Plato, Republic

Art is imitation, and thats bad.

Problems with imitation:

Epistemological: An imitation is at three removes from the reality or truth of something

(example of bed).

Theological: Poets and other artists represent the gods in inappropriate ways.

Moral and Psychological: A good imitation can undermine the stability of even the best
humans by making us feel sad, depressed, and sorrowful about life itself.

Aristotle, Poetics
Art is imitation, and thats all right, even good.

Imitation is natural to humans from childhood.

Imitation is how children learn, and we all learn from imitations.

Tragedy can be a form of education that provides moral insight and fosters emotional
growth.

Tragedy is the imitation (mimesis) of certain kinds of people and actions.

Good tragedies must have certain sorts of people and plots. (Good people experience a
reversal of fortune due to some failing or hamartia.)

A successful tragedy produces a katharsis in the audience.

Katharsis = purification through pity and fear.

Platn, en el campo de la esttica, distingui el arte que produce objetos del que los
representa. Para finalmente diferenciar entre artes representativas, imitativas y
mimticas. Realmente no elabor en exceso su teora, por lo menos no de forma
pormenorizada, as que no se preocup en determinar a qu artes les corresponde qu lugar
de la clasificacin. Tampoco concreto una definicin de cada divisin ni estableci lmites
entre ellas. Adems, parece que no tena una idea muy clara respecto a lo que era arte

imitativo, ya que mientras en el Banquete incluye la msica en la poesa, en la Repblica,

realiza el camino inverso, incluyendo la segunda (poesa) en la primera (msica). En
realidad, se limita a dar el primer paso de esta teora de las artes imitativas.
El arte imita a la naturaleza
Hemos visto anteriormente que esta concepcin del arte no era ni mucho menos ajena para
los griegos contemporneos de Platn, ya que antes que l otros ya defendieron esta tesis.
Sin embargo, su inters al respecto era ms bien nulo. Saban que una escultura de una
persona, representa a esa persona real; que un cuerpo humano pintado es una representacin
de los cuerpos humanos reales; y as un largo etctera. Pero ya est, constatado el hecho no
haba nada ms de qu hablar, lo mejor era dispersarse y tratar de otros temas. Como
escudriar la msica o la danza, que son completamente expresivas. Y de las artes
figurativas preferan fijarse en su capacidad de hechizo, del engao que producan y de lo
que diferan de la realidad, como as lo hizo Gorgias, por ejemplo.
Asegura Tartakiewicz que este hecho probablemente se produjo porque hasta el siglo V en
las artes figurativas haba ms geometra que realismo. De hecho, no haba propiamente
un nombre para denominar el hecho de que las artes representasen la realidad. Es cierto que
Scrates utilizo diversos trminos pero ninguno excesivamente satisfactorio.

La mmesis
Para los griegos contemporneos de Platn, y de pocas anteriores, el concepto de
mmesis se refera a la expresin del carcter y la recitacin, pero no tena nada que
ver con imitar la realidad. Aunque Demcrito y los seguidores de Herclito, s que lo
empleaban para la imitacin de la realidad, no se referan a la repeticin de su apariencia,
por lo que era una caracterstica de todas las artes. Platn fue el primero de la historia en
aadir al concepto de mmesis una nueva definicin que caracterizaba a un tipo concreto
de arte.
En el siglo V a. C. la escultura abandona la camisa de fuerzas que supona su estilo
completamente geomtrico, para comenzar a representar personas reales. En la pintura
tambin se acentu este cambio de paradigma.
As, Platn se dio cuenta de que la representacin propiamente se da en las artes que, en sus
palabras, sirven a las Musas, introducindola en su teora esttica con el nombre de
mmesis, que si bien era un trmino antiguo, logr darle una nueva e interesante
perspectiva. Y aunque la utilizara en su sentido antiguo, respecto a la msica o la danza, al
hacer uso de ella en su teora del arte, contribuy a modificar definitivamente su
significado.

LA HERMENETICA

Originalmente, la hermenetica fue una tcnica para la interpretacin de textos literarios

biblicos y jurdicos. Las controversias posteriores a la Reforman le otorgan as, gran
importancia.
En el Romanticismo, adquiere el carcter de disciplina filosfica. Schleiermarcher dir que
se trat de una "teora de la comprensin". En efecto, la hermenetica aspira a un proceso
de re-creacin o repeticin del proceso de creacin artstica del texto o de la obra de arte, el
intrprete habra de identificarse con el autor, congeniando con l.
Schleiermarcher tiene pues, una visin subjetivista y psicologizante. Dilthley partir desde
este punto y transformar a la hermenetica un mtodo para las ciencias del espritu. La
comprensin adquiere as, en su ltima etapa, un carcter objetivo en tanto ya no se
fundamenenta en la "psicologa comprensiva" sino que se dirigie hacia las "objetivaciones
de la vida", es decir, hacia las obras y valores histrico culturales que brotan de "la vida" y
que han de ser otra vez captados por medio de la vivencia.
Pero es con Heidegger que esta disciplina alcanza autntica profundidad filosfica. Dir as
que la "comprensin" es una estructura fundamental del ser humano y ya no una forma
particular de conocimiento. Esto significa que la comprensin es lo que hace posible todo
conocimiento. La interpretacin es posterior a la comprensin.
Hermeneutics
First published Wed Nov 9, 2005
The term hermeneutics covers both the first order art and the second order theory of
understanding and interpretation of linguistic and non-linguistic expressions. As a theory of
interpretation, the hermeneutic tradition stretches all the way back to ancient Greek
philosophy. In the course of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, hermeneutics emerges as
a crucial branch of Biblical studies. Later on, it comes to include the study of ancient and
classic cultures.

