, but as actualized in intentional acts, it becomes an immanent part of those acts, while being is not a part of God's "thoughts".(105)
Creation is the only act that does not involve either a motion or the use of instruments, while the work of the artist involves the movement of thought and of imagined representations transposed to external material with the help of his tools. The artist's work may be arduous and may take years, while creation is performed beyond time, as time itself is created.(106)
All the elements of being are created by God, while at the foundations of artistic creativity we find the "composition" and "division" of something that is already there at hand. The artist does not create in the primary sense, nor does he co-create, but his work simply presupposes creation. The work of art as resting upon a particular material such as wood or marble exists with the existence of the material, and as a sign it exist with the existence of the acts of a man that are directed toward it, but does not have its own existence.
From the point of view of the categories of being, all artefacts are classed among the accidents, but are not counted as substances.(107) The artist is not in a position to create a substance, for a true living lion does not come into existence by the work of the sculpture. The operations of the artist are operations upon accidents that perform the function of a sign. Art, then, is not in any respect creation in the strict sense, creation such as is attributed to the Absolute alone. There is no other creation.(108)
The categories of art do not apply to the creative ideas of God along the lines of Plotinian ideas, for the ideas are God himself as knowing himself, and God is transcendent in relation to man.(109)
How does realistic philosophy explain the phenomenon of human creativity? If the human soul is created in the strict sense, and has not existed from eternity, then we must exclude any possibility of anamnesis. If the divine ideas are identical with the transcendent God, then we must reject any thought of a mediating cognition of creative ideas. If man is not God, then he does not have the power to create. Thus the ideas that serve as the exemplars for works of art must be produced on the basis of reality such as it is found and cognized by man, and there is no other way for art to come about. Such creativity out of given material also presupposes that reality itself is apt for human creativity, and that man is aptly endowed to be a quasi-creator. Reality is apt on account of its composition of potency and act, and reality is pliable, although not a completely passive mass, but as a potency determined by a particular form and dynamized in a particular direction. As for man's aptness, Thomas' distinction between what are called first intentions and second intentions is of key importance.
Man is not born into a pleroma of ideas, nor does he possess any cognitive apriori ideas. Thus the original content of cognition is drawn from the reality surrounding man, and this reality supplied man in this way with the foundations for the development of his personal, scientific, religious and artistic life. That which is the center of the interiorization or assimilation of reality with the help of the various cognitive faculties is called first intentions.(110) First intentions are not that which we know, but that by which we know. We know real things by the mediation of impressions, mental representations and concepts. That which I see now is, for example, a chair, but for the chair to be known, a vicarious form must be produced in my faculties, and through this form the chair is seen. There is no other possibility, if we are to know real things, such things that we do not create, but which on the other hand do not really enter into us (the stone does not fall into the eye when it is seen). Things must be apprehended by the mediation of a similarity, a similarity that is completely diaphanous, so that it is the thing that is seen rather than the intention.(111) There are two kinds of mediating factors, sensory and intellectual, for man knows things by sense and intellect together.
However, human cognition is not exclusively oriented to objects: man is also capable of reflecting upon the the object and mode of his cognition.(112) In such a reflection, one can make the first intention itself, the diaphanous medium, into the chief object of intention. Logic does this when it performs operations upon species and genera, which are nothing other than second intentions, and art does it as well in its own way.(113) The number of intentions in our cognitive powers is virtually unlimited, because the cognition of each contentual aspect of being is performed with the help of diaphanous media.
Art can cross over to the second intentions in order to perform upon them the operations traditionally described as composition and division. These second intentions can either be joined one to another, or divided, even to such a degree that the result corresponds to nothing in reality. Thomas writes: est enim quaedam operatio animae in homine quae dividendo et componendo format diversas rerum imagines, etiam quae non sunt a sensibus acceptae -- there is a certain operation of the soul in man that, by dividing and combining, forms various images of things, even such as are not received by the senses.
