The ArtworldArthur DantoThe Journal of Philosophy, Vol.docx

The Artworld
Arthur Danto
The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 61, No. 19, American
Philosophical Association Eastern
Division Sixty-First Annual Meeting. (Oct. 15, 1964), pp. 571-
584.
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SYMPOSIUM: THE WORK O P ART
THE ARTWORLD *
Hamlet:
Do you see nothing there9
The Queen:
Nothing a t all; yet all that is I see.
Shakespeare: Hamlet, A c t III, Scene I V
H AMLET and Socrates, though in praise and deprecation

respectively, spoke of art as a mirror held up to nature.
As with many disagreements in attitude, this one has a factual
basis. Socrates saw mirrors as but reflecting what we can
already
see; so art, insofar as mirrorlike, yields idle accurate
duplications
of the appearances of things, and is of no cognitive benefit
what-
ever. Hamlet, more acutely, recognized a remarkable feature of
reflecting surfaces, namely that they show us what we could not
otherwise perceive--our own face and form-and so art, insofar
as it is mirrorlike, reveals us to ourselves, and is, even by
socratic
criteria, of some cognitive utility after all. As a philosopher,
how-
ever, I find Socrates7 discussion defective on other, perhaps
less
profound grounds than these. If a mirror-image of o is indeed
an imitation of o, then, if art is imitation, mirror-images are art.
But in fact mirroring objects no more is art than returning
weapons to a madman is justice; and reference to mirrorings
would be just the sly sort of counterinstance we would expect
Socrates to bring forward in rebuttal of the theory he instead
uses them to illustrate. If that theory requires us to class these
as art, it thereby shows its inadequacy: "is an imitation" will not
do as a sufficient condition for "is art." Yet, perhaps because
artists were engaged in imitation, in Socrates' time and after,
the
insdciency of the theory was not noticed until the invention of
photography. Once rejected as a sufficient condition, mimesis
was
quickly discarded as even a necessary one; and since the
achieve-
ment of Kandinsky, mimetic features have been relegated to the
periphery of critical concern, so much so that some works
survive

in spite of possessing those virtues, excellence in which was
once
celebrated as the essence of art, narrowly escaping demotion to
mere illustrations.
I t is, of course, indispensable in socratic discussion that all
participants be masters of the concept up for analysis, since the
aim is to match a real defining expression to a term in active
use, and the test for adequacy presumably consists in showing
* To be presented in a symposium on "The Work of Art" a t the
sixty-
first annual meeting of the American Philosophical Association,
Eastern
Division, December 28, 1964.
572 T H E JOURNAL OF PHILOXOPHP
that the former analyzes and applies to all and only those things
of which the latter is true. The popular disclaimer notwithstand-
ing, then, Socrates' auditors purportedly knew what art was as
well
as what they liked; and a theory of art, regarded here as a real
definition of 'Art', is accordingly not to be of great use in help-
ing men to recognize instances of its application. Their antece-
dent ability to do this is precisely what the adequacy of the
theory is to be tested against, the problem being only to make
explicit what they already know. I t is our use of the term that
the
theory allegedly means to capture, but we are supposed able, in
the words of a recent writer, "to separate those objects which
are
works of a r t from those which are not, because . . . we know
how correctly to use the word ' a r t ' and to apply the phrase

'work
of art'." Theories, on this account, are somewhat like mirror-
images on Socrates' account, showing forth what we already
know,
wordy reflections of the actual linguistic practice we are
masters in.
But telling artworks from other things is not so simple a
matter, even for native speakers, and these days one might not
be
aware he was on artistic terrain without an artistic theory to tell
him so. And part of the reason for this lies in the fact that
terrain is constituted artistic in virtue of artistic theories, so
that
one use of theories, in addition to helping us discriminate art
from the rest, consists in making art possible. Glaucon and the
others could hardly have known what was a r t and what not:
otherwise they would never have been taken in by mirror-
images.
Suppose one thinks of the discovery of a whole new class of
artworks as something analogous to the discovery of a whole
new
class of facts anywhere, viz., as something for theoreticians to
explain. I n science, as elsewhere, we often accommodate new
facts to old theories via auxiliary hypotheses, a pardonable
enough
conservatism when the theory in question is deemed too
valuable
to be jettisoned all a t once. Now the Imitation Theory of Art
( I T ) is, if one but thinks i t through, an exceedingly
powerful
theory, explaining a great many phenomena connected with the
causation and evaluation of artworks, bringing a surprising
unity
into a complex domain. Moreover, it is a simple matter to shore

