Mimesis, the notion that art imitates reality, has long been recognized as one of the central ideas of Western aesthetics and has been most frequently associated with Aristotle. Less well documented is the great importance of mimetic theories of literature, theater, and the visual arts during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. In this book, the most comprehensive overview of the theory of mimesis since Auerbach's monumental study, Gunter Gebauer and Christoph Wulf provide a thorough introduction to the complex (...) and shifting meanings of the term. Beginning with the Platonic doctrine of imitation, they chart the concept's appropriation and significance in the aesthetic theories of Aristotle, Molière, Shakespeare, Racine, Diderot, Lessing, and Rousseau. They examine the status of mimesis in the nineteenth-century novel and its reworking by such modern thinkers as Benjamin, Adorno, and Derrida. Widening the traditional understanding of mimesis to encompass the body and cultural practices of everyday life, their work suggests the continuing value of mimetic theory and will prove essential reading for scholars and students of literature, theater, and the visual arts. (shrink)

Mimesis, the notion that art imitates reality, has long been recognized as one of the central ideas of Western aesthetics and has been most frequently associated with Aristotle. Less well documented is the great importance of mimetic theories of literature, theater, and the visual arts during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. In this book, the most comprehensive overview of the theory of mimesis since Auerbach's monumental study, Gunter Gebauer and Christoph Wulf provide a thorough introduction to the complex (...) and shifting meanings of the term. Beginning with the Platonic doctrine of imitation, they chart the concept's appropriation and significance in the aesthetic theories of Aristotle, Molière, Shakespeare, Racine, Diderot, Lessing, and Rousseau. They examine the status of mimesis in the nineteenth-century novel and its reworking by such modern thinkers as Benjamin, Adorno, and Derrida. Widening the traditional understanding of mimesis to encompass the body and cultural practices of everyday life, their work suggests the continuing value of mimetic theory and will prove essential reading for scholars and students of literature, theater, and the visual arts. (shrink)

Mimesis, the notion that art imitates reality, has long been recognized as one of the central ideas of Western aesthetics and has been most frequently associated with Aristotle. Less well documented is the great importance of mimetic theories of literature, theater, and the visual arts during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. In this book, the most comprehensive overview of the theory of mimesis since Auerbach's monumental study, Gunter Gebauer and Christoph Wulf provide a thorough introduction to the complex (...) and shifting meanings of the term. Beginning with the Platonic doctrine of imitation, they chart the concept's appropriation and significance in the aesthetic theories of Aristotle, Molière, Shakespeare, Racine, Diderot, Lessing, and Rousseau. They examine the status of mimesis in the nineteenth-century novel and its reworking by such modern thinkers as Benjamin, Adorno, and Derrida. Widening the traditional understanding of mimesis to encompass the body and cultural practices of everyday life, their work suggests the continuing value of mimetic theory and will prove essential reading for scholars and students of literature, theater, and the visual arts. (shrink)

Can we dispense with mimesis in representation? Content Type Journal Article Category Essay Review Pages 1-6 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9529-1 Authors José A. Díez, Department of Logic, History and Philosophy of Science/LOGOS Research Group, University of Barcelona, C/Montalegre, 6-8, 08001 Barcelona, Spain Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

Philosophy of education is regarded as an art of hermeneutics that integrates a theory of mimesis in its understanding of the educational transmission. The idea of the master is reconsidered in this perspective in order to overcome the old opposition between classicism and romanticism. In that way the author attempts to respond to the question: What is the secret to pedagogically sound education?

Philosophy of education is regarded as an art of hermeneutics that integrates a theory of mimesis in its understanding of the educational transmission. The idea of the master is reconsidered in this perspective in order to overcome the old opposition between classicism and romanticism. In that way the author attempts to respond to the question: What is the secret to pedagogically sound education?

