Book X Of Plato's Republic

In Book X of Plato’s Republic, Socrates launches an argument questioning the value of art. In it he claims that artists have no conception of the forms and simply mimic the things around them because that’s the best they can do . I think Socrates misses the mark and doesn’t realize the value of art. Good art reflects select aspects of the form of what it imitates. It does so at the cost of misrepresenting or neglecting other facets of that form.
Talking to Glaucon, Socrates argues that there are three versions of a thing, he used a couch as an example. The first version is the form of a couch, which a god made. The second is a specific couch, which a craftsman made following the example of the form. The final version of a couch is …show more content…
Each of us has a uniquely incomplete conception of the forms we see. Each form has multiple facets within it. These facets compose our partial understanding of a form. There are traits of specific forms that are largely recognized, like the understanding that a couch is supposed to be comfortable to sit on, but even those are debated at times. A craftsman doesn’t necessarily understand the form of a couch better than the rest merely because he makes one. It is because his expression of the form of a couch necessitates the presence of all the aspects of the form of a couch that he appears to have a clearer understanding of that form. There are more than enough ugly, uncomfortable couches to support the claim that craftsmen don’t have the highest grasp of the form of a couch simply from the fact that they make …show more content…
This stems from his assertion that artists look only to specific things to mimic and cannot see the forms of those things. Just because a painter paints a couch instead of makes one doesn’t mean he cannot make one or doesn’t understand the form of a couch. Instead it seems that a painter, recognizing the visual part of the form of a couch, chooses to express his understanding of the form of a couch through the medium that fits his focus best. In the same way a poet waxing eloquent on the comforts of a couch understands that aspect of the form of a couch, though perhaps he does not realize its structure in the same way the craftsman does. If a real couch is by definition not the form of a couch than a measure of one’s understanding of the real couch cannot totally determine one’s understanding of the form. Just because a painter or a poet chooses one medium of expression over another, painting or writing over building, doesn’t mean they don’t understand the form. Instead they choose the style of expression best formatted to present their