Panel Title
Plato on the Evaluation of Images
Location
Salle Jean Ladrière, Collège Mercier, Place Cardinal Mercier 14, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve
Start Date
2-14-2014 11:45 AM
End Date
2-14-2014 12:30 PM
Abstract
In Laws II, 669a-b, the Athenian identifies music as a representational (eikastikê) art, and argues that there are three criteria that a wise judge must recognize in order to pronounce such a work to be (kalon):
- what it is
- that it is correctly (orthôs) rendered
- that it is well (eu) rendered.
These criteria are not well understood. The third, in particular, is widely misinterpreted as expressing the requirement that the "images" produced by such arts be morally appropriate. On the contrary, I argue that what counts as being “well worked” in the relevant sense is explained in the immediately following passage (669b5-670b7), which requires that the harmonies and rhythms in a choral work be compatible with each other and with the melodies (mele) and gestures (schêmata) that are set in those structures. Thus we may conclude that being “well worked… in (alt: “by”) words, songs, and rhythms” in the third criterion is a matter of such internal consistency—a supposition confirmed by the Athenian’s identification of expertise at assessing such rhythmic and harmonious appropriateness as the specialized competence of the Dionysian chorus at 670b8-671a1. We might call such internal consistency in a work of art its “integrity.” The three things the wise judge of art must know are therefore (1) what is the object of representation; (2) how accurately the work of art represents it; and (3) how well suited the media of representation are to the subject matter represented.
Plato on the Evaluation of Images
Salle Jean Ladrière, Collège Mercier, Place Cardinal Mercier 14, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve
In Laws II, 669a-b, the Athenian identifies music as a representational (eikastikê) art, and argues that there are three criteria that a wise judge must recognize in order to pronounce such a work to be (kalon):
- what it is
- that it is correctly (orthôs) rendered
- that it is well (eu) rendered.
These criteria are not well understood. The third, in particular, is widely misinterpreted as expressing the requirement that the "images" produced by such arts be morally appropriate. On the contrary, I argue that what counts as being “well worked” in the relevant sense is explained in the immediately following passage (669b5-670b7), which requires that the harmonies and rhythms in a choral work be compatible with each other and with the melodies (mele) and gestures (schêmata) that are set in those structures. Thus we may conclude that being “well worked… in (alt: “by”) words, songs, and rhythms” in the third criterion is a matter of such internal consistency—a supposition confirmed by the Athenian’s identification of expertise at assessing such rhythmic and harmonious appropriateness as the specialized competence of the Dionysian chorus at 670b8-671a1. We might call such internal consistency in a work of art its “integrity.” The three things the wise judge of art must know are therefore (1) what is the object of representation; (2) how accurately the work of art represents it; and (3) how well suited the media of representation are to the subject matter represented.