Featuring contributions from leading experts, this book represents the first collection of essays on the topic of art and science in the analytic tradition of ...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Realm of Mimesis in Plato: Orality, Writing, and the Ontology of the Image by Mariangela EspositoDoug Al-MainiESPOSITO, Mariangela. The Realm of Mimesis in Plato: Orality, Writing, and the Ontology of the Image. Boston: Brill, 2023. xiv + 173 pp. Cloth, $143.00This manuscript grew out of the author’s original interest in Platonic aesthetics, itself developing into a more particularized examination of Plato’s account of beauty. Plato’s (...) interest in the arts is famously bound up in a broad criticism of their imitative nature; the relation between the original and the imitation, or the eidos and the eidolon, is the core topic of this book. When this binary nature of mimesis is emphasized, it is difficult not to see the two poles as opposed to each other, and indeed there are several passages in the Platonic corpus that tell us directly to value the eidos over the eidolon. “The critique of the arts, in general terms, is based on the assumption that they produce multiple, false, sensorial images (eidola ) that are far removed from the truth, while the truth is a process through which multiplicities are gathered together into an intellectual unity (eidos).” While this duality shows up in the dialogues in numerous ways, Esposito seeks to show a method that transcends it, a method that depends on the experience of [End Page 347] beauty. Beauty is the entity that allows for a transition from the sensual to the intellectual, a point Plato makes in both the Symposium and the Phaedrus, and thereby supports the view that the binary pair of image and original are not so discrete as we might originally believe.Esposito’s analysis of the relation between image and original is made concrete through its application to writing and speech. The book is divided into an introduction, three chapters, and a conclusion that track the progress of our ascent to the eidos, with the first chapter devoted to Plato’s critique of writing, the second to the critique of speech, and the third to an analysis of how beauty facilitates going beyond their opposition. The main sources for the critique of writing are the Phaedrus and the Seventh Letter; Socrates in the Phaedrus explicitly declares writing to be an imitation of speech and the Seventh Letter supports this position. Esposito follows Derrida’s famous essay, Plato’s Pharmacy, stating, “In Derrida’s account of the Phaedrus, this is the main charge against the written word: first, it imitates the original, and then—its second crime—substitutes itself for the original.” The ability of the copy to substitute itself for the original shows a sensitivity on Derrida’s part to the kind of project that Esposito wants to engage in, and indeed a major theme of Derrida’s work was his use of the concept of the pharmakon as something that transgressed a boundary between seemingly discrete opposites; the term pharmakon could refer to either a poison or a cure. But Esposito claims that focusing on the opposition between speech and writing ensures that it will never be overcome, and so this criticism of writing (as an imitation) must be demoted in importance. Esposito therefore ultimately distances herself from Derrida and also spends time taking on the importance of the so-called Unwritten Doctrines, especially as outlined by the Tübingen School. The Tübingen School straightforwardly accepts the criticism of writing in comparison to speech and so develops a theory of unwritten doctrines that Plato would only transfer orally. Given her project of synthesizing the tension between writing and speech, it is unsurprising that Esposito would be hostile to the project of the Tübingen School, “which this work does not consider sustainable.”In the second chapter Esposito moves on to the critique of speech. Here the core of her analysis is given to the Sophist, which provides us with “the best ontological expression of the criticism of image making.” The wider criticism of the Sophist is centered on the observation that appearances are bound up with nonbeing itself; “the biggest challenge posed by the sophist and the main danger of the mimetic mechanism is revealed: both allow the pseudos... (shrink)

My purpose is to suggest and open a dialogue between Plato and Adorno, and for this I have chosen the concept of mimesis, a concept that plays a central role in both thinkers both epistemologically and aesthetically. While Plato uses the term in order to expel the poets from Kallipolis, to be more precise certain kinds of poetry such as tragedy and comedy, Adorno uses the term to show the relationship between art and natural beauty, the somatic dimension of (...) knowledge, and the importance subversive poets and artists. For Plato, poets are three times removed from the truth and for Adorno, by contrast, the work of art is a vehicle of truth. This dialogue between an ancient and a modern intends to show not only the presence of the old in the new, but the valuable present and the fruitful transformation that an old concept can have. (shrink)

