The Aesthetics of Plato and Kant

Vladyslav Nazarchuk

Both Plato and Immanuel Kant lived in some of the most artistically-productive periods in human history: Plato worked in Athens during the cultural flourishing of the Age of Pericles, while Kant was alive at the same time as Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. Thus, it is no wonder that the theory of aesthetics occupies a significant portion of both of their philosophies. However, it is unavoidable that each reflected on art and beauty through the perspective of the rest of his own philosophical system: his views on logic, metaphysics, and ethics.

Thus, this essay seeks to understand and analyze Plato and Kant’s philosophies of art and the beautiful. First, the main elements of Plato’s views on aesthetics will be comprehensively investigated. Then, these elements will be matched up in dialogue with several principles of Kant’s theory of aesthetics. Overall, it will be argued that, although the aesthetic systems of Plato and Kant share many correspondences, the primary differences between them are driven by the philosophers’ different understandings of the mind and the extent of its potential for knowledge.

Plato’s Conception of Beauty

Plato’s views on aesthetics, rather than being presented as a single, complete system, are dispersed among several of his dialogues. Knight suggests that “this was partly due to the fact that he lived in such a constant atmosphere of Beauty, both artistic and literary, that he did not care to analyze it speculatively in the same way that he analyzed the nature of the true and the good.”¹ Plato must have felt that the logic, ethics, and politics of his day needed more correction than art, and therefore these former subjects are better represented in his dialogues. Nevertheless, spread throughout Plato’s dialogues, one can find critiques on all the arts—architecture, sculpture, painting, dance, music, and literature—and frequent references to and remarks on beauty.

A reasonable starting point for understanding Plato’s theory of aesthetics is Greater Hippias, which can be characterized as a “dialogue of search.”² In this dialogue, Socrates tries to find a definition for Beauty itself, “by which everything else is beautified and seen to be fine when that form is added to it”³: essentially, the Platonic form of Beauty. Several definitions are proposed, but all prove to be deficient in some way upon closer examination. One definition for Beauty given by Socrates is that “the useful and able for making some good—that is the fine.”⁴ The identification of the beautiful and the useful is actually the definition of Beauty that was given by the historical Socrates. Xenophon, in his Memorabilia (iii. 8) quotes Socrates as saying that “Whatsoever is beautiful is for the same reason good, when suited to the purpose for which it was intended.”⁵ In Plato’s dialogue, however, Socrates overturns his own definition by arguing that it implies that Beauty is the cause of the Good, and since cause and effect must be different, “the fine is not good, nor the good fine.”⁶

Whether Socrates’ refutation of the identification of Beauty with usefulness is valid or not is somewhat of a “red herring,” since, as a whole, Plato’s doctrine closely identifies Beauty with the Good, and a separation between the two can hardly be drawn. Cavarnos, for instance, notes that for Plato, “that which is intrinsically good and that which is beautiful are identical.”⁷ He characterizes the distinction between them only as follows: “If Plato uses … ‘good’ and ‘beautiful,’ to refer to the same class of objects, it is because man can and does adopt two distinct attitudes towards these objects: in the one case a practical attitude and in the other a contemplative attitude.”⁸ When we view something from the perspective of having value when embodied in our lives or actions, we call it “good,” while if we view the same thing from a purely contemplative perspective, we call it “beautiful.” If so, this approach would resolve the apparently problematic conclusion in Socrates’ refutation that the Beautiful is not the Good, opening the possibility for “Beauty is usefulness” to be a valid definition. However, since Plato defines “useful” as “able for making some good,”⁹ such a definition would first require a definition of the Good itself.

Another promising definition which Socrates proposes in the dialogue is that Beauty is “what is pleasant through hearing and sight.”¹⁰ As Socrates and Hippias agree, this definition is actually a fair characterization of the things people find beautiful: even “beautiful laws” and “beautiful activities” could potentially be reduced to fit into this definition. However, Socrates constructs an intricate argument which shows that “pleasant through hearing and sight,” while true as a characterization, cannot logically be Beauty itself: the single form in which all beautiful things participate in. Thus, after seven or so failed attempts, Socrates concludes that “What’s fine is hard,”¹¹ and gives up the search for the definition of Beauty.