it up against many purported counterinstances by such auxiliary
hypotheses as that the artist who deviates from mimeticity is
perverse, inept, or mad. Ineptitude, chicanery, or folly are, in
fact, testable predications. Suppose, then, tests reveal that these
hypotheses fail to hold, that the theory, now beyond repair,
must
573 SYMPOSIUM: THE WORK O F ART
be replaced. And a new theory is worked out, capturing what
it can of the old theory's competence, together with the
heretofore
recalcitrant facts. One might, thinking along these lines, repre-
sent certain episodes in the history of art as not dissimilar to
cer-
tain episodes in the history of science, where a conceptual
revolu-
tion is being effected and where refusal to countenance certain
facts, while in part due to prejudice, inertia, and self-interest, is
due also to the fact that a well-established, or a t least widely
credited theory is being threatened in such a way that all coher-
ence goes.
Some such episode transpired with the advent of post-impres-
sionist paintings. I n terms of the prevailing artistic theory ( I
T ) ,
it was impossible to accept these as art unless inept a r t :
otherwise
they could be discounted as hoaxes, self-advertisements, or the
visual counterparts of madmen's ravings. So to get them
accepted
as art, on a footing with the Transfiguration (not to speak of a
Landseer stag), required not so much a revolution in taste as a
theoretical revision of rather considerable proportions,

involving
not only the artistic enfranchisement of these objects, but an
emphasis upon newly signscant features of accepted artworks,
so
that quite different accounts of their status as artworks would
now have to be given. As a result of the new theory's accept-
ance, not only were post-impressionist paintings taken up as art,
but numbers of objects (masks, weapons, etc.) were transferred
from anthropological museums (and heterogeneous other places)
to musbes des beaux arts, though, as we would expect from the
fact that a criterion for the acceptance of a new theory is that
it account for whatever the older one did, nothing had to be
trans-
ferred out of the musQe des beaux arts-even if there were
internal
rearrangements as between storage rooms and exhibition space.
Countless native speakers hung upon suburban mantelpieces in-
numerable replicas of paradigm cases for teaching the
expression
'work of a r t ' that would have sent their Edwardian forebears
into linguistic apoplexy.
To be sure, I distort by speaking of a theory: historically,
there were several, all, interestingly enough, more or less
defined
in terms of the IT. Art-historical complexities must yield before
the exigencies of logical exposition, and I shall speak as though
there were one replacing theory, partially compensating for his-
torical falsity by choosing one which was actually enunciated.
According to it, the artists in question were to be understood
not
as unsuccessfully imitating real forms but as successfully
creating
new ones, quite as real as the forms which the older art had
been
thought, in its best examples, to be creditably imitating. Art,

574 THE JOURNAL OP PHILOSOPHY
after all, had long since been thought of as creative (Vasari says
that God was the first artist), and the post-impressionists were
to be explained as genuinely creative, aiming, in Roger Fry's
words, "not a t illusion but reality.'' This theory (RT) furnished
a whole new mode of looking a t painting, old and new. Indeed,
one might almost interpret the crude drawing in Van Qogh and
CBzanne, the dislocation of form from contour in Rouault and
Dufy, the arbitrary use of color planes in Qauguin and the
Fauves,
as so many ways of drawing attention to the fact that these were
non-imitations, specifically intended not to deceive. Logically,
this would be roughly like printing "Not Legal Tender'' across a
brilliantly counterfeited dollar bill, the resulting object
(counter-
feit cum inscription) rendered incapable of deceiving anyone.
I t is not an illusory dollar bill, but then, just because i t is
non-
illusory it does not automatically become a real dollar bill
either.
I t rather occupies a freshly opened area between real objects
and
real facsimiles of real objects: it is a non-facsimile, if one
requires
a word, and a new contribution to the world. Thus, Van Gogh's
Potato Eaters, as a consequence of certain unmistakable distor-
tions, turns out to be a non-facsimile of real-life potato eaters;
and inasmuch as these are not facsimiles of potato eaters, Van
Gogh's picture, as a non-imitation, had as much right to be
called
a real object as did its putative subjects. By means of this
theory