Mimesis or imitation comes in many forms, from animal and plant mimicry to artistic copies 'from life'. This book offers eighteen essays addressing mimesis from diverse perspectives. From the recreation of galaxies to Iron Age torcs, from counterfeit dragons to modern waxworks, each chapter explores facets of material mimesis from prehistory to the present day. The Matter of Mimesis invites readers to compare practices of imitating, faking, and synthesising materials and objects in nature, art and science, (...) raising questions about skills, techniques and politics of making that transcend historical and disciplinary boundaries and inform both our past and future worlds. (shrink)

Mimesis as Make-Believe is important reading for everyone interested in the workings of representational art.

In Republic 376d, the interlocutors discuss the education of children. Much of this passage revolves around the role or function of poetry as mimesis in the polis or city-state. In 377b-378e some of the poetry of Homer, Hesiod and Pindar is deemed harmful and censored within the educational structure of the polis in virtue of its potentially deleterious effect on society.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Mimesis: Culture, Art, SocietyGene FendtMimesis: Culture, Art, Society, by Gunter Gebauer and Christoph Wulf; translated by Don Reneau; 400 pp. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995, $45.00 cloth, $18.00 paper.The purpose of this book is to develop “a historical reconstruction of important phases in the development of mimesis” (p. 1) from a brief discussion of its pre-Platonic Greek significance through contemporary thinkers. It is, then, not (...) strictly a philosophical text, as are most of the texts and authors the book takes up. It is, however, a significant effort in the history of ideas, and as such it is shot through with traces of the traditional tropes, shaping power, ideology, and even social relations of that discipline, particularly as it is practiced in the venerable school of German scholarship. That is, the structure, tone, and argument of the book are shaped mimetically. This book’s problematic is, then, not simply historical, as Republic’s problem with the poets is not simply philosophical. Rather, both books partake of mimesis, even while each one aims to criticize or set forth the concept’s historical development.Let this stand as notice of a deep philosophical problem with the method of historical criticism. In fairness we should note that the authors are not unconscious of their difficulty here: “The fact that mimesis cannot be represented without the use of mimetic processes poses the fundamental problem of theory formation in reference to our object. What is the relation between the representational and the represented world? Is the representation of representation structurally equivalent to simple representation?” (p. 21). The authors hope to moot the power of those questions, if not the questions themselves, by attending “first of all to representations of mimesis found in texts best selected for that purpose and only afterward begin to offer considerations of a more generalizing nature” (p. 21). Their reasoning and choice of texts here is the traditional trope of the discipline: a mimema. Among other things, this methodos requires that the authors treat Girard as developing a “literary critical examination of [mimesis in] nineteenth and twentieth century novels” (p. 359n1) and a “new ordering of nineteenth century social relations” (p. 235), rather than, as he claims, a comprehensive anthropological thesis. At least, this method requires treating the former as essential, and the latter as less justifiable, for if Girard’s anthropological thesis about mimesis were justifiable a history of the idea of mimesis would be merely a heresiology. This problem can be restated mutatis mutandis for such thinkers as Plato and Augustine, whose theses—if they have theses—about mimesis are deeply anthropological.Two further questions arise early on and remain at the end. If, as the authors hold (and show), “the concept of mimesis necessarily loses its intellectual centrality with the rise of rational thought,” so much so that “the field of art, which comes to be regarded in the process as autonomous, undergoes a complete and fundamental restructuring” (p. 3), must we not begin to [End Page 199] suspect—as recent philosophers like Derrida attempt to show—that there is a dialectical relationship between the intentional, truth-functional relations of modern rational thought and the mimetic, unformalizable and “ambivalent” (pp. 2–3) processes of mimesis? Rather than conclude that “the question what is mimesis? is one which demonstratively leads to error” (p. 309), does it not begin to seem that intentional representation, as most visible in science, and mimetic assimilations, as most obviously effective in art, are together the necessary dialectical elements of culture, art and science? While it seems that the rise of rational scientific thought pushes mimesis to the social fringes of the arts, isn’t scientific activity and writing still just as much subject, and just as much a product, of the power of mimesis as art? Similarly art is just as bound as science to “probability” or “the convincing impossibility,” to recall Aristotle. This idea is not entirely foreign to the book; it appears subliminally as a plausible explication of the work of theorists like Benjamin and Adorno (pp. 267–93).The third difficulty is a question about selection. As in Auerbach’s renowned precursor, Wulf... (shrink)

