Philosophy Aesthetics and Art Social Sciences Research Paper

Philosophy Aesthetics and Art of Plato and Collingwood
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Aesthetics is the philosophical approach towards the appreciation of art and beauty. However, it is well known that the definition of art is vague and is often interchanged with craft. Most people, on the other hand, view art as a medium for self-expression to channel the strong emotions of the artists. These perspectives of art are observed in everyday interpretation of different people but these perspectives may had been rooted from different philosophical thoughts of great philosophers such as Plato and Robin George Collingwood. Plato's aesthetics connects art, such as poetry and painting, to be a form of craft work since both are nothing more than an imitation of an imitation. This way, Plato view poetry as a craft since poets just imitate the form of an object through spoken language for it to become an art. Additionally, Plato despise imitators since they only represent a loose rendition of the truth, thus, making them ignorant about distinguishing fiction from reality. On the other hand, Collingwood describes art to be independent against craft since the elements that makes craft a craft can be non-existent in art.[Nikolas Pappas, "Plato's Aesthetics," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, last modified June 23, 2017, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-aesthetics/#Imi.] [Christopher Janaway, Images of Excellence: Plato's Critique of the Arts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995),36] [Joseph Maguire. "The Differentiation of Art in Plato's Aesthetics," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 68 (1964): 392-393, /stable/310813.] [Christopher Janaway. "Arts and Crafts in Plato and Collingwood," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 50, no. 1 ( 1992): 45, /stable/431066.] [Jessica Moss. "What Is Imitative Poetry and Why Is It Bad?", The Cambridge Companion to Plato’s Republic, 415, doi:10.1017/ccol0521839637.015] [Janaway, "Arts and Crafts in Plato and Collingwood," 45.]
Although the definition of art is broad and dynamic from person to person, the perspectives of Plato and Collingwood on the similarities or the distinction between art and craft is necessary to understand whether art has a function or not. In this paper, the core concepts of Plato's aesthetics as art and craft are just imitation that is removed from the reality of forms and Collingwood's aesthetics that outlines the principles of art, which is separate from craft will be tackled to appreciate and understand these philosopher’s notion of philosophical aesthetics.
Understanding Plato's notion of art requires an understanding of his basic philosophies such as the tripartite soul. In Plato's philosophy regarding the tripartite soul, a person possesses an inner self that he called the soul. He formulated that the soul is composed of three parts: the rational soul, the spirited soul, and the appetitive soul. The rational soul is responsible for governing the self with reason and intellect. The Spirited soul governs the emotions an individual. The appetitive soul governs the desire of the individual of basic physical needs such as food, sleep, and sexual desires. Plato presented that the proper balance of the three soul is needed so that a per...