Art begins from the wealth and differentiation contained in the first intentions, which as objects form the material for artistic operations. Thomas, like Aristotle, is not concerned that some works of art may not have any counterpart in reality. Art is mimesis or imitation, not duplication or creation. The genesis of all works of art may be found in the first intentions, which does not mean at all that the genesis should be identified with the finished work.(114) The finished work contains something new, though not new in absolute terms, that is, in the sense of a creation ex nihilo.(115)
We can see that art, from Plato to Thomas Aquinas, is treated as a kind of imitation of reality which is neither a duplication or copying, nor a creation in the strict sense. It cannot be a duplication, since reality cannot be duplicated, nor can it be a creation, since man does not possess such a power, which belongs to God alone. Moreover, if duplication or copying consists in the production of something identical to its model, it would be creation, but man is not in a position to create a duplicate of any real being. On this account, in terms of reality, duplication can take place only on the level of artifacts: one product is a copy of another, but the work of art is not a copy of a real being, but at most a likeness, an image, or something of that sort. Duplication in this sense does not presuppose any primary creativity on the part of the artisan, because every artifact exists by virtue of the existence of the material which man finds at hand either immediately, such as wood or stone, or indirectly, as some transformed material.
In this case, then, what is imitation or creation in the human sense? Why are composition and division not merely a mechanical collage, but permit us to arrive at a unity, not indeed a substantial unity, but at least an intentional one? The work of the artist is an actualization of potency. In the real order, potency is an attribute of matter, and because of its matter, a being is subject to change and can be multiplied, and matter alone as potency makes it possible that something composite can simultaneously be one being. Matter as matter by itself does not exist, but it is always found in a composition under some actual form. If we say of some piece of wood or stone that it is matter, in reality it is already a composite of matter and form.(116)
What is matter, if the only way we can isolate it is by our intellects? Matter is pure potentiality. Of itself it does not possess any determinations. Every determination comes from form. Matter can be actualized only by various forms, and this can be seen in substantial changes. By the mediation of substantial changes matter runs its course through the entire animate and inanimate world.(117)
If matter is pure potency, then matter itself does not present any obstacles in the actualization or determination of any particular being.(118) Such obstacles may come from a form insofar as it determines matter, when the entirety (matter under the particular form) puts up a resistance, and the actualization may oppose the inclinations that come out of the form-nature. In the real order art is the actualization of potentialities that are directed by a form. These potentialities are directed by substantial form when art heals nature. They are directed by an accidental form when art employs nature for its own ends. The actualization is either the removal of obstacles or the strengthening of the inclination. Paidea or education is the strengthening of an inclination by repetition, whereby something like a "second nature" arises. In the case of the imitative arts, the actualization of potency does not meet resistance from the substantial form of the being that is imitated, and on this account the actualization has a broader range. In reality we cannot make a centaur, but we can paint or sculpt one. There must be an initial potency that will be actualized at the starting point of the imitative arts. However, there will not be a true proportion between matter and form, because the form can appear in the role of a substantial form, although in reality it is merely an accidental form.
The theory of act and potency allows us to travel through the order of real change and artificial change. This theory was still unknown to Plato. For him reality was an hierarchy of acts in the order of the ideas, or else shadows of the ideas in the order of the sensible world.(119) The imitative arts thus could not possess their own proper act, but merely pointed toward a true act by way of another shadow. For Plato, only substantial forms existed, and every meaning had to possess its own independent counterpart in the world of ideas. Aristotle, on the other hand, not only denied the need of resorting to an ideal world, but moreover distinguished form-essence from form-accident. The latter is not a being in itself, but in a substance. On this account the field of mimesis in art can be broadened and given more value. Accidental forms, although they are not substances, are still real, and they constitute the basis of the imitative arts, and also serve actualization without substantial change. For Plato, act was only in the order of essence, without any dynamism or potency, and without any accidents. Mimesis could only be a degraded essence. For Aristotle, on the other hand, mimesis could even give nobility to the meaning of a being, as took place in tragedy. In mimesis there can be a greater degree of actualization of character than in reality.