Art, Mimesis and the Avant-Garde explores the relationship between art and philosophy. Andrew Benjamin argues for a reworking of the task of philosophy in terms of the centrality of ontology. It is in relation to this centrality, understood through the differences between modes of being, that art, mimesis, and the avant-garde come to be presented. A fundamental part of this book is the original interpretations of important contemporary painters and their themes: Lucian Freud's self-portraits, Francis Bacon 's use (...) of mirrors, R. B. Kitaj and Jewish identity, Anselm Kiefer and iconoclasm. Apart from painting, Benjamin considers architecture, literature, and the philosophical writings of Walter Benjamin and Descartes in elaborating the various aspects of ontological difference. Benjamin develops the theory of the avant-garde as a philosophical category rather than a historical marker, thus bringing the worlds of contemporary art criticism and contemporary philosophy closer together. (shrink)

This book reconsiders the fate of the doctrine of mimesis in the eighteenth century. Standard accounts of the aesthetic theories of this era hold that the idea of mimesis was supplanted by the far more robust and compelling doctrines of taste and aesthetic judgment. Since the idea of mimesis was taken to apply only in the relation of art to nature, it was judged to be too limited when the focus of aesthetics changed to questions about the (...) constitution of individual subjects in regard to taste. Tom Huhn argues that mimesis, rather than disappearing, instead became a far more pervasive idea in the eighteenth century by becoming submerged within the dynamics of the emerging accounts of judgment and taste. Mimesis also thereby became enmeshed in the ideas of sociality contained, often only implicitly, within the new accounts of aesthetic judgment. The book proceeds by reading three of the foundational treatises in aesthetics—Burke’s _Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful_, Hogarth’s _Analysis of Beauty_, and Kant’s _Critique of Judgment_—with an eye for discerning where arguments and analyses betray mimetic structures. Huhn attempts to explicate these books anew by arguing that they are pervaded by a mimetic dynamic. Overall, he seeks to provoke a reconsideration of eighteenth-century aesthetics that centers on its continuity with traditional notions of mimesis. (shrink)

This book gathers an interdisciplinary group of thinkers to ask if intersubjective acts of relating can be transferred to artificial beings without remainder. Using the uncanny valley model developed by Masahiro Mori, this significant contribution to performance philosophy presents a clear framework to consider aesthetic experience beyond mimesis.

The book edited by Roman Frigg and Matthew C. Hunter is a great example of interdisciplinary collaborative work, bringing together contributions by scholars of science and of art, around the topic of representation. The collection consists of eleven essays, seven of which were presented in early form at a conference organized by the two editors at the London School of Economics and the Courtauld Institute of Art in June 2006; the other four have been added subsequently. The result is a (...) high-standard, remarkably edited book. (shrink)