With the emergence of German romanticism and idealism the status of hermeneutics
changes. Hermeneutics turns philosophical. It is no longer conceived as a methodological
or didactic aid for other disciplines, but turns to the conditions of possibility for symbolic
communication as such. The question How to read? is replaced by the question, How do
we communicate at all? Without such a shift, initiated by Friedrich Schleiermacher,
Wilhelm Dilthey, and others, it is impossible to envisage the ontological turn in
hermeneutics that, in the mid-1920s, was triggered by Martin Heidegger's Sein und Zeit and
carried on by his student Hans-Georg Gadamer. Now hermeneutics is not only about
symbolic communication. Its area is even more fundamental: that of human life and
existence as such. It is in this form, as an interrogation into the deepest conditions for
symbolic interaction and culture in general, that hermeneutics has provided the critical
horizon for many of the most intriguing discussions of contemporary philosophy, both
within an Anglo-American context (Rorty, McDowell, Davidson) and within a more
Continental discourse (Habermas, Apel, Ricoeur, and Derrida).
1. The Beginnings of Hermeneutics
The term hermeneutics, a Latinized version of the Greek hermeneutice, has been part of
common language from the beginning of the 17th century. Nevertheless, its history
stretches back to ancient philosophy. Addressing the understanding of religious intuitions,
Plato used this term in a number of dialogues, contrasting hermeneutic knowledge to that of
sophia. Religious knowledge is a knowledge of what has been revealed or said and does
not, like sophia, involve knowledge of the truth-value of the utterance. Aristotle carried this
use of the term a step further, naming his work on logic and semantics Peri hermeneias,
which was later rendered as De interpretatione. Only with the Stoics, and their reflections
on the interpretation of myth, do we encounter something like a methodological awareness
of the problems of textual understanding.
The Stoics, however, never developed a systematic theory of interpretation. Such a theory
is only to be found in Philo of Alexandria, whose reflections on the allegorical meaning of
the Old Testament anticipate the idea that the literal meaning of a text may conceal a deeper
non-literal meaning that may only be uncovered through systematic interpretatory work.

About 150 years later, Origenes expounds on this view by claiming that the Scripture has
three levels of meaning, corresponding to the triangle of body, soul, and spirit, each of
which reflects a progressively more advanced stage of religious understanding.
With Augustine we encounter a thinker whose influence on modern hermeneutics has been
profoundly acknowledged by Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer. According to Gadamer, it
is Augustine who first introduces the universality-claim of hermeneutics. This claim arises
from the connection Augustine establishes between language and interpretation, but also
from his claim that interpretation of Scripture involves a deeper, existential level of selfunderstanding. The work of Thomas Aquinas, to which the young Heidegger paid a great
deal of attention, has also had an impact on the development of modern hermeneutics.
Heidegger, however, was mainly interested in Aquinas's notion of Being, and not in his
engagement with specifically hermeneutic issues such as the proper authorship of certain
pseudo-Aristotelian texts. Presupposing the relative unity of an author's work, Aquinas
questions the authenticity of these texts by comparing them to the existing Aristotelian
corpus, thus anticipating a critical-philological procedure that would later emerge as a
crucial aspect of Friedrich Schleiermacher's notion of grammatical interpretation. This,
however, is not the only point of contact between medieval philosophy and modern
hermeneutics. Another such junction is the way in which medieval interpretations of Sacred
texts, emphasizing their allegorical nature rather than their historical roots, are mirrored in
Gadamer's attempt to rehabilitate the hermeneutic relevance of the allegory.
In spite of these and similar points of dialogue, it is in the wake of Martin Luther's sola
scriptura that we see the dawn of a genuinely modern hermeneutics. Following Luther's
emphasis on faith and inwardness, it was possible to question the authority of traditional
interpretations of the Bible in order to emphasize the way in which each and every reader
faces the challenge of making the truths of the text her own. Our understanding of a text
does not consist in a faithful adoption of the predominant or authorized readings of the
time. It is up to the individual reader to stake out her own path to the potential meaning and
truth of the text. Reading now becomes a problem in a new way.