(RT), artworks re-entered the thick of things from which soc-
ratic theory ( I T ) had sought to evict them: if no more real
than
what carpenters wrought, they were a t least no less real. The
Post-Impressionist won a victory in ontology.
I t is in terms of RT that we must understand the artworks
around us today. Thus Roy Lichtenstein paints comic-strip
panels, though ten or twelve feet high. These are reasonably
faithful projections onto a gigantesque scale of the homely
frames
from the daily tabloid, but it is precisely the scale that counts.
A skilled engraver might incise The Virgin and the Chancellor
Rollin, on a pinhead, and it would be recognizable as such to
the
keen of sight, but an engraving of a Barnett Newman on a
similar
scale would be a blob, disappearing in the reduction. A photo-
graph of a Lichtenstein is indiscernible from a photograph of a
counterpart panel from Steve Canyon; but the photograph fails
to capture the scale, and hence is as inaccurate a reproduction
as
a black-and-white engraving of Botticelli, scale being essential
here
as color there. Lichtensteins, then, are not imitations but new
entities, as giant whelks would be. Jasper Johns, by contrast,
paints objects with respect to which questions of scale are ir-
relevant. Yet his objects cannot be imitations, for they have the
575 S Y M P O S I U M : T H E W O R K O P A R T
remarkable property that any intended copy of a member of this
class of objects is automatically a member of the class itself, so
that these objects are logically inimitable. Thus, a copy of a

numeral just is that numeral: a painting of 3 is a 3 made of
paint.
Johns, in addition, paints targets, flags, and maps. Finally, in
what I hope are not unwitting footnotes to Plato, two of our
pioneers-Robert Rauschenberg and Claes Oldenburg-have made
genuine beds.
Rauschenberg's bed hangs on a wall, and is streaked with some
desultory housepaint. Oldenburg's bed is a rhomboid, narrower
a t
one end than the other, with what one might speak of as a built-
in
perspective: ideal for small bedrooms. As beds, these sell a t
singularly inflated prices, but one could sleep in either of them:
Rauschenberg has expressed the fear that someone might just
climb into his bed and fall asleap. Imagine, now, a certain
Testadura-a plain speaker and noted philistine-who is not aware
that these are art, and who takes them to be reality simple and
pure. He attributes the paintstreaks on Rauschenberg's bed to
the slovenliness of the owner, and the bias in the Oldenburg bed
to the ineptitude of the builder or the whimsy, perhaps, of who-
ever had i t "custom-made." These would be mistakes, but mis-
takes of rather an odd kind, and not terribly different from that
made by the stunned birds who pecked the sham grapes of
Zeuxis.
They mistook a r t for reality, and so has Testadura. But i t
was
meant to be reality, according to RT. Can one have mistaken
reality for reality? How shall we describe Testadura's error?
What, after all, prevents Oldenburg's creation from being a mis-
shapen bed? This is equivalent to asking what makes it art, and
with this query we enter a domain of conceptual inquiry where
native speakers are poor guides: they are lost themselves.
To mistake an artwork for a real object is no great feat when
an artwork is the real object one mistakes it for. The problem is

