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          A retrospect concerning art

          Many modern commentators accuse Plato and Tolstoy for having a low esteem for art. This is according to my opinion not correct and has its origin in our neglect of the depth of their psychological insight. The strict moral and normative judgement both put on art is caused by its strong potential impact on our emotional and instinctive feelings that both perceive. It is because art is so powerful that it has the potential to drastically influence the feelings of people positively and negatively apart from their rational capacities. The moral limits with regard to its content are just meant to limit and neutralize the poisonous effects of art on the human sentiment. However both thinkers regard as indispensable in its moral constitutive efficacy for mankind and the society he lives in. Tolstoy even remarks that art is just as essential with regard to our moral education, as is speech with regard to our reasonable development. Anne Sheppard compares the convictions of Tolstoy and Plato about the educational value of art with these of the Social Realism during the communist regime in the former Soviet Union. Though Tolstoy specifically contributes art an 'internal qualification'. The required moral model should not be ordered from above by the state, but should originate from a sincere inner tuning in to his religious perceptiveness for moral values.
          The quantity 'good' art Tolstoy acknowledges is nevertheless rather limited. Because of his abhorrence for nearly al the classical and modern art styles of his time, which he associated with that of the upper classes, he only valued positively the traditional and simple art of the Russian farmers. According to my opinion Tolstoy's personal preferences for the uncomplicated art of farmers are a rather rigid standard to judge the quality of all art. And though Plato joins his condemnation and rejection of quite a lot of art, his predilection for beauty appears a bit more tolerant than Tolstoy's attitude towards these. Plato does not reject physical and sensual beauty per se, only its obsessive and addictive character. We for instance can not find any place where he complains about the many nude statues of his era. Tolstoy seems to have more puritan tendencies and his complaining about the many nude bodies in art sometimes takes the form of an 'erotic phobia'.
          Anyway one gets curious what Plato and Tolstoy would have thought about certain phenomena in our modern consumption society. We are every day constantly bombarded and seduced by the mass media and it advertisements to purchase as much as possible consumption goods. These advertisements are quite successful in selling their products. Do not expect any relevant reasonable information from these advertisements; they are all just trying to unconsciously manipulate and indoctrinate our emotional attitude towards their products. And though we consciously know that junk food is harmful, the feelings they are associated with by means of advertisements make them irresistible! Perhaps advertisers have a far better understanding and appreciation for what man like Plato and Tolstoy meant with their psychological insight than a lot of academic scholars.
          Friedrich Nietzsche has written in his "Die Geburt der Tragödie"¹ that Socrates and Plato have greatly contributed to the decline and disappearance of the Greek tragedy. He accuses the so-called "Socratic aestheticism" that it had deprived the art of Classical Greece from its religious and infectious qualities. According to Nietzsche originally the tragedy had been the product of a Dionysian mystic experience combined with an Apollonian lust for beauty of shapes and images. In his opinion Plato treats the so-called 'divine madness' ironically, and did he not express a true appreciation for this phenomenon. Euripides and his 'New Greek tragedy' that Nietzsche considered to be exemplary for its decline, were greatly influenced by Plato. This 'New Greek tragedy' had on the one hand exchanged the Dionysian ecstasy for an artificial arousal of emotions (paqoj), on the other hand it had exchanged the Apollonian lust for beauty for a Socratic moral and logical reasoning. Nietzsche despises the morally educational function Plato ascribes to art, because it fundamentally undermined both its mystic ecstatic elements and its mark of beauty.
          The (hopefully sufficiently proved) strong and intrinsic relation between art and transcendence as has been found in Plato's Symposium, the Phaedrus dialogue and the Io dialogue goes directly against Nietzsche convictions. Nietzsche uses certain text fragments derived from the Io dialogue to illustrate the artificially flogged up enthusiasm of the 'Socratic art' contrary to the true and sincere Dionysian ecstasy. However on could argue that his observations are diametrically opposed to the true meaning and content of the Io dialogue. Socrates emphatically connects Io's talent to infect his audience with his feelings with the 'Music divine madness' that takes control of him and steers his emotions during his artistic performances. The distance of the artist from his regular and daily personality that Nietzsche regards as typical for the artistic enchantment during artistic performances, is in his opinion absent in the 'enthusiastic state' Plato ascribes to the rhapsodist Io. However Io puts this Apollonian distance humoristicaly into words by saying that he was happy and content when his audience was crying because this meant that he could be assured of a certain financial benefit and income. The fact that Plato did not attribute any relevant, reasonable knowledge to art was because he understood that art only conveyed feelings, without any rational operation.
          The Phaedrus dialogue also explains how the 'Music divine madness' has educated posterity because of its valuable moral insights, in contrast to the rational and mechanical poetry that only produces shoddy works (244a, Io 533d). Apparently Plato considered art that was the product of mere logical reasoning, because it was solely motivated by an inferior desire of the artist for material and finite pleasures such as pride, prestige, status and greed, to be the most inferior and utterly boring. Plato uses the moral 'Apollonian' standards just to neutralize and harmonize the 'witches' cauldron' of feelings that it could stir up and that could infect people and drag them along without any reasonable and conscious consent. From this perspective it looks if Plato was not that far situated from Nietzsche own considerations. Anyway it looks as if Nietzsche preconceived notions, as would Plato one the one hand exchange art's beauty for the power of persuasiveness by logical reasoning, or on the other hand that he exchanged the Dionysian ecstasy for some artificial and cunning oratorical tricks and methods, can be sufficiently refuted.
 
 

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1. Friedrich Nietzsche, Die Geburt der Tragödie, Carl Hanser Verlag, Munchen 1966.