The concept ofmimēsiswas ‘shared by most authors, philosophers and educated audiences in the classical period, in antiquity as a whole, and even later’, although it has probably never been developed into a well-articulated theory. As far as we can judge from the extant evidence, the meaning of the expressions μίμησις and μιμέομαι differs from author to author and sometimes even from passage to passage. Ancient Greek views onmimēsishave often been discussed in modern scholarship, mainly within the field of history of (...) art, and it has been demonstrated repeatedly that the traditional English translation ‘imitation’ is not always appropriate for the ancient texts and that in many contexts it is rather misleading. In the following study I aim to focus on this concept as it was employed in the oldest Greek cosmological and philosophical theories. As a rule, the study of these theories is complicated by their fragmentary state of preservation and by their distortion through the specifically Platonic views that were dominant among the later doxographers. I shall suggest that the Platonizing tendency still prevalent today, which tends to translate and interpretmimēsisas ‘imitation’ or ‘copy’, should be carefully revised in the light of the Hippocratic evidence and specifically in view ofDe victu, probably the oldest authentic, non-fragmentary, and non-Platonic document attesting the concept ofmimēsis. (shrink)

A comunicação tem como propósito uma análise comparativa sobre o problema filosófico da arte como expressão de verdade, tendo em vista o idealismo platônico e o idealismo estético moderno de G.W.Hegel. Parte-se da hipótese que a presente análise sustenta uma relação paradoxal entre ambas propostas idealistas, na medida em que se em Platão é afirmada a tese da arte como distanciamento da verdade, considerando o seu caráter essencialmente mimético, em Hegel, a arte ao constituir-se como momento de realização efetiva do (...) Espírito só pode ser assim compreendida a partir do paradigma da ideia, de inspiração platônica. Ressalta-se a compreensão da arte oriunda da teoria metafísica platônica e de sua concepção idealista de aisthesis, bem como o caráter científico da estética, segundo Hegel, cuja fundamentação filosófica reivindica a compreensão da ideia, enquanto razão absoluta que se autodesdobra historicamente e se efetiva nos limites da finitude sensível. Pretende-se mostrar que a pretensa superação hegeliana da concepção idealista platônica acerca da arte não pode prescindir do fundamento do platonismo - a idéia universal, o infinito.: The Communication aims a comparative analysis on the philosophical problem of the art as an expression of truth, considering the Platonic idealism and the modern esthetic idealism from Hegel. The starting point is the assumption that this analysis holds a paradoxical relationship between both idealistic proposals, Insofar as Plato affirms the art thesis as detachment from the truth, considering his character essentially mimetic, Hegel says that the art to establish itself as a moment of effective realization from the Spirit can only be understood from the paradigm of the idea, of Platonic inspiration. We emphasize the art understanding coming from the Platonic metaphysics theory and his idealistic conception of aisthesis, as well as the scientific character of aesthetics, according to Hegel, whose philosophical foundation claims the understanding of the idea, as absolute reason that self unfolds historically carries up within the limits of finitude sensitive. It is intended to show that the Hegelian overcoming supposed from Platonic idealist conception about the art can not prescind from foundation of Platonism - the universal idea, the infinity. Keywords: Plato, Hegel, Idea, art, truth,idealism. (shrink)

