CRITICISM: BACKGROUND

    The term “Criticism” derives from the ancient Greek term “Krites” meaning “to judge”. Perhaps the first type of criticism was that which occurred in the process of poetic creation itself: in composing his poetry, as poet would have made certain “judgements” about the themes and techniques to be used in his verse, about what his audience was likely to approve, and about his own relationship to his predecessors in the oral or literary tradition. Hence the creative act itself was also a critical act involving inspiration, self-assessment, reflection, and judgement. In this sense, literary criticism goes atleast as far back as archaic Greece, which begins around 800 years before the birth of Christ. This is the era of the epic poets Homer and Hesiod, and of the lyric poets Archilochus, Ibycus, Alcacus, and Sappho. What we call the “classical” period emerges around 500 BC, the period of the great dramatists Euripides, Aeschylus, and Sophocles, and the philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.

The first recorded instances of criticism go back to dramatic festivals in ancient Athens, which were organized as contests, requiring an official judgement as to which author had produced the best drama. A striking literary – critical discussion occurs in Aristophanes’ play The Frogs, (perf. 405 BC), suggesting that literary criticism is used to entertain and amuse a large audience of several thousand people. Poetry, for them, was an important element in the educational process, it was a forum for the discussion of larger issues.

(Aristophanes discusses the relative merits of Aeschylus & Euripides).

PLATO (428 BC – 347 BC) “Of all philosophers, I have esteemed him most worthy of reverence and with great reason, since of all the philosophers he is the most poetical”

[Philip Sidney about Plato]

Plato gathered the odds and ends of proto-criticism, and articulated them in a coherent manner. He was the first to expound a theory of art in general terms, and his views have exerted a strong influence on every generation of thinkers who came after him. On the one hand, he is opposed to art as an end in itself, and, on the other hand, he glorifies and extols the artist and emphasizes his role in human life. By his time, the glory of Althenian art and literature, illustrated in this works of artists like Phidias & Polygnotus and writers like Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes was on the wane and their place was taken by philosophy and oratory, of which the chief figures include Socrates, Gorgias, and Lysias. Confronted with the decline in national character and the standards of social and public life, the philosophers applied the test of reason to a variety of matters. While the previous age was one of creative activity, this age was one of critical inquiry and analysis.

Plato’s chief interest was philosophical investigation, which forms the subject of his great work, the ‘Dialogues’ – so called because each question, that interested Plato, is discussed there in question and answer form by a number of inter locators, the chief of whom is Socrates. Some of the major dialogues of Plato include Ion, Cratylus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Symposium, Republic, Phaedrus, Philebus and Laws. 

Plato’s View of Art:

Art is intimately bound up with what is called his Theory of Ideas. Ideas, he says in the Republic are the ultimate Reality. Things are conceived as ideas before they take practical shape as things. The idea of everything, therefore, is the original and the thing itself is its copy. As the copy ever falls short of the original, it is once removed from reality. Art copies a copy and hence it is twice removed from reality. ie. Art reproduces or imitates physical reality (mimesis). So images of art are copies of copies. For instance, a table exists firstly as idea, secondly as object of craftsmanship and thirdly as object of representation in art. Thus mimesis is thrice removed from reality. For Plato, art when rightly pursued, could inculcate a love for beauty, but few use it well. He uses the Cave image (7th book of the Republic) as a metaphor for education, suggesting that the enlightened person has a moral responsibility to the unfortunate people, still in the cave, to rescue them and bring them into the light.

Plato’s conception of Poetry:

(Comments on poetry occurs in two texts Ion and the Republic)

The Poet writes not because he has thought long over what he has to say, but because he is ‘inspired’. Hence poetic inspiration is divine having no rational involvement from the poet’s part. i.e., impulse of the moment. Hence, for Plato, poetry cannot be relied upon.

Being a product of impulse, poetry appeals to baser emotions rather than high intellect. It encourages passions and lets them rule.

Plato indicts poetry for its lack of concern with morality. According to him, poetry indiscriminately lets virtue as well as vice triumph, it presents gods and heroes as susceptible to vices. Hence poetry is non moral.

Pleasure, even of the highest kind, ranks low in Plato’s scale for values. For him, poetry, should instruct. It should mould character and promote the interests of the state. Poetic truth must be the highest truth – ideal forms of justice, goodness, beauty, and the like.

