Ion

Plato’s views on art are based on his Theory of Forms. Forms are perfect, absolute, unchanging versions of things; they are the ultimate reality on which all human experience and perception are based. For instance, when a person builds a circular window, they build an imperfect version of the Form of a circle. The Form of the circle is responsible (in a way Plato struggles to define in other dialogues) for the existence of every version of a circle that a person might encounter. Plato also invokes the Forms with references to things like Good, Beauty, Justice, and Truth (and they are often written with a capital letter to represent their superior nature). The circular window is at one remove from the Form of a circle. Art, then, is a representation of these imperfect reflections of the Forms—a representation of a representation. Plato argues that creating art and studying art takes one away from reality rather than closer to it. For Plato, art is not truth. It is a copy of a copy, which is why he believes art can be dangerous. It causes people to mistake imitations for reality.