Art and aesthetical value in philosophy and society

• Author: Gabriela Ratulea
• Position: Faculty of Sociology and Communication, University Transilvania of Brasov
• Pages: 45-52

Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov

Series VII: Social Sciences • Law • Vol. 8 (57) No. 1 - 2015

ART AND AESTHETICAL VALUE IN

PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIETY

Gabriela RĂŢULEA1

Abstract: The paper aims to show the relationship that exists between art,

philosophy, religion and the role of aesthetical value in society. Throughout

history, the relation between art and philosophy has been established within

the boundaries set by Plato, since the Greek philosopher was the first to set

the terms of the discussion: thus, art was allowed to stand next to philosophy,

provided that beauty is perceived as an ideal and that aesthetic

contemplation is associated to intellectual contemplation.

Key words: aesthetics, art, society, philosophy.

1 Faculty of Sociology and Communication, University Transilvania of Brasov.

1. Introduction

The approach to the relationship between

art and philosophy is marked by Plato’s

paradigmatic gesture, who, in The

Republic, stated the programmatic

incompatibility between art and

philosophy, by claiming that poets should

be cast out of the ideal city. In the 7th book

of The Republic, Plato discusses the

education of young people in the ideal city,

wondering what the ideal means for such

an education are. Based on his conception

about knowledge and truth and on his

assertion that education must be made in

the spirit of truth, Plato answers that art

would not be a suitable means for the

education of young people, because art is a

copy of a copy, a representation of a thing,

which in turn only exists as part of the idea

[8]; art takes us further away from truth,

instead of bringing us closer to it, since it

is associated to a „third degree” reality.

Thus, for Plato, the artistic object becomes

the ontological embodiment of error and of

lying. However, the incompatibility

between truth and aesthetic categories,

such as it is presented in The Republic,

isn’t Plato’s last statement. In the

Phaedrus, where Plato speaks of how the

soul travels through the sensible world, the

dungeon of the soul and the world of ideas,

beauty, no longer separates these worlds,

rather it brings them closer. This time,

beauty – be it that of worlds, of bodies, of

the soul, or of the artistic object – does not

identify itself with the shape of things, but

with the way in which it corresponds to the

ideal form of which it is part. Now, beauty

is the effigy that truth takes on, and the

issue of the compatibility between art and

philosophy is rewritten in a different

manner. At the other end of western

philosophy, Hegel will state the same

thing: „ it is the free and adequate

embodiment of the Idea” [3, 77].

2. Art and philosophy

Throughout history, the relation between

art and philosophy has been established

within the boundaries set by Plato, since