Coming from a very different tradition, Giambattista Vico, the author of the Scienza nuova
(1725), is another central figure in the development of early modern hermeneutics.
Speaking out against the Cartesianism of his time, Vico argues that thinking is always
rooted in a given cultural context. This context is historically developed, and, moreover,
intrinsically related to ordinary language, evolving from the stage of myth and poetry to the
later phases of theoretical abstraction and technical vocabularies. To understand oneself is
thus to understand the genealogy of one's own intellectual horizon. This grants a new
urgency to the historical sciences. Moreover, it offers a model of truth and objectivity that
differs from those entertained by the natural sciences. The historian does not encounter a
field of idealized and putatively subject-independent objects, but investigates a world that
is, fundamentally, her own. There is no clear distinction between the scientist and the object
of her studies. Understanding and self-understanding cannot be kept apart. Selfunderstanding does not culminate in law-like propositions. Appealing to tact and common
sense, it is oriented towards who we are, living, as we do, within a given historical context
of practice and understanding.
Another philosopher who came to influence the early stages of modern hermeneutics is
Benedict de Spinoza. In the seventh chapter of the Tractatus theologico-politicus (1670),
Spinoza proposes that in order to understand the most dense and difficult sections of the
Holy Scriptures, one must keep in mind the historical horizon in which these texts were
written, as well as the mind by which they were produced. There is an analogy, Spinoza
claims, between our understanding of nature and our understanding of the Scriptures. In
both cases, our understanding of the parts hinges on our understanding of a larger whole,
which, again, can only be understood on the basis of the parts. Seen in a larger perspective,
this hermeneutic circle, the movement back and forth between the parts and the whole of
the text, is an important hermeneutical theme. What does not lend itself to immediate
understanding can be interpreted by means of philological work. The study of history
becomes an indispensable tool in the process of unlocking hermetic meaning and languageuse.

Preoccupied respectively with subjective piety, with the new science of man, and with the
historical aspects of understanding, Luther, Vico, and Spinoza all shaped and gave direction
to modern hermeneutics. Yet none of these thinkers developed anything like an explicit
philosophical theory of understanding, let alone a method or a set of normatively binding
rules by means of which the process of interpretation should proceed. Such a theory was
first formulated by Johann Martin Chladenius.
In his Einleitung zur richtigen Auslegung vernnftiger Reden und Schriften (1742),
Chladenius distinguishes hermeneutics from logic, but also elaborates a typology of points
of view. Attesting to the legacy of Leibniz and Wolf, the so-called School Philosophy, the
focus on the different points of view enables Chladenius to explain how variations in our
perception of phenomena and problems may cause difficulties in our understanding of other
people's texts and statements. At stake is not really a historical methodology in the modern
meaning of the term, but a didactic and cognitively oriented procedure of interpretation. In
order to understand what, at first, might look strange or obscureand Chladenius outlines a
whole catalogue of different obscuritiesone ought to take into account the tacit and prereflective assumptions characterizing the point of view from which the problematic text or
statement was brought forth. Only thus may we reach a true or objective understanding of
the subject matter. Hermeneutics, at this point, goes hand in hand with epistemology. With
his coupling of the search for truth and the search for understanding, Chladenius anticipates
an important orientation in 20th century hermeneutics.
Georg Friedrich Meier is another hermeneutically minded philosopher within the LeibnizWolffian paradigm. Whereas Chladenius had been concerned with speech and writing,
Meier's hermeneutics is geared towards signs as suchthat is, every type of sign, including
non-verbal or natural signs. In Versuch einer Allgemeinen Auslegungskunst (1757), Meier
argues that signs do not stand for or refer to a specific non-semiotic meaning or intention,
but gain their meaning through their location within a larger, linguistic whole. What
determines the meaning of a sign is its relation to other signs. Meier's contribution to
hermeneutics is to argue for the interdependence of hermeneutics and language, introducing

a semantic holism in which linguistic obscurities are detangled by reference to language

itself, not by reference to extra-linguistic elements such as the intention of the author.
Considering the early beginning of the modern hermeneutic tradition, two more names
must be mentioned: Friedrich Ast and Friedrich August Wolf.
Ast published his Grundlinien der Grammatik, Hermeneutik und Kritik in 1808. An
accomplished classicist and a student of Friedrich Schelling, his aim was to provide a
methodology through which the whole of world-historical spirit could be retrieved.
Individual utterances are neither to be understood with reference to their author, nor with
reference to their place within the semiotic system, but according to their location within
world-history. This, Ast thought, was possible through the combination of a synthetic and
an analytic approach, the former focusing on the whole, the latter on the particular parts of
which this whole consists. Ast thereby extends the scope of the hermeneutic circle.
Originally conceived in terms of the relationship between the parts and the whole of the
text, the hermeneutic circle now includes the text's relationship to historical tradition and
culture at large.
Like

Ast,

Wolf

was

trained

in

Classical

studies.

Both

his

Museum

der

Altertumswissenschaft (1807) and his Vorlesungen ber die Enzyklopdie der

Altertumswissenschaft (1831) address the epistemic, that is, the philosophical, aspects of
classical philology. Classical studies, Wolf claims, aims at a total knowledge of its object,
but should also reflect on the relevance of such knowledge as well as the method through
which it is reached. However, dealing with ancient texts, hermeneutic knowledge
presupposes not only a general study of culture, but also a certain sensitivity to the
individuality of its author. By establishing philology as a methodological discipline
reflecting both the shared, cultural framework and the dimension of individuality, Wolf
came to mark his place as one of the most important precursors of romantic hermeneutics.