how to a:.oid such errors, or to remove them once they are
made.
The artwork is a bed, and not a bed-illusion; so there is nothing
like the traumatic encounter against a flat surface that brought it
home to the birds of Zeuxis that they had been duped. Except
for the guard cautioning Testadura not to sleep on the artworks,
he
might never have discovered that this was an artwork and not a
bed; and since, after all, one cannot discover that a bed is not a
bed, how is Testadura to realize that he has made an error 4 A
certain sort of explanation is required, for the error here is a
576 T H E JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
curiously philosophical one, rather like, if we may assume as
cor-
rect some well-known views of P. F. Strawson, mistaking a
person
for a material body when the truth is that a person i s a material
body in the sense that a whole class of predicates, sensibly ap-
plicable to material bodies, are sensibly, and by appeal to no
different criteria, applicable to persons. So you cannot discover
that a person is not a material body.
We begin by explaining, perhaps, that the paintstreaks are not
to be explained away, that they are part of the object, so the
object is not a mere bed with-as 'it happens-streaks of paint
spilled over it, but a complex object fabricated out of a bed and
some paintstreaks: a paint-bed. Similarly, a person is not a ma-
terial body with-as it happens-some thoughts superadded, but
is a complex entity made up of a body and some conscious
states:
a conscious-body. Persons, like artworks, must then be taken
as irreducible to parts of themselves, and are in that sense

primitive.
Or, more accurately, the paintstreaks are not part of the real
object-the bed-which happens to be part of the artwork, but
are, like the bed, part of the artwork as such. And this might be
generalized into a rough characterization of artworks that
happen
to contain real objects as parts of themselves: not every part of
an artwork A is part of a real object R when R is part of A and
can, moreover, be detached from A and seen merely as R. The
mistake thus far will have been to mistake A for part of itself,
namely R, even though it would not be incorrect to say that A is
R,
that the artwork is a bed. It is the 'is' which requires clarifica-
tion here.
There is an i s that figures prominently in statements concern-
ing artworks which is not the i s of either identity or
predication;
nor is i t the i s of existence, of identification, or some special
i s
made up to serve a philosophic end. Nevertheless, it is in
common
usage, and is readily mastered by children. It is the sense of i s
in accordance with which a child, shown a circle and a triangle
and asked which is him and which his sister, will point to the
triangle saying "That is me" ; or, in response to my question,
the
person next to me points to the man in purple and says "That
one is Lear"; or in the gallery I point, for my companion's bene-
fit, to a spot in the painting before us and say "That white dab is
Icarus." We do not mean, in these instances, that whatever is
pointed to stands for, or represents, what i t is said to be, for
the
word 'Icarus' stands for or represents Icarus: yet I would not
in the same sense of i s point to the word and say "That is
Icarus."

The sentence "That a is b" is perfectly compatible with "That a
is not b" when the first employs this sense of i s and the second
577 SYMPOSIUM: THE WORK O F A R T
employs some other, though a and b are used nonambiguously
throughout. Often, indeed, the t r u t h of the first requires the
t r u t h of the second. The first, in fact, is incompatible with
"That
a is not b" only when the i s is used nonambiguously
throughout.
F o r want of a word I shall designate this the i s o f artistic
identifi-
cation; i n each case in which i t is used, the a stands for some
specific physical property of, or physical part of, an object; and,
finally, it is a necessary condition for something to be an
artwork
that some p a r t or property of it be designable by the subject
of a sentence that employs this special is. It is a n is,
incidentally,
which has near-relatives in marginal and mythical pronounce-
ments. (Thus, one i s Quetzalcoatl; those are the Pillars of
Hercules.)
Let me illustrate. Two painters are asked to decorate the east
and west walls of a science library with frescoes to be
respectively
called Newton's P i r s t L a w and Newton's T h i r d L a w .
These paint-
ings, when finally unveiled, look, scale apart, as follows:
As objects I shall suppose the works to be indiscernible: a
black,
horizontal line on a white ground, equally large in each