Plotinus' system of emanation brought greater coherence to platonism. However, there we are dealing with a degradation of being in the particular hypostases in relation to their source. Art as a form of being would have to share the lot of Platonic art, if it were not for the transcendence of the artist's spirit as he roams among the ideas. At that moment art becomes an idea, not a copy of an idea, but an idea itself. Later this would be at the basis of the theology of the icon in Byzantium. Meanwhile, art is neither a human creation, or re-creation, but is simply a vision of an idea in itself. For Plato, art was a shadow of the ideas, whereas for Plotinus it is an idea or the vision of an idea, and ideas cannot be produced. In Aristotle's theory, although an idea cannot be produced, one can produce a whole thing as composed of form (which corresponds to idea) and matter. The idea (the form) is in the thing produced. The error of Plato and Plotinus consisted in treating as independent that which was not independent, since they mistook difference for independence. From the fact that form and matter differ as parts of being, it does not follow that the form exists independently. The form has being in matter, much as there is no seeing without an eye, even though the eye is one thing, and seeing is another. The creation of the artist is thus neither the making of a shadow, nor the seeing of an idea in itself, but it is the actualization of an entire thing, of a form in matter. This actualization admits of a great variety, and the reality surrounding man suggests actualizations inexhaustibly. In the intentional order there are many ways in which these actualizations can be superimposed one upon another. They can converge, combine, divide, etc. All this is potency for art, and this potency can be understood in both the passive and active sense.
The human soul assimilates the reality that it knows, and it becomes "as if all things" ("quodammodo omnia"). On this account, everything that the soul becomes can be material for its operations. This operations do not arise "from nothing". Man arrives at these operations by a conscious artistic attitude. From infancy on, his soul gathers everything, and he cannot purge himself of what he has gathered. It is impossible that a man's soul could still be a blank slate when he has already arrived at the age when he is capable of producing art. Art comes from that which is constantly settling itself in man from reality, that which passes into him through the senses, the feelings, the reason and will. All of this is composed of matter and form, of potency and act, of both static and dynamic elements. These varied components suggest unlimited possibilities of intentional actualization. Since active potency and the entire dynamism of being come into play, this material cannot be treated as something merely static and passive, like bricks, to which the artist then provides a form that he has created (in almost a divine fashion). Kant suggested this view. Reality as known by man already possesses its own structure and dynamism that do not come from any human a priori. The form, then, is not created (in the full sense), but it is actualized in the potentiality of matter. Modern agnosticism and constructivism weighs heavily upon the current vision of artistic creativity. However, the artist neither constructs the form, nor does he create it out of nothing, but the form is in matter, even if it is intellectual matter. The artistic creation of form is an actualization of the form in matter, not of the form in an unqualified sense, but precisely in matter.(120)
Why have we begun to attribute a full creative power to the artist, and the status of an entirely new being to the work of the artist? There may be many reasons, but there are two primary ones: first, there is an erroneous conception of metaphysics that does not allow one to indicate the proper reason that differentiates real being from intentional (artificial) being; second, metaphysics has been replaced by mysticism, which results in panentheism, the identification of the artist with God himself. If the artist is God or a "part" of God, then the artist can create in the full sense. However, is not panentheism at times merely emanationism? If man indeed can create out of nothing, then it is also true that God cannot create out of nothing.
1. cf. G. Sörbom, Mimesis and Art: Studies in the Origin and Early Development of an Aesthetic Vocabulary, Uppsala 1966, pp. 41-98.
2. ibid. Sörbom very scrupulously analyzes the philosophical and other literary contexts in which the term "mimesis" and related terms occur. It is constantly indicated that mimesis is not copying.
3. cf. Eva C. Keuls, Plato and Greek Painting, Leiden 1978, p. 9-23. After investigating the meaning of the term "mimesis" before Plato, the author writes: "The mimesis conception is invariably dramatic; i.e. it always contains a connotation of impersonation, reembodiment, disguise or one phenomenon posing as another. Even in its most weakened metaphorical extension, a mimema cannot be a copy, only a substitute." Eva Keuls thinks that it is difficult to find a word today that could do justice to the various nuances of meaning in "mimesis", though she thinks that "enactment" perhaps is the closest, since it has a dynamic aspect that has been lost in contemporary esthetic terminology to the advantage of a static conception.
