Dante, Plato, Aristotle Essay

The assignment is rhyme v. school of thought. Plato speaks of a quarrel b/t song and philosophy. He dismisses the arts while Aristotle defends them. DO we envision traces of this quarrel in later traditions? If so, where? And how is it played out there? For this essay, in addition to Plato and Aristotle, focus on Dantes Inferno. (Please look to see if my thesis is clear and strong, my evidence is all relevant, and whether this whole essay persuades you) by dint of with(predicate)out his life, Plato strongly believed that the arts and philosophy directly opposed each different.On the other hand, Aristotle defended meter as an fear to philosophy. Dante, a philosophical poet, successfully synthesizes Plato and Aristotles views in the Divine Comedy of the Inferno without compromising either naturalise of thought. He ac experiences the f typify that while the arts hit its uses within the squ atomic number 18 world and philosophy its uses in the spiritual, both need the ot her to be complete. Both Plato and Aristotle agree that poetry brings or so great feeling which has a lasting impact on the individual and society. However, they disagree on poetrys emotional effects.In Meno, Plato believes it results in harm while Aristotle argues that it leads to usefulness in Poetics. Upon closer inspection, we see that Dantes Inferno contains a philosophical significance underlying its poetic style. Poetry and philosophy work towards the similar end, but in different ways. at that place is no doubt that poetry is an imitation. What Aristotle and Plato dispute over is the source of that imitation. Plato strongly states that the arts ar mimetic, twice removed from the truth. They are an imitation of the pattern entities in the soil of the forms, in which all things are perfect.For instance, tragedy presents multiple possibilities and situations earlier than a hit essence. In Meno, Platos Socrates discusses the difference between doxa and episteme. Poet s, politicians and priests utilize doxa, a character reference of knowledge that is not mediated with any intellectual reasoning. This pass on demonstrates the composition of the material realm. Right opinion, or doxa, flees from the mind just as the secular body quickly perishes. Socrates says opinion is not worth frequently until it is fastened with reasoning of cause and effect (Plato 65). He is alluding to episteme, lawful knowledge that remains in the brain.This is accomplished through intellectual inquiry in the ideal realm. Throughout the dialogue, Menon insults Socrates by saying he looks like a stingray, alluding to a type of desensitizeing-drug. However, Menon proves to accommodate false knowledge as Socrates shows how reminiscence occurs via the Socratic Method. Only when he experiences aporia, the state of confusion and realization of superstars ignorance, can he arena true knowledge. The reference to the drug, pharmakon, symbolizes how Menon became numb to t he false, material world in order to transition to the divine realm where all things originate.While Plato asserts that imitation comes from the true essence of things, Aristotle believes it has its roots in hu reality put through. In Poetics, he examines how adult males have an instinct for imitation, conformity and rhythm. We often learn our earliest lessons from mimesis. Aristotle asserts that the just way to reach the ideal is through action. He views it as a horizontal developmental rather than a vertical sensation, as Plato did. By the process of energia, we move from authority to actuality. This is also analogous to the concept of the material to the ideal. We come out of the core out and into the sun through our admit activities.As the arts best face action, tragedy contains knowledge because it presents psychological possibilities and popular truths about ourselves. Each viable reality may be the ideal essence. Tragedy, subsequently all, is an imitation of actio n and of life, not men. The stage externalizes whats within our souls. The actors play out the core of life which the audience can safely inspect without endangering themselves. This perspective is highly human-centric compared to Platos divine ideal. For instance, tragedy contains plot that is action-centric and based on the complex body part of incidents.Unlike a story, a plots events can be resequenced in any fashion. This is like an experiment in which the stage is our lab. A plot can furthermore be split in deuce ways complex or simple. A complex plot contains peripeteia and anagnorisis. The latter, similar to Platos Meno, shows the progression from ignorance to knowledge. Yet the characters on stage, even after making decisions, are still susceptible to Fortunes will. frankincense peripeteia occurs, alluding to God and the divine realm we ultimately reach with the aid of anagnorisis. There are some things people cant control.However, what we do imitate and control are our a ctions within the material world. For Aristotle, action was the nearly significant aim to focus on. In Dantes Inferno, the poet Virgil guides Dante into Hell. Poetry initiates to act as a gentler remedy compared to philosophy. It is more relatable to the human mind and sensible world. Through catharsis, Dante moldiness eliminate all emotional tumult to compose en uncontaminatingened. This process of catharsis is similar to the movement from the material to spiritual realm. Paradiso, the highest realm, is where true intellect exists and where we bring about one with God.In the second canto, Dante demonstrates the wickedness of emotions and the materialistic realm when Virgil tells him Your soul has been assailed by