Upon a closer inspection, though, Greater Hippias is not merely a “dialogue of search” which fails its objective: rather, it reveals several foundational principles for how Plato views Beauty. First, as implicit in Socrates’ goal in this dialogue, Beauty for Plato is a single ideal form, which all beautiful objects participate in. Second, the fact that the dialogue fails to find a suitable definition for Beauty after many attempts, suggests that Plato does not think Beauty can fully be defined in words at all. This, in fact, aligns with Plato’s conception of human reason. Cavarnos explains that for Plato, reason has both a discursive function (dianoia) and an intuitive, contemplative function (nous).¹² Discursive reason is ultimately bound to the world of the senses, while contemplative reason can transcend the senses and have knowledge of the higher realm of forms. The kind of dialogue which Socrates and Hippias engage in—proposing hypotheses, logical argumentation, using real-life examples—is primarily one of discursive reason: in fact, Plato would probably have viewed the sophist Hippias as well-trained in discursive reason, but wholly untrained in intuition of the higher realm of forms. Thus, it is no wonder that the pair fail to come to an understanding of Beauty.

In particular, Socrates’ last attempt of defining Beauty as that which is “pleasant through hearing and sight” puts this problem into high relief. A piece of music and a sculpture, for example, can both be beautiful, and yet their respective media have nothing in common: music exists as energy in time, while sculpture exists as matter in space. Then, the only common quality between them, by virtue of which they both would be beautiful, could only exist in the immaterial realm of forms, accessible only through intuition, and inaccessible to discursive reason. Meanwhile, if an art form is taken by itself, then due to a shared medium it becomes at least possible to define beauty within that context: for instance, music theory provides guidelines for how to write beautiful music.

The transcendent nature of Beauty figures more explicitly in Plato’s Phaedrus. In the dialogue, as Socrates gives a speech in defense of the madness that comes from love, he presents a myth in which immortal souls, before their birth on earth, “gaze upon what is outside heaven”¹³: the realm of forms, things which are truly real and are the subject of true knowledge. This includes Beauty, as “beauty was radiant to see at that time when the souls … saw the blessed and spectacular vision.”¹⁴ Thus, when a lover sees a beautiful boy, “a godlike face or bodily form that has captured Beauty well,”¹⁵ he is struck by the memory of the true Beauty which he saw in the ideal realm. The result of this love based on the recognition of Beauty in the boy, is “sprouting of wings”: the growth of the intuitive part of the lover’s reason, allowing it to see and know the ream of forms.

The emotional aspect of this apprehension of Beauty is prominent in this dialogue. Plato describes the experience of souls in heaven while apprehending Beauty as ecstatic: “we gazed in rapture at sacred revealed objects that were perfect, and simple, and unshakable, and blissful.”¹⁶ Meanwhile, the lover’s emotional state on earth is described as follows: “Now the whole soul seethes and throbs in this condition … From the outlandish mix of these two feelings—pain and joy—comes anguish and helpless raving.”¹⁷ While the pleasure from experiencing Beauty comes from the bliss of direct contact with the form, the simultaneous pain comes from the ultimate alienation of the lover from this form: the lover is still trapped in a material body, and the form is seen only through the imperfect medium of sense.

This emotional aspect aligns with Plato’s general view that reason not only has a cognitive power, but also an emotional power (eros). Cavarnos explains that “while only the cognitive side of reason can contemplate the ideal realm, it is eros that enables it to rise to that realm.”¹⁸ Feeling Beauty with the emotional power thus forms a prerequisite and a motivator for comprehending it with the intuitive, contemplative power of reason.

Plato’s Critique of the Arts

So far, the discussion has focused on Beauty as an ideal form, and its manifestation in a beautiful human. As to art, as the intentional production of beautiful objects, Plato is generally considered to hold a disparaging view. In the aforementioned Phaedrus, for example, when listing the lives of souls on earth in order of their virtue, Plato assigns “the life of a poet or some other representational artist” sixth place, far below first place which he assigns to “a man who will become a lover of wisdom or of beauty.”¹⁹ A fuller criticism of art as representation is found in Book X of the Republic. In this dialogue between Socrates and Glaucon, Socrates set up a conceptual chain between the archetype or form, an object which is a particular instantiation of this form, and an imitation of this form; he relegates artists to the third rung in this ladder. For example, while a god makes the archetype of the bed, and a craftsman makes an instance of the bed, a painter merely imitates the appearance of an instance of the bed. Similarly, a tragedian “is by nature third from the king and the truth, as are all other imitators”²⁰: the archetype is virtue, a king embodies virtue in his actions, and the tragedian imitates the king’s actions in his drama.

Because the artist is therefore twice-removed from the ideal form, which is the only link in the chain that is truly real, and because he only works on the basis of appearance, the artist “has neither knowledge nor right opinion about whether the things he makes are fine or bad.”²¹ Instead, the artist works to affect the lower, irrational part of the soul, imitating “what appears fine or beautiful to the majority of people who know nothing.”²² As a result, by appealing to the passions and emotions of the public, the artist “arouses, nourishes, and strengthens this part of the soul and so destroys the rational one,”²³ leading to moral decay. For this reason, Plato banishes all such imitative art from his ideal city.