4. W. Tatarkiewicz, A History of Six Ideas: An Essay on Aesthetics by Wadysaw Tatarkiewicz, Polish Academy of Science, The Hague,1986, p. 267.
5. In both English and Polish versions, translators often make the mistake of introducing the idea of copying in place of mimesis: "If it is a question of the question of a discussion on that which is merely a copy (a>peikas'ia) of this reality, and consequently merely its image (eikona)..". Plato, Timajos, Kritias albo Atlantyk, 29c. trans. P. Siwek, Warsaw, 1986. In an English translation we find the following formulation: "But when they express only the copy or likeness (italics, P.J.), and the eternal things themselves ..." trans. B. Jowett, in: The Collected Dialogues of Plato, edited by E. Hamilton, H. Cairns, Princeton 1971. In another passage in the Polish translation we read: "...one could say in precise terms that our world is its copy (afomoiwma) (31B).
6. cf. Harper's Latin Dictionary, ed. Charlton Lewis and Charles Short, 1880..
7. M. Korolko, Sztuka retoryki: Przewodnik encyklopedyczny (That art of rhetoric: an encyclopedic guide), Warsaw, 1990, p. 141.
8. This is the origin of the term "copyist". The copyist was most commonly a Benedictine monk who wrote out ancient texts with proverbial patience.
9. In the ancient understand of the term copia, the emphasis is upon abundance, while today it is upon identity.
10. cf. G.M. A. Grube, Plato's Thought, London 1935, p. 1-51.
11. We should not forget that Aristotle's sharp critique of Plato was concerned in part with Plato's separating substance (ousia) from concrete material things. The things that are substances and those which are not substances belong to two different worlds and are divided by an ontological gulf. Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics, bk. Zeta, ch. 14.
12. Plato tried to depict the gulf dividing the world of ideas from the sense world with his allegory of the cave, in which enchained men see only the shadows cast from the exterior of objects, but do not see the objects themselves. Republic, VI, 514-515D.
13. Plato divided cognition into scientific (episteme), and ordinary cognition or opinion (doxa). He subdivides episteme into noetic and dianoetic cogntion, and subdivided doxa into faith (pistis) and thinking in images (eikasia). The object of science is ideas and numbers, while the object of opinion is the material world. Republic, 511 A-E. Cf. A. Mansion, Introduction à la physique aristotélicienne, Louvain, 1945, p. 129f.
14. "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 the one which the carpenter made ... and the one which the painter made." Republic. 597 C-D. Plato says that what the painter produces are not true beings (ouk alhqh). The bed he paints is a mere appearence (fainomenhn) (Rep. 596E). The carpenter in turn does not produce the idea of the bed (ou to eidos poiei), a bed as such, but he simply produces a "certain bed" (klinhn tina). Even though the craftsman's products is closer to the idea than the artist's product, Plato constantly emphasizes that no craftsman can make a true being (Ouk ouv ei mh d' estin poiei ouk an to on poioi, alla ti toiouton) (Rep. 597A). The bed as such in its unique and singular exemplar was "made" by a god (outos epoihsen mian monon authn ekeinhn d'estin klinh) Republic 597C. God is the creator of the nature of a bed (klinhs poihths ontos oushs), the carpenter is the producer (dhmiourgon klinhs), while the painter is neither, but rather an imitator (mimhths) (Rep. 597DE). As we can see, the platonic terminology is rather fluid, since the demiurge of the Timaeus does not produce the ideas, but produces the material world, while a god has produced the original models for the craftsmen's arts. The god is called the poietes, while the craftsman himself is called a demiurge.
