There’s too much information missing right now before I start Plato. All of the stuff covered by Bernard is treated differently, yet slightly better as regards the Greek stuff, in the Bosenquet entry. I’m gonna approach these two histories in tandem by starting with the Pre-Socratic speculation. I’m going to return to the intro chapter later when I actually look at Bosenquet’s ideas.
CHII – The Creation of a Poetic World, and It’s first enciounter with Reflection
p1/p2, Reconfirmation; Not much to be found in terms of aesthetic inquiry in early Greece. ‘Fine art’ is the term for objects of aesthetic inquiry, and he says rather than this, it (Early Greek art) is a tracing of the development out of ‘savagery’. It wasn’t any national mind of the Greeks but rather, its examples show their quick and lofty development. Thus early Critiques of Homer and Hesiod like Herodotus for example, don’t look towards splendor. Like how the Great Poets are treated with a more practical (As in moral)/epistemic value.
p3, So why are we missing the idea of beauty kind of wholly in this attitude of reflection. It is because our modern considerations will try to breach a divide between artistic representation and a difference in intention or kind from the ‘realities’ of ordinary life. (Plato may be the beginning? As these 2nd order realities hold less ontological weight, and therefore less truth/good). “The Greek world of ideas, before or outside the philosophic schools, was wholly free from dualism”(HOA, 11). He cites the Gods as an example (And this stays consistent with the values of the poets listed in this entry). Their reality is homogenous with ours.
“And therefore, although a work of creative idealization unparalleled in the history of the world had been performed by the plastic fancy of Greece in the age that culminated with the highest art of Athens, yet in the absence of any mystic sense of an invisible order of realities the prevalent impression produced by this world of beauty was rather that of imitative representation than of interpretative origination.”(HOA, 12).
p4, Bosenquet shows how the idea (Noted in the last linked entry) of ‘mimesis’ not to be developed really until the late 5th century BC) inherently involves an imaginative distinction. The imitation requires not only the object represented but an explanation of the ‘the act of imaginative production by which it is born again under the new conditions imposed by another medium’ (HOA, 12). In short, someone is making an imitation. Incipt Plato’s Sophist.
p5, So antiquity didn’t have a more fully developed ‘artistic consciousness’ because:
a) Of an ‘immature’ reflection judging by reality and utility (Moral/epistemic value of Great Poets)
b) Of no belief in anything which can’t be visibly imitated (2nd order of imitation, so to speak)
p5, “It is however the case that the term imitation in ancient aesthetic theory is opposed rather to industrial production than to artistic origination” (HOA, 13). Que? He means that now we generally make a difference between how we recognize an object of art as
- Imitation of an ‘original/creative’ work (Think Warhol debates)
And the lack of ‘fine art’ as a concept leaves the term used, techne, with a wide variety of meaning.
p6, We now consider those works as ideal, non-illusive (Intentionally), and highly detailed, while the Greeks thought it merely representative/imitative (Dual translation for mimesis). Two aspects of the nature of this art:
- The ‘Great Poets’ (Bosenwuet, “The Imitative Art-ists) didn’t have a massive responsibility for mystic/symbolic significance. This allowed their art to shine with a more clearly imitative appeal; not every detail was scrutinized so they could wonderfully paint the forest, without overdue regard for the leaf on every tree.
- The fact that we may regard the Greeks sentiments as less humorous, or animated, or strange (in short, overly dramatic) is wrong. We simply are abstracting our reactions from the lack of historical record. They were certainly vivacious. So while more developed discussions of art do show us more of aesthetic inquiry (Art knowledge), it is not a result of poverty in their thinking about art wholly, it was the natural reaction to the noble nature of their art outlined in point one. “Had the realism of the antique been less modest and refined, it would have challenged an analysis which would have replaced censure by explanation. But the time for this was not yet; and it will be seen that despite the protests of the philosopher and the satirical comedian, theory was forced in the long run to become more subtly appreciative as art became less severely noble.” (HOA, 15) What a very interesting point.
p7, Bosenquet summarizes “A world of beautiful shapes and fancies has been brought into being, which must of necessity have trained the perception to recognize beauty as displayed in the corresponding province of nature, that is, mainly in the human form, and must have developed some partly conscious sentiment of the beautiful as distinguishable from the good and the true. This imaginary world has been recognized as a new creation both negatively by the claims of the metaphysician and the moralist and positively by the naive appreciation of the historian and the allegorizing construction of the mystic. The mystic is the forerunner of a later age; but the historian and the philosopher agree, by their acquiescence and their censure respectively, in treating it as claiming to pass for a simple reproduction of natural reality. And thus the immense panorama depicted by Hellenic imagination enters the range of philosophic vision under the title of mimetic or representative art.” (HOA, 15).
Rustle in the Bush 
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