Plato and Aristotle's Perspective on the Value of Art As literary critics, Plato and Aristotle deeply disagree on the value of art in human society. Plato attempts to deprive artists of the power and importance they enjoy in his society, while Aristotle seeks to develop a method of inquiry to determine the merits of an individual work of art. Interestingly, these two different notions of art are based on the same fundamental assumption: that art is a form of mimesis, imitation. Both philosophers are concerned with the artist's ability to have a significant impact on others. It is the imitative function of art that promotes contempt in Plato and curiosity in Aristotle. Examining the reality that art purports to imitate, the process of imitation, and the inherent strengths and weaknesses of imitation as a form of artistic expression can lead to understanding how these contrasting visions of art might develop from a seemingly similar premise. Both philosophers hold radically different conceptions of reality. The assumptions each man makes about truth, knowledge, and goodness directly influence his specific ideas about art. For Plato, art imitates a world already very far from authentic reality, from Truth. Truth exists only in intellectual abstraction, that is, paradoxically, more real than concrete objects. The universal essence, the Idea, the Form of a thing, is more real and therefore more important than its physical substance. The physical world, the world of appearances experienced through the senses, does not host reality. This tangible world is an imperfect reflection of the universal world of Forms. Human observations based on these reflections are, therefore, highly suspect. A b...... middle of the paper...... the definition derived by each philosopher is profoundly different. To build a coherent and wide-ranging philosophy we must deal with art and its impact on society, both as an imitation of a distant system and as a system among us. The process of imitation is used in both cases to promote the particular version of reality espoused by each man. While such a study is useful in tracing the philosophical conflict regarding the use and importance of imitation in art, what is more evident, perhaps, is the discovery that language itself is an imperfect imitation of meaning, capable of encourage such conflicts. Works Cited: Aristotle. "Poetics" The critical tradition. Ed., David H. Richter, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989. Plato. "Repubblica, Book X" The critical tradition. Ed., David H. Richter, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989.