This thesis starts from the point of departure of asking why Aesthetic Theory is difficult to read. In answering this question it is argued that the difficulty of the work is a function of the unusual claims Adorno makes about the relation between art and philosophy, and that the presentation of these arguments exemplifies these claims. This complimentary relation between form and content has implications for the way Adorno can be understood as engaging the idea of mimesis. Aesthetic Theory (...) should be understood as a theory of mimesis in modern art and as a mimetic work itself. Given this idea, the question of the readability of the work emerges as inseparable from the explicit claims Adorno makes for mimesis. If the work ultimately cannot be understood because Adorno does not define his concepts, or it is unexplainable for any other reason, then mimesis will be shown to be untenable. The issue of the readability of Aesthetic Theory is explored in the Introduction through a discussion of issues arising from the recent history of Adorno's reception. Particular attention is paid to the differences between critics who have emphasised the significance of the particular claims Adorno makes against those who emphasise his method. Chapter I rejects this distinction while it argues that the character of Adorno's writing is uneven, that is to say, Aesthetic Theory cannot usefully be read in a uniform way. Chapter I considers different aspects of this lack of uniformity and argues that the identity of Aesthetic Theory as 'philosophy' is often tenuous as it moves in and out of other modes of argument. Chapters 2 and 3 look at different aspects of the identity of Aesthetic Theory as philosophy. Chapter 2 explains the strategic significance of the work as a continuation of a tradition of philosophy from Hegel onwards. This tradition, it is argued, has explicitly understood the problem of philosophy as recognising itself as experience while it attempts to describe experience. Chapter 3 extends this theme into a consideration of philosophical form. If philosophy is understood as a mode of experience then its form as well as its content is significant. Through a consideration of Heidegger and Derrida, Chapter 3 examines the uniqueness of the philosophical form of Aesthetic Theory. Having made this distinction. Chapter 4 reads Aesthetic Theory as philosophical form, describing aspects of it as mimetic. Chapters 5 and 6 then give detailed readings of parts of Aesthetic Theory which are particularly relevant for an understanding of Adorno's theory of the mimetic potential of modern art. The concluding chapter argues that the internal consistency of Aesthetic Theory in its practice and definition of the crisis of mimesis in modernism has significant implications for the practice of art history and criticism of twentieth-century art. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to show that, according to Theodor Adorno, art is knowledge, it has gnoseological relevance, and is linked to truth. While Adorno makes a radical separation and distinction between art and philosophy, at the same time he claims that they have a complementary and collaborative relationship. This relationship can only be grounded on the understanding of art as dialectics and estrangement from the real world. The dialectical link with concrete reality grounds two aesthetic concepts that (...) characterize the peculiar way of thinking in art, namely, “mimesis” and “expression.” After dealing with the mimetic-expressive condition of art, the article clarifies the complementary relationship between art and philosophy. (shrink)

This book reconsiders the fate of the doctrine of mimesis in the eighteenth century. Standard accounts of the aesthetic theories of this era hold that the idea of mimesis was supplanted by the far more robust and compelling doctrines of taste and aesthetic judgment. Since the idea of mimesis was taken to apply only in the relation of art to nature, it was judged to be too limited when the focus of aesthetics changed to questions about the (...) constitution of individual subjects in regard to taste. Tom Huhn argues that mimesis, rather than disappearing, instead became a far more pervasive idea in the eighteenth century by becoming submerged within the dynamics of the emerging accounts of judgment and taste. Mimesis also thereby became enmeshed in the ideas of sociality contained, often only implicitly, within the new accounts of aesthetic judgment. The book proceeds by reading three of the foundational treatises in aesthetics—Burke’s _Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful_, Hogarth’s _Analysis of Beauty_, and Kant’s _Critique of Judgment_—with an eye for discerning where arguments and analyses betray mimetic structures. Huhn attempts to explicate these books anew by arguing that they are pervaded by a mimetic dynamic. Overall, he seeks to provoke a reconsideration of eighteenth-century aesthetics that centers on its continuity with traditional notions of mimesis. (shrink)

First published in 1991. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In Art and Truth after Plato, Tom Rockmore argues that Plato has in fact never been satisfactorily answered—and to demonstrate that, he offers a comprehensive account of Plato’s influence through nearly the whole history of Western ...

A comunicação tem como propósito uma análise comparativa sobre o problema filosófico da arte como expressão de verdade, tendo em vista o idealismo platônico e o idealismo estético moderno de G.W.Hegel. Parte-se da hipótese que a presente análise sustenta uma relação paradoxal entre ambas propostas idealistas, na medida em que se em Platão é afirmada a tese da arte como distanciamento da verdade, considerando o seu caráter essencialmente mimético, em Hegel, a arte ao constituir-se como momento de realização efetiva do (...) Espírito só pode ser assim compreendida a partir do paradigma da ideia, de inspiração platônica. Ressalta-se a compreensão da arte oriunda da teoria metafísica platônica e de sua concepção idealista de aisthesis, bem como o caráter científico da estética, segundo Hegel, cuja fundamentação filosófica reivindica a compreensão da ideia, enquanto razão absoluta que se autodesdobra historicamente e se efetiva nos limites da finitude sensível. Pretende-se mostrar que a pretensa superação hegeliana da concepção idealista platônica acerca da arte não pode prescindir do fundamento do platonismo - a idéia universal, o infinito. (shrink)