15. This concerns the conception of poetry as mania, which we will discuss later.
16. In the Laws Plato writes: " ... matters of rhythm and music generally are imitations of the manners of good or bad men." (798D). Music was an essential part of education in Plato's republic, which is the reason for his solicitude regarding music. Some melodies and rhythms have a good influence on the learner (when they imitate the desired virtues, e.g. fortitude), but some corrupt the learner (e.g. the mixolydian and syntonolydian modes are too mournful, and they can produce an excessively effeminate character in a future guard) (Rep. 398C-399A). Plato writes: "In that case, Glaucon, will not the most manly means of education be a service to the Muses? For rhythm and harmony penetrate most deeply into the depth of the soul, and most powerfully implant in the soul a beautiful aspect; if a man has been well educated, thereafter he hold together beautifully. If he has not been well educated, it is the opposite case" (ibid. 401D).
17. "Inasmuch as choric performances are representations of character, exhibited in actions and circumstances of every kind, in which the several performers enact their parts by habit and imitative art, whenever the choric performances are congenial to them in point of diction, tune or other features (whether fron natural bent, or from habit, or from both these causes combined) then these performers invariably delight in such performances and extol them as excellent." (Laws, II, 655DE). In book VII Plato explains the mechanism whereby mimesis in dance arose: " Under these conditions every man moves his body more violently when his joys are greater, less violently when they are smaller; also, he moves it less violently when is more sedate and better trained in courage, but when he is cowardly and untrained in temperance, he indulges in greater and more violent changes of motion [. . .] Hence, when the representation of things spoken by means of gestures arose, it produced the whole art of dancing." (815E-816A). Plato's point is that in the ideal state there should only be "dances of beautiful bodies and brave souls" (ibid 816D). Plato makes the interesting observation that in dance the dancer uses himself as an instrument, whereas, for example, when he sculpts in stone his instrument is a chisel. (The Sophist 267A).
18. "... beginning from Homer all poets practice imitation (pantas tous poihtikous mimhtas) and they create images of virtue (edwlwn arhths einai) and of the other things they write about, but they do not attain the truth." Rep. 600E; "...and of the poet we say that he with words and phrases composes certain colours taken from particular kinds of knowledge, but he himself does not know how to do anything except to imitate (auton ouk apaionta all h mimisqai)." (ibid. 601A).
19. "Guest: .... I see two kinds of imitation (mimhtikhs) [...] I see in it one part -- this is the ability to confect likenesses (mian men thn eikastikhn). This is seen when some, in accord with the proportions of the model in length, breadth and depth, makes an imitation of it and also gives it colours fittingly for every part. Theatetus: How is this? Do not all imitators try to make something of this sort? Guest: Not they who sculpt or paint a work of great dimensions. For if they were to preserve the true proportion of beautiful models, you know that the high parts would seem smaller than they should, and the lower parts would seem too large, for we would view the former from a distance, and the latter from a close position. [...] Thus I spoke of two kinds of production of images (eidowlopoiikhs): the creation of likenesses (eikastikhn) and the creation of deceptive images (fantastikhn)", Sophist, 235D-236C. Note that the translator describes the activity of the artist with the verb "create", which is too strong a word, instead of "make". On the other hand, is is interesting that what Plato regards as fantastic is not some complete fiction of the artist that reminds us of nothing, but rather that which creates the illusion of real objects that we know well, but whose proportions must be changed if art is to achieve the desired effect.
20. " And the same object appears straight when looked at out of the water, and crooked when in the water; and the concave becomes convex, owing to the illusion about colours to which the sight is liable. Thus every sort of confusion is revealed within us; and this is that weakness of the human mind on which the art of conjuring (gohteias) and of deceiving by light and shadow and other ingenious devices imposes, having an effect upon us like magic (qaumatopoiia)" Rep. 602CD
21. The Polish term for imitation is nasladowanie. Na means toward, in or on. A slad is a trace or track (vestigium).
22. Plato leaves a place for art in his republic, because he considered it as having an important pedagogical role. The artist, however, must stay under the control of the state. There is no room for artistic license. The state decides which arts benefit education, and only those arts have a reason for being.