This criticism, however, is not so damning to the whole of artistic endeavor as it seems at first glance. The real issue is not that the artist is an imitator, but that he imitates the appearance of particulars, which are themselves imitations of forms. If, however, the artist takes the place of the craftsman, and imitates the forms directly (and the form of Beauty in particular), then his work will be blameless: it will be done with true knowledge, appeal to the rational part of the soul, and will make the beholder of the artwork more virtuous by leading him to contemplation of the forms, driven by eros through the experience of Beauty. Plato himself suggests that such arts are possible. For example, earlier in the Republic when discussing the shaping of a city’s constitution by a philosopher, Plato uses the analogy of painters of human character:

“They’d look often in each direction, towards the natures of justice, beauty, moderation, and the like … They’d erase one thing, I suppose, and draw in another until they’d made characters for human beings that the gods would love as much as possible.

At any rate, that would certainly result in the finest sketch.”²⁴

The painters are thus taking the forms of virtue as their objects of imitation directly. The same analogy, of painting the ideal man rather than a particular man, reoccurs in another passage in the dialogue: “Do you think that someone is a worse painter if, having painted a model of what the finest and most beautiful human being would be like … he could not prove that such a man could come into being?”²⁵

In other passages in the Republic, Plato has positive things to say about some of the arts. When choosing the best type of music for his city, the Dorian and Phrygian modes are kept, as being able to inspire courage and moderation.²⁶ Plato also allows “hymns to the gods and eulogies to good people”²⁷ into his city, evidently as conducive to virtue. In other dialogues, Plato compliments the art of architecture due to its rational aspect, as being of a “superior level of craftsmanship over other disciples,”²⁸ and having “a share in the theoretical sort of knowledge.”²⁹ Hence, even if perhaps Plato viewed the majority of the arts of his day as debased and imitative, he also recognizes the possibility of a useful sort of art. Cavarnos names this as the Platonic distinction between “true art” and “pseudo art,” characterizing them as follows: “True art relies on reason and has a clear grasp of its objects and operations … Sham art, on the other hand, relies on the irrational part of the psyche: it proceeds without knowledge.”³⁰

In summary, the Platonic system of aesthetics consists of four main elements. First is imitative, irrational art, which appeals to the lower part of the soul. Second is beautiful particulars, either in nature or as the products of true, rational art, which serve to guide the soul towards virtue and contemplation of the forms. Third is the form of Beauty itself, in which all beautiful things participate. And fourth is the form of the Good, which is closely related to or is essentially identical to Beauty.

Kant’s Theory of Aesthetics

Kant, unlike Plato, views aesthetics in the specific context of the mind’s faculty of judgment. Judgment, for Kant, forms the link between the faculty of understanding or cognition, which synthesizes sensations received from nature, and the faculty of practical reason, which includes ethics and the freedom of the will. Since cognition deals with sense appearances from nature, while practical reason works on a “supersensible” level, treating the world as it ought to be, there is a certain “chasm” between them. Judgment, then, is a third faculty “from which we merely regulate or reflect on our cognition in a way that enables us to regard it as systematically unified,”³¹ harmonizing cognition and practical reason, or nature and freedom, into a single system.

Aesthetic judgments, specifically, involve the “free play” of the imagination (which prepares sensations for cognition), and the cognition itself—which, when harmonized, produce aesthetic pleasure. Kant distinguishes the different kinds of aesthetic pleasure as follows: “In relation to the feeling of pleasure an object must be classed with either the agreeable, or the beautiful, or the sublime, or the (absolutely) good.”³² A productive approach, then, would be to loosely match these up with the four elements of Platonic aesthetics discussed above, and investigate these correspondences in turn.

The “agreeable” for Kant is the lowest and simplest form of aesthetic pleasure, “expressed by saying simply that one likes something or finds it pleasing,”³³ like a tasty food. This is not a pure aesthetic pleasure because, rather than the subject remaining disinterested, the agreeable is “an incentive for desires”; furthermore, Kant notes that “nor does the agreeable contribute to culture, but it belongs to mere enjoyment.”³⁴ Thus, the agreeable is similar to imitative art as described by Plato, in that it brings pleasure but does not lead a person to anything higher. In fact, Kant, like Plato, is critical of aesthetic pleasure that does not contribute to growth in virtue. Kant comments that “many people believe they are edified by a sermon that in fact builds no edifice (no system of good maxims), or are improved by the performance of a tragedy when in fact they are merely glad at having succeeded in routing boredom,” and rather prefers that art “leave us with a mental attunement that influences, at least indirectly, our consciousness of our fortitude and resolution concerning what carries with it pure intellectual purposiveness,”³⁵ i.e., our moral duty. Thus, the moral criticism of the lower form of art is common to Plato and Kant.

