Plato and Aristotle

Comparison Essay # 116889

Philosophy > Ancient Greek

Plato and Aristotle

Compares Plato's concept of human nature and Aristotle's ideas about art in regards to imitation and originality.

870 words () | 0 sources | 2009 United States

Paper Summary:

This paper examines the connection between Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" and Aristotle's "Poetics" in terms of imitation and originality. The paper explores both realms and looks at how they are related in terms of art and human nature. The paper concludes that both philosophers tend to agree that the course of understanding the separation of realms and traveling from the imitative to the truthful one is very painful.

From the Paper:

"If the visible realm and truthful realm were in fact paralleled horizontally, the visible would be that closest to the ground. Justification for such placement is due to the fact that the sun, above the truthful, would in fact cast shadows and therefore give birth to a line mirrored beneath it. Plato illustrates this picture by saying that when it comes to visible figures, people "are not really thinking about them, but about the originals which they resemble.""