23. According to Aristotle, the Platonic ideas where merely objectified concepts which did not exist at all somewhere in the pleroma, but rather arose by way of abstraction: the material thing possesses within itself not only mutable elements, but also elements characterized by their necessity, and these provide the foundation for generalities. Cf. Metaph. Book Zeta, passim.
24. It should be noted that the contemporary understanding of the soul has been formed under the influence of Descartes, who separated the soul from its function of animating the body and identified it with spirit (spiritualism). When we hear that the Greeks regard plants as possessing souls, it would be a misunderstanding if we were to identify the soul in the Cartesian sense with the soul taken simply as the principle of life. The Greeks did not at all want to say that there is a spirit in plants, only that there is something that makes a given being assimilate food, grow and multiply.
25. To the question -- what is it? -- we answer that it is, for example, an equilateral rectangle. In this way we provide a definition that expresses the essence of a thing. Aristotle discusses the problems involved in understanding form (substance) as essence in Metaphysics, book Zeta, ch. 10-15.
26. ... "For nature is the principle and cause of motion and rest to those things, and those things only, in which she inheres primarily, as distinct from incidentally". Physics, II, i, 192b. trans. P.H. Wicksteed, Harvard U. Press, 1953.
27. cf. Mieczysaw Albert Krpiec, Metaphysics: An Outline of the Histoy of Being, Peter Lang Publishing, 1991, trans. Theresa Sandok, p. 428-429.
28. "And this view of where to look for the nature of things [in form] is preferable to that which finds it in the material; for when we speak of the thing into the nature of which we are inquiring, we mean by its name an actuality not a potentiality merely ... nature, then, qua genesis proclaims itself as the path to nature qua goal." Physics, II, i, 193b.
29. "Indeed, as a general proposition, the arts either, on the basis of Nature, carry things further than Nature can, or they imitate Nature." Physics, II, viii, 199a 15-20. In this context, the imitation of nature by art is understood to mean that, just as a natural process is composed of a series of stages that succeed one another not by mere accident (the bud, flower, fruit, seed), so also art, in aiming at an end, must in turn respect the order of activities. So Aristotle says, "if natural products could also be produced by art, they would move along the same line that the natural process actually takes. We may therefore say that the earlier stages are for the purpose of leading to the later." (ibid.) If someone builds a house, he begins with the foundations, not with the third floor.
30. In the Protagoras, Plato recounts the myth of how "the race of mortals" came to be. The gods created them, but it was Epimetheus that first gave them their abilities. However, he was not too wise, because by the time he came to man he had nothing left to offer him, since all the skills had been distributed. Prometheus saw that "whereas the other creatures were fully suitably provided for, man was naked, unshod, unbedded, unarmed". He decided to rob Hephaestus and Athena of fire and wisdom ("the mother of the arts") and give them to man. Protagoras, 320e-321D. In this view, all men of art would be of divine origin. Aristotle, and Democritus before him, looked at art more realistically as an ability acquired by man's own effort, in which the imitation of nature played an important role.
31. "In der Interpretation der aristotelischen Mimesis ist wiederholt auf die Bedeutung des dynamischen Naturbegriffs hingewiesen worden, der nicht so sehr den gegebenen eidetischen Gesamtbestand bedeutet, als vielmehr den Inbegriff der generativen Prozesse, die deisen Bestand jederzeit bedingen ..." H. Blumenberg, Wirklichkeiten in denen wir leben: Aufsätze und eine Rede, Stuttgard 1981, p. 72.
32. Poetics, 1. 1447 a.
33. "The common original, then, from which all the arts draw is human life -- its mental processes, its spiritual movements, its outward acts issuing from deeper sources; in a word, all that constitutes the inward and essential activity of the soul. On this principle landscape and animals are not ranked among the objects of aesthetic imitation. The whole universe is not conceived of as the raw material of art. Aristotle's theory is in agreement with the practice of the Greek poets and artists of the classical period, who introduce the external world only so far as it forms a background of action, and enters as an emotional element into man's life and heightens the human interest." S.H. Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, New York 1951, p. 124. It may be added that, according to Pliny, an interest in landscapes arose first in the time of Augustus. Cf. Th. Twining, Poetry as an Imitative Art, in "Aristotle's Poetics and English Literature: A Collection of Critical Essays", ed. E.Olson, Chicago, Toronto 1965, p. 69.