dimension
and element. B explains his work as follows: a mass, pressing
downward, is met by a mass pressing upward: the lower mass
reacts equally and oppositely to the upper one. A explains his
work as follows: the line through the space is the path of a n
isolated particle. The path goes from edge to edge, to give the
sense of its going beyond. If i t ended or began within the
space,
the line would be curved: and i t is parallel to the top and
bottom
edges, for if i t were closer to one than to another, there would
have to be a force accounting for it, and this is inconsistent with
its being the path of an isolated particle.
Much follows from these artistic identifications. To regard
T H E JOURNAL O P PHILOSOPHY
the middle line as an edge (mass meeting mass) imposes the
need
to identify the top and bottom half of the picture as rectangles,
and
as two distinct parts (not necessarily as two masses, for the line
could be the edge of one mass jutting up--or down-into empty
space). If it is an edge, we cannot thus take the entire area of
the
painting as a single space: it is rather composed of two forms,
or
one form and a non-form. We could take the entire area as a
single space only by taking the middle horizontal as a line
which
is not an edge. But this almost requires a three-dimensional
identification of the whole picture: the area can be a flat surface

which the line is above (Jet-flight), or below (Submarine-path),
or
on (Line), or in (Pissure), or through (Newton's Pirst Law)-
though in this last case the area is not a flat surface but a trans-
parent cross section of absolute space. We could make all these
prepositional qualifications clear by imagining perpendicular
cross
sections to the picture plane. Then, depending upon the ap-
plicable prepositional clause, the area is (artistically)
interrupted
or not by the horizontal element. If we take the line as through
space, the edges of the picture are not really the edges of the
space: the space goes beyond the picture if the line itself does;
and we are in the same space as the line is. As B, the edges of
the picture can be part of the picture in case the masses go right
to the edges, so that the edges of the picture are their edges. I n
that case, the vertices of the picture would be the vertices of the
masses, except that the masses have four vertices more than the
picture itself does: here four vertices would be part of the a r t
work which were not part of the real object. Again, the faces
of the masses could be the face of the picture, and in looking a t
the picture, we are looking a t these faces: but space has no
face,
and on the reading of A the work has to be read as faceless, and
the face of the physical object would not be part of the artwork.
Notice here how one artistic identification engenders another
artis-
tic identification, and how, consistently with a given
identification,
we are required to give others and precluded from still others:
indeed, a given identification determines how many elements
the
work is to contain. These different identifications are
incompatible
with one another, or generally so, and each might be said to
make

a different artwork, even though each artwork contains the
identical
real object as part of itself--or a t least parts of the identical
real
object as parts of itself. There are, of course, senseless
identifica-
tions: no one could, I think, sensibly read the middle horizontal
as
Love's Labour's Lost or The Ascendency of St. Erasmus.
Finally,
notice how acceptance of one identification rather than another
is in effect to exchange one world for another. We could,
indeed,
579 SYMPOSIUM: THE WORK O F ART
enter a quiet poetic world by identifying the upper area with a
clear and cloudless sky, reflected in the still surface of the
water
below, whiteness kept from whiteness only by the unreal
boundary
of the horizon.
And now Testadura, having hovered in the wings throughout
this discussion, protests that all he sees i s paint: a white
painted
oblong with a black line painted across it. And how right he
really is: that is all he sees or that anybody can, we aesthetes in-
cluded. So, if he asks us to show him what there is further to
see,
to demonstrate through pointing that this is a n artwork (Sea
and
S k y ) , we cannot comply, for he has overlooked nothing (and
i t