Plato’s Conception of Drama:

Unlike poetry, drama is meant to be staged. In order to please the audience, the dramatist often introduces what they like. Hence drama arouses baser instincts by offering cheap pleasure to the masses. This leads to back taste and laxity in discipline. 

Sometimes drama reacts unfavorably on the actors themselves. But constantly impersonating evil characters like cowards, criminals etc, they let these evil qualities enter into their own nature. Hence impersonation represses individuality and enfeebles character. He also maintains the view that tragic and comic pleasure arise from the excesses and weaknesses in the human nature.

Plato’s View of Art: A revision

In Plato’s view, art is, therefore, useless and potentially dangerous.

(1) Art is useless:

According to Plato, art serves no useful purpose in the society. As a mere “imitation of Nature”, it adds no knowledge, and hence has not intellectual value. ie, the same value could be added simply by holding up a mirror to the world which would be far less costly. As per his metaphysics, art is only an imitation of an imitation and hence barely real at all, and therefore useless. 

(2) Art is potentially dangerous

Plato maintains the view that art is potentially dangerous and he points out several reasons in this regard.

As art is basically imitation, the whole aim of art is to deceive. A work of art can achieve success, only when the spectator mistakes an imitation for reality. Further more, artists are unconcerned with facts or truths. So it makes no difference to artists nor to the success of their works whether the images or stories they depict are real or their messages are true or good. Hence art is essentially deceptive.

According to Platonic mind/body dualism, our bodies are the least valuable, least permanent and least “real” aspects of our personalities. Further, according to Plato’s rationalism, our senses are incapable of providing us with genuine knowledge since they only gather impressions from an every changing physical world, but not from the invisible forces which guide, direct, and sustain the physical world. Thus our senses and, consequently, art are “metaphysically” misguided since it is directed towards illusion and not “reality”. Art, therefore, is directed entirely towards pleasing the senses and thereby ignoring the mind or intellect, and hence is potentially dangerous.

“Poetry feeds and waters the passions instead of drying them up; she lets them rule, although they ought to be controlled, if mankind is ever to increase in happiness and virtue”. In Plato’s view, human existence is, in great part, a struggle to master the emotions and sensual urges by using reason and intellect. Therefore art is dangerous and counter productive since it appeals not to reason and intellect, but to the psychological forces which constantly try to over throw reason, namely passion and emotion. Hence art is psychologically de-stabilizing.  

An artist, like a skilled chef, is only interested in pleasing the plate, even if it poisons the diner, says Plato. Since art (mimesis) is divorced from truth, goodness or any concern with “real” beauty, it creates an environment of superficial made to seem a tempting confession. Thus art is unconcerned with morality, sometimes even teaching immoral lessons. It seems that morality has nothing to do with a work’s success as “art”. Plato points out the treatment of morality in “The Iliad’ in this regard. He worries that such art would encourage immorality in the citizens of this state. People might uncritically accept and admire immoral, vicious traits when they are attractively packaged by skilled artists. Hence art leads to immorality.

Plato worried that strong art which appeals to emotions stirs up negative emotions which we usually try to control. But this is more than just a problem for the individual. ie, for some people who are having history of “mania”, strong and emotion – stirring art is rightly seen as a threat to the good of the state or community. It is, therefore, correctly the concern of government. Hence art is a threat to common good. This is similar to the criticism leveled by some people against violence and sex in the media. Like Plato, they argue that violence and sex in the media cause us to be a more violent, sexually obsessed culture. This affects not just the people who consume the violent images, but the entire community of which they are a part. 

Plato’s contribution to the critical art, thus, is scattered in fragments, though, all together it read like a systematic treatise on the art of writing. 

The Value of Plato’s Criticism

Plato is a discerning critic in both poetry and drama. In his attack on poetry, he exhibits a thorough insight into their nature, function and method. He insists on truth as the test of poetry. He says that poetry is twice removed from reality. He disapproves of the non-moral character of poetry. He makes a distinction between the function of poetry and that of philosophy. He also derides the emotional appeal of poetry. He makes valuable observations on the source of comic and tragic pleasure. He was also, perhaps, the first to see that all art is imitation of mimesis. He divides poetry into the dithyrambic or the purely lyrical, the purely mimetic or imitative such as drama and the mixed kind such as the epic. He makes valuable observation on style of good speech and writing.