34. "... rhythms and melodies contain representations of anger and mildness, and also of courage and temperance and all their opposites, that most closely correspond to the true natures of these qualities (esti de omoiwmata malista para tas alhqinas fuseis)" Politics, VIII, v, 1340a18. trans. H. Rackham, Harvard U. Press, 1977. "Music was held by Aristotle, as by the Greeks generally, to be the most 'imitative' or representative of the arts." Butcher, op. cit. p. 128f.
35. "Rhythm alone without tune is employed by dancers in their representations, for by means of rhythmical gestures they represent (ruqmwn mimountai) both character and experience and actions." Poetics, I, 1447a, trans.W. Hamilton Fyfe, Harvard U. Press, 1982.
36. "Words spoken are symbols or signs of affections or impressions of the soul; written words are the signs of words spoken. As writing, so also is speech not the same for all races of men. But the mental affections themselves, of which these words are primarily signs, are the same for the whole of mankind." Peri Hermeneias, (On Interpretation) I, i, 16a. trans. Hugh Treddenick, Harvard U. Press, 1983.
37. "From childhood on men have an instinct for imitation (mimeisqai sumfuton), and in this respect man differs from the other animals that he is far more imitative (mimhtikwtaton) and learns his first lessons by representing things. And then there is the enjoyment people always get from representations." Poetics, IV, 1448b.
38. This is the sense of the opening sentence of the Metaphysics: Pantes antqrwpoi tou eidenai oregontai fusei ("all men by nature desire to know"). The desire for knowledge is innate in man, it grows out of his nature. This is not a matter merely of scientific cognition, but of cognition in general, without which it would be difficult to speak of human life. Cognition is not an addition or appendage to human nature, but grows out of human nature.
39. Today we might say that children pay little attention to the artistic aspect of their books, but rather to the similarity of the pictures to real objects, and their reaction at the moment of recognition is well known to all parents.
40. In this case, the current flooding of the children's market with works depicting monsters and monstrosities is very damaging for the child's development. The child learns at the start not to take reality into account, and this can have further negative consequences in adult life.
41. "Tragedy is, then, a representation of an action that is heroic and complete and of a certain magnitutde -- by means of language enriched with all kinds of ornament, each used separately in the different parts of the play: it represents men in action and does not use narrative, and through pity and fear it effects relief to these and similar emotions." Poetics, VI, vi, 1449b24-28.
42. cf. H. Podbielski's introduction to Aristotle's Poetics, published by the Polish National Library (1983), p. xiv.
43. Aristotle's Poetics is analytic and descriptive. Only in modern times has it been treated as a program to "limit" creative freedom, whereupon the Poetics began to meet with disapproval.
44. "Pity, according to the popular definition, which is all that Rhetoric requires, is a feeling of pain that arises on the occasion of any evil, or suffering, manifest (apparent, to the eye or ear), deadly or (short of that) painful, when unmerited; also of such a kind as we may expect to happen either to ourselves or to those near and dear to us, and that when it seems to be near at hand." Rhetoric, II, viii, trans. Edward M. Cope, The Rhetoric of Aristotle, Cambridge U. Press, 1877. Compare this with Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (hereafter referred to as STh), II-II, 30. Thomas uses the term "misericordia", where Aristotle uses eleos, e.g. "... unde Philosophus dicit in 2 Rhet. (Cap. 8), quod misericordia est tristitia quaedam super apparenti malo corruptivo, vel contristativo" (ibid., a. 1)
45. "Let fear be defined as a pain or disturbance arising from a mental presentation or impression of coming evil, destructive or painful". Rhetoric, II, 5; cf. St. Thomas, Summa Theologica, I-II, 41-44: "...est enim, ut Philosophus dicit in 2 Rhet (cap. 8), quod misericordia est tristitia