Philosophical Perspectives on Art

1. Art as an Imitation

Ancient Greek thought held that poetry, drama, and other forms of fine art were imitations of reality, a
reality that could be actual or potential. Indeed, their phrase for what we think of as “fine art” was
“imitative arts”, and great importance was attached to poetry as an integral part of the Greek education.
Some questions naturally spring from this broad theory of art, for example: what exactly is being
imitated by the poet or artist? How is it being imitated, is the imitation a straight copy, a distortion or an
improvement in some way? Finally this leads us to questions of the end of poetry itself, and its
justification for existence, that is, why imitate at all and can we obtain knowledge and/or

Both Plato and Aristotle, the foremost philosophers of their time, arrived at widely different answers
to the questions above. This is because art was held to be an imitation of nature or reality, and Plato and
Aristotle’s theories on nature and reality were widely different, as were their ideas on the mechanism of
imitation. Their differing views on mimesis, as outlined principally in The Republic and The Poetics, were
thus partly a consequence of their differences in their ontological and epistemological views of the
world. There are other factors, too, which complicate the matter.

2. Art as a Representation

Whatever else it may do, art must represent something of the outside world. That something cannot be
the whole world, of course, but we often feel that the part represented should be made intelligible,
memorable, and important to us. Even the abstract arts, music and modern painting, involve the
emotions, and must in some way re-present them and if representation then fidelity, truth of some sort.
"Life isn't like that" is a serious criticism to make of a play or novel.

3. Art as a Disinterested Judgment

A disinterested judgment is one which judges the object apart from how it might be useful/desirable for
you - apart from your personal, contingent interest in the object. Though I might find Monet's Water
Lilies useful as kindling for a fire or to hide behind, my judgment of their beauty must be purely
disinterested, for Kant.

Judgments of beauty are based on feeling, in particular feelings of pleasure (Kant also mentions
displeasure, but this does not figure prominently in his account.
 4. Art as a Communication of Emotion

A philosophical theory of artistic communication presupposes that works of art are capable of transmitting

concrete and definite 'messages'. For example, Tolstoy holds that the purpose of art is to transmit feelings of
brotherhood of man. He defended the production of the sometimes truly extravagant art, like operas, despite extreme
poverty in the world. For him, art plays a huge role in communication to it’s audience’s emotions that the artist
previously experienced.

Lastly, Art has remained relevant in our daily lives because most of it has played some form of function for man.
Since the dawn of the civilization, art has been at the forefront of giving color to man’s existence.