Mimesis and the portrayal of reflective life in action : Aristotle's Poetics and Sophocles' Oedipus the King -- The portrayal of reflective life in action in poetry : Shakespeare's dramatization of the poet in Sonnets 1-126 -- The portrayal of reflective life in action in music : Bach's Prelude and Fugue in B flat minor (The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1) and Beethoven's String Quartet in A minor, opus 132 -- The portrayal of reflective life in action in painting : (...) discovery of the inner life of sensory perception in watercolours by Turner and oil paintings by Cézanne. (shrink)

The commemorative forms of the Romans are marked by the ubiquity of two contrasting presentational modes: one essentially mimetic, rooted in the representational power of artistic forms, the other abstract and figurative, dependent on the presentation of cues for the summoning of absent yet necessary images. The mimetic mode was thoroughly conventional, and thus posed few problems of interpretation; the figurative knew no such orthodoxy and required a different and distinctive form of attention. At the tomb, epigraphic and sculptural forms, (...) each in its characteristic manner, addressed an audience habituated by tradition to respond to both of these modes, to grasp their differences, and to rise to the challenge implicit in the very fact of their contrast. (shrink)

In the "Republic," Plato has Socrates attack poetry’s use of mimēsis, often translated as ‘imitation’ or ‘representation.’ Various scholars (e.g. Blondell 2002; Frank 2018; Halliwell 2009; K. Morgan 2004) have noticed the tension between Socrates’ theory critical of mimēsis and Plato’s literary practice of speaking through various characters in his dialogues. However, none of these scholars have addressed that it is not only Plato the writer who uses mimēsis but also his own character, Socrates. At crucial moments in several dialogues, (...) Socrates takes on a role and speaks as someone else. I call these moments “Socratic mimēsis.” While previous commentators have noticed some of these moments, they have either overstated their rarity or they have not studied them collectively. My dissertation is the first in-depth investigation of this phenomenon in the dialogues. Socrates’ dramatic imitation of others is way of teaching in a voice separate from his own, and it is also a way for Plato to speak to, and to educate, different kinds of audiences. Although “Socratic mimēsis” occurs throughout the Platonic corpus, I focus on three passages from three different dialogues, which are paradigm instances: [1] in the "Crito" Socrates plays the part of ‘the Laws’ (50a-54c); [2] in the "Theaetetus" he acts the part of ‘Protagoras’ (166a-168c); and [3] in the "Menexenus" he recites a funeral speech learned from ‘Aspasia’ (236d-249c). Instead of one-sidedly reading the dialogues as either only literary works of art or as only a series of philosophical arguments, this study gleans philosophic insights from the literary and dramatic details of the dialogues. In chapter one I argue that in the "Crito" Socrates tries to convince Crito of a universal and absolute ethics based on never committing injustice, but Crito is not able to understand. In order to make Crito more just—but not yet at the level of Socratic ethics—Socrates creates ‘the Laws’ to persuade Crito to expand his personal notion of justice. Socrates instills a political obedience in place of Crito’s existing lawlessness as a second-best recourse. Plato expects the astute listener or reader to see the contrast between Socrates’ earlier ethical principles, said in his own voice, with what he says in the voice of ‘the Laws.’ In chapter two I argue that in the part of the "Theaetetus" where Socrates defends Protagoras (often called ‘the Defense’), Socrates, by imitating ‘Protagoras,’ is actually criticizing Protagorean relativism. The Protagorean theory cannot account for mimēsis and Socrates’ mimetic act performatively contradicts the identity of appearance and reality, which the theory presupposes. Finally, in chapter three I argue that in the Menexenus the funeral oration that Socrates recounts for Menexenus that he heard from ‘Aspasia’ is actually a disguised criticism of political rhetoric and of Athenian imperialism. Although the speech is never interrogated within the dialogue, Plato provokes the listener or reader outside the dialogue to question its message and to see how it conflicts with many of Socrates’ positions in other dialogues. Beyond reconsidering the long-standing and persistent view that Plato was against poetry and mimetic performance, I re-examine the role that performance and role-playing can have in philosophy and pedagogy more generally. Actors, by taking on other personas, and audience members, in observing actors and their actions, are both involved in acts of imagination that can expand their horizon of thinking and feeling. (shrink)