The “beautiful,” on the other hand, “contributes to culture, for it teaches us at the same time to be mindful of purposiveness in the feeling of pleasure.”³⁶ The “purposiveness” being referred to is that, during the aesthetic judgment of a beautiful object, the faculty of judgment makes it appear to the mind that nature has given some purpose to the object (even though nature can never be known in itself). This purpose cannot be expressed in terms of a definite concept, so Kant instead calls it “the mere form of purposiveness.”³⁷ Still, much like for Plato all beautiful objects participate in the single form of Beauty, for Kant beautiful objects have a certain universality: when one makes a judgment that an object is beautiful, he at the same time claims that the object ought to be beautiful to anyone else who perceives that object. Also, Kant’s concept of the beautiful includes both objects of nature, as well as works of art—as long as the artist does not make the art seem too intentional, since “fine art must have the look of nature even though we are conscious of it as art.”³⁸ Thus, Kant’s concept of the beautiful can reasonably be identified with beautiful particulars—either in nature as a beautiful boy, or in the work of the true artist—in Plato’s aesthetics.

The “sublime,” in its relation to the Platonic form of Beauty, is, however, perhaps the greatest difference between Plato and Kant. For Kant, the sublime is an experience of unboundedness, infinity, or totality, which occurs when an object in nature invokes in the mind “the exhibition of an indeterminate concept of reason.”³⁹ The imagination then strains to harmonize with reason, but cannot, since this concept of infinity within the reason transcends the realm of sense. As a result, “this inadequacy itself is the arousal in us of the feeling that we have within us a supersensible power,”⁴⁰ and the reason feels its superiority over imagination and the sensible realm of nature.

As such, the sublime and Beauty share their transcendence from sense, and the experience of both results in a paradoxical combination of pain and pleasure, “amazement bordering on terror, by horror and a sacred thrill.”⁴¹ However, the key difference is that, for Kant, sublimity lies within the noumenon, of which we can have no knowledge at all, only apprehension; while for Plato, human reason has the capacity for direct knowledge of the forms, and can both apprehend and comprehend the form of Beauty. Furthermore, while the sublime directs the mind inward, feeling the transcendence of its own reason, Beauty is a form that lies outside of the mind, and is accessed in a state of ecstasy (“out of body”). Finally, for Kant the beautiful and the sublime are two distinct categories, and are not connected in the same way that beautiful particulars participate in the form of Beauty. Even if there were some transcendent, independent “Beauty” within the noumenon of nature itself, it would be fundamentally unknowable, since the mind only has access to nature as a phenomenon.

Finally, “the good,” as judged in terms of the moral feeling it inspires, involves for Kant the mind realizing its superiority over sense through the conception of an absolute moral law. This superiority manifests in the fact that a person “can sense within himself … obstacles in sensibility, but at the same time his superiority to sensibility in overcoming these obstacles, which determinability is moral feeling.”⁴² Since this is formally similar to the feeling of superiority to sense that arises from an experience of the sublime, Kant, like Plato, believes that the good can be presented in aesthetic terms, even through for Kant it properly belongs “not to aesthetic but to pure intellectual judgment.”⁴³ Further, Kant generally believes that experiences of the beautiful and the sublime have a positive effect on a person’s virtue. He writes that “it is in fact difficult to think of a feeling for the sublime in nature without connecting with it a mental attunement similar to that for moral feeling,” and that “the beautiful prepares us for loving something, even nature, without interest; the sublime, for esteeming it even against our interest (of sense).”⁴⁴

Conclusion

In conclusion, by patterning the four types of aesthetic experience arising from the mind’s faculty of judgment in Kant—the agreeable, the beautiful, the sublime, and the good—onto four aspects of Plato’s aesthetics— imitative art, beautiful particulars, Beauty, and the Good—a fruitful comparison can be made. On the one hand, Kant’s aesthetics share many correspondences with those of Plato, including the criticism of aesthetic experiences that affect the passions but do not build virtue, the universality of aesthetic judgments of beauty, the transcendent nature of the sublime which elicits an ambivalent emotional state, and a connection between aesthetics and ethics. However, while for Plato a soul can know and comprehend the realm of forms through contemplative reason (the realm of forms being the only place where true knowledge lives in the first place), for Kant the mind has no access to knowledge of the noumenon: as a result, the highest aesthetic experience of the sublime escapes the faculty of cognition. Furthermore, the Kantian experience of the sublime does not lead the mind to higher realities outside of itself, but merely makes it aware of some indeterminate infinities within it own reason. Hence, while the Platonic soul experiences ecstasy in a direct vision of Beauty and walks in the train of the gods, the Kantian soul is forever trapped within itself, alienated from a complete knowledge of both itself and of nature by the noumenon.