Ouphilpo

Antithetical in nature, Plato’s challenge of mimesis and Aristotle’s defense of the poetics hinge on the interesting concept of the spectator’s observation of the tragic experience before them. Plato criticizes art as the practice of mimesis, the representation of an imitation, as something that should remain avoided within his ideal society, or Republic. However, Aristotle defends mimesis and the poetics by proclaiming the observer, and a tragedy centered on the observation of the tragedy, and not the presentation itself. For Plato, the presentation of the imitated as reality is the true tragedy; for Aristotle, the tragedy is the synthesis of the representative with the formal ideal.
Plato outright rejects to find any truth in art, rather is three times removed from the truth. He is concerned with the ideal form, or the pure Notion of something as the first Absolute truth. The second removal is in the realm of the perceptible and tangible, the real experience, and art or mimesis is merely a representation of this reality, and is thus the most inferior conduit to truth. In order for a mimesis to take the trait of judgment of quality, the spectator must find revelation within this constructed representation of the righteous ideal. Plato takes aim at the representation itself as something that should remain shunned from an ideal Republic, whereas Aristotle takes aim at the more specific (and intimate) process of the judgment of quality.
Aristotle defends artwork and challenges Plato’s judgment of art as the problem, rather than the root of the issue—the observer. The problem for Aristotle is when watching people pretend to enact a tragic scene are understood to be in a tragedy become one in the same Notion. The presentation of tragic scenes exists to please a primordial sense of pleasure or entertainment. So long as the spectating audience remembers they bought a ticket to get in, and this is all for entertainment and not sustenance or truth, art and mimesis have a place in society.
Plato’s interpretation of mimesis appears to remain within a fated situation of immersion in a piece of art, devoid of all choice or historical actions and preferences of the individual observers, where the audience inevitably walks away believing to have witnessed truth or reality. Aristotle offers a hopeful and existential situation of choice for the observer, where one can choose to indulge and find pleasure, or repel and see it as merely a nonsensical symbol or a misrepresentation of an ideal or form of some thing. In my opinion, I believe the fatuous idea of having choice in matters such as judgment is over-idealistic. The absurd truth sought by the two was this idea of chaotic comings and goings—one moment driving, the next daydreaming; hearing a story of a past event and picturing it in your head; or even a photograph, we choose what to indulge in by surrounding ourselves with a chosen stimulus, and whether or not we attract to something, whether or not we read the billboard, is totally out of our immediate control. From birth we feel comfort in the categorization and the evaluation of immediate surroundings, from the mobile in the crib to a child’s first piano recital, to even a first day of Junior High and fitting in all become seemingly natural (although arguably prescribed, but this is beyond this scope) events of either culture or necessity out of a need to comprehend our surroundings. I must agree with Hegel, when in the Phenomenology of Spirit he claims that this disposition of being a spectator and watching a representation as the origin of thinking. What lies next for this origin of thinking—the pseudo-choice of indulgence or ignorance in a work of art is due to the immediate fact of perpetual existence as an observing spectator.