The viscerally Freudian elements of Adorno's use of the concept of mimesis interweave with readings of Kafka in which certain thoughts about childhood play an important role. The first section of this article links biological mimicry with critical theory and art: both mimic what they criticize, while also conserving a repressed and childlike mimetic relationship with otherness and sexual difference. Adorno criticizes both the civilized repression of the mimetic impulse and its subsequently distorted return, a dialectic neglected by direct (...) appeals to mimesis. Good art tries to extricate itself from these distortions. Conversely, the second section of this article explores Adorno's suggestion that fascistic psychology is a refuge for a twisted mimesis of mimesis, which gratifies the worst side of repressed nature while ideologically appealing to the best. Anti-Semitic humour shows how the fascist mimics his own aggressive fantasy of natural law, while secretly envying the closeness to nature he thinks he detects in other races. The final section uses Freud's theories on sympathetic and sadistic comedy to unpack Adorno's readings of Kafka and Mörike. Adorno's critical recuperation of mimetically childlike moments of ridiculousness in art clarifies his differentiation of the varieties of mimesis, as well as countering the gloomy stereotype of the humourless intellectual. But the black side of Adorno's use of laughter dialectically maintains his commitment to painfully remembering the victims of history. (shrink)

The article analyzes the use of visual metaphors to understand the conceptual potential of mimesis in education from the viewpoint of the theory of communicative action. The article seeks to reflect on mimesis in art from the sphere of classical antiquity up to modernity, taking as a basic pa..

В работе ставится вопрос о роли изобразительного начала в абстрактном искусстве Франции периода после Второй мировой войны. Рассматривая творчество и теоретические суждения ведущих мастеров пейзажной абстракции, ташизма, оп-арта, автор приходит к заключению, что принцип мимесиса был не исключен из их искусства, но переосмыслен: задача правдоподобного воссоздания зримых форм сменилась поиском способов обобщенной передачи процессов и структур внешнего мира. Творчество таких мастеров, как Альберто Джакометти и Никола де Сталь, «вырастивших» фигуративные формы из нефигуративных, показывает, что между двумя системами нет непроходимой границы, (...) но существует множество переходных стадий. Заключительная глава посвящена направлению повествовательной фигуративности и роли абстрагирующих моделей реальности в нем. (shrink)

Heidegger formulates the artwork's origin in a movement against the false motion of portrayal and repetition. The term mimesis is employed in the present essay to describe this origin and the means by which truth 'happens', specifically when mimesis turns against itself as imitation. The movement of the artwork is considered within the following constellation: the concept of mimesis is examined in light of Heidegger's 'Origin' essay to illuminate the concept and the essay by placing both in (...) relation to Adorno's aesthetics (especially the way mimesis figures there) as well as Kant's doctrine of the sublime- via Lyotard's Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime. The movement of the artwork toward truth is presented as the movement of mimesis. Further, for both Heidegger and Adorno's accounts, the mimetic movement of the artwork parallels the movement of aesthetic judgment, especially as it is construed in regard to Kant's doctrine of the sublime. Key Words: aesthetic judgment • .art theory • . beauty • . mimesis • . the Sublime. (shrink)