cowardice, which often weighs so heavily on a man- distracting him from honorable trails- as phantoms frighten beasts when shadows fall. (lines 45-48) This is an extremely Platonian perspective. Partially right, Plato believed that tragedy produced cowardly leaders as it appealed to passion rather than logic and reason. Through Virgil, Dante demonstrates how the arts, especially poetry, are effective in cleansing the soul of emotion by experiencing or contemplating it.Much like the Socratic Method in Meno, Dante must become numb to false knowledge via catharsis and begin with a clean slate. He accomplishes this by observing the damned in the inferno. When he passes through aporia, only then will he become enlightened and obtain truth. The shadows are a reference to Augustines visio corporals, the countermine of pure materiality, in which false knowledge resides. Dante says in canto one that man must come out of the shadowed forest (line 2) where he is so full of sleep (line 11).All this is accomplished through human action, equal through tragedy and poetry. Furthermore, Virgil symbolizes the coming emergence of Christian Rome through Dante. He has already taken Aeneas to the Underworld, setting up the entire story. fit to this, poetry lays th e necessary foundation for the coming age of philosophy. Dante uses typology of the inferno to paradiso. equal the Hebrew Bible, the inferno remains incomplete and estimates whats to come. The New testament completes the text, in the same way philosophy does to poetry. Each is interdependent on the other.In the Inferno, Dante fails to read the inscription to the Gateway to Hell, demonstrating how the archaic style of emphasize no longer resounds in the new age of foregrounding. This method brings to light how the mind reads and interprets with reason. Because the material realm is incomplete, Dante cannot move to this abstract, spiritual meaning without rootage going through the forest. In the third canto, Virgil describes to Dante how those in hell have lost the good of the intellect (line 18). The mind can never be fulfilled as it is a pure sensory experience.This is proven when Virgil is only able to guide Dante so far. He cannot take Dante beyond the material realm because he is not a Christian. He represents the arts, the non-metaphysical. A higher(prenominal) entity, Beatrice, will lead him to paradiso. Virgil declares in canto one If you would then ascend as high as these / a soul more worthy than I am will guide you (lines 121-122). Likewise, we can think of poetry, represented by Virgil, as a disguise to philosophy, the eventual remedy of Beatrice. While philosophy speaks of a thing itself, poetry uses metaphors as a transition to reach a philosophical conclusion.It is a vehicle for truth in its own peculiar way, addressing our minds through imagination, sensibility and feelings. Dante can synthesize Plato and Aristotles views because they are working toward one common goal the divine, the cave of pure intellect. The mechanisms of philosophy are simply a more sophisticated turn on poetry. Traces of Plato are still seen in Dante, especially when he states in the fifth canto Those who undergo this torment are damned because they sinned subjecting reason to the rule of appetite (lines 37-39).However, in tragedy, what seems irrational and absurd to the audience becomes permeated with reason as it speaks the universal truth about ourselves. The arts show there is something beyond human thought and action as the audience learn how we cannot control everything. There is something beyond this human, materialistic world that we cannot begin to understand. This is God, which is exactly what philosophy aims at. It speaks the truth, not only of human action, but of the existence of the ultimate good. In this way, poetry consists of rational thought and intellect.Virgil tells Dante in canto eight Forget your fear, no one can hinder our passage One so great has give it (lines 104-105). We are turning inward to our souls to reach the divine. This also speaks of Gods infinite and unexplainable power. God makes the impossible possible. Dante had to go down into the deepest take of hell to see the divine. This irony demonstrates catabasi s and anagogy, the one single movement towards God. Furthermore, Cassius and Brutus foreshadow Judas betrayal. These three make up the material inversion of the Holy Trinity. We are able to see God in Lucifer.This demonstrates the typology from the inferno to paradiso as strong as the process of recollection in Platos Meno and Aristotles Poetics. exactly as Dante had to move through conclusion to experience life, the reader must pass through poetry to obtain philosophy. All thinking about God involves moving from the material to the realm of the forms. The divine uses metaphors, our language, to help us understand. We are able to indirectly talk to God through poetry as He determines our fate. It was his will to send Dante into Hell. Like poetrys catharsis and philosophys pharmakon, Dante engages his mind as he journeys through the inferno.By looking and contemplating the suffering of the damned, he becomes reconciled to aspects of his life which would otherwise be nonsensical. Both the poet and philosopher seek the existence of God and of the metaphysical. Although Dante recognizes that the arts have limited utility, he realizes how poetry helps lay the foundation for philosophy through the Aristotelian and Platonian method. It has a cognitive function by helping to bump appreciate and complete philosophy. As Venantius Fortunatus wrote in his hymn Vexilla Regis, by death did life procure. Likewise, by poetry did philosophy come about.