would be absurd to suppose he had, that there was something
tiny
we could point to and he, peering closely, say "So i t is! A
work
of a r t after all!"). We cannot help him until he has mastered
the i s o f artistic identification and so constitutes i t a work
of art.
If he cannot achieve this, he will never look upon artworks: he
will
be like a child who sees sticks as sticks.
But what about pure abstractions, say something that looks just
like A but is entitled No. 7 1 The 10th Street abstractionist
blankly insists that there is nothing here but white paint and
black,
and none of our literary identifications need apply. What then
distinguishes him from Testadura, whose philistine utterances
are
indiscernible from his? And how can i t be an artwork for him
and not for Testadura, when they agree that there is nothing that
does not meet the eye? The answer, unpopular as i t is likely to
be to purists of every variety, lies in the fact that this artist has
returned to the physicality of paint through a n atmosphere
com-
pounded of artistic theories and the history of recent and remote
painting, elements of which he is trying to refine out of his own
work; and as a consequence of this his work belongs in this
atmos-
phere and is part of this history. H e has achieved abstraction
through rejection of artistic identifications, returning to the real
world from which such identifications remove us (he thinks),
somewhat in the mode of Ch'ing Yuan, who wrote:
Before I had studied Zen f o r t h i r t y years, I saw mountains
a s mountains
a n d waters a s waters. When I arrived a t a more i n t i m a t

e knowledge, I came
t o t h e point where I saw t h a t mountains a r e n o t
mountains, a n d waters a r e
not waters. B u t now t h a t I have g o t t h e very substance
I a m a t rest. F o r
it i s j u s t t h a t I see mountains once again a s mountains,
a n d waters once
a g a i n a s waters.
His identification of what he has made is logically dependent
upon
the theories and history he rejects. The difference between his
ut-
terance and Testadura's "This is black paint and white paint and
580 T H E JOURNAL OP PHILOSOPHY
nothing more" lies in the fact that he is still using the is of
artistic identification, so that his use of "That black paint is
black
paint" is not a tautology. Testadura is not at that stage. To see
something as art requires something the eye cannot decry-an
atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of a r t
:
an artworld.
I11
Mr. Andy Warhol, the Pop artist, displays facsimiles of Brillo
cartons, piled high, in neat stacks, as in the stockroom of the
supermarket. They happen to be of wood, painted to look like
cardboard, and why not? To paraphrase the critic of the Times,
if one may make the facsimile of a human being out of bronze,
why not the facsimile of a Brillo carton out of plywood? The

cost of these boxes happens to be 2 x l o 3 that of their homely
counterparts in real life-a differential hardly ascribable to their
advantage in durability. I n fact the Brillo people might, a t
some
slight increase in cost, make their boxes out of plywood without
these becoming artworks, and Warhol might make his out of
cardboard without their ceasing to be art. So we may forget
ques-
tions of intrinsic value, and ask why the Brillo people cannot
manufacture art and why Warhol cannot but make artworks.
Well, his are made by hand, to be sure. Which is like an insane
reversal of Picasso's strategy in pasting the label from a bottle
of
Suze onto a drawing, saying as it were that the academic artist,
concerned with exact imitation, must always fall short of the
real
thing: so why not just use the real thing? The Pop artist
laboriously reproduces machine-made objects by hand, e.g.,
paint-
ing the labels on coffee cans (one can hear the familiar com-
mendation "Entirely made by hand" falling painfully out of the
guide's vocabulary when confronted by these objects). But the
difference cannot consist in craft: a man who carved pebbles out
of stones and carefully constructed a work called Gravel Pile
might invoke the labor theory of value to account for the price
he
demands; but the question is, What makes it a r t ? And why
need
Warhol make these things a n y w a y m y not just scrawl his
signature across one? Or crush one up and display it as Crushed
Brillo Box ("A protest against mechanization . . .") or simply
display a Brillo carton as Ultcrushed Brillo Box ("A bold af-
firmation of the plastic authenticity of industrial . . .") ? Is this
man a kind of Midas, turning whatever he touches into the gold
of
pure a r t ? And the whole world consisting of latent artworks

waiting, like the bread and wine of reality, to be transfigured,
through some dark mystery, into the indiscernible flesh and
blood
SYMPOSIUM: T H E W O R K O P A R T 581
of the sacrament? Never mind that the Brillo box may not be
good, much less great art. The impressive thing is that it is art
at all. But if it is, why are not the indiscernible Brillo boxes
that are in the stockroom7 Or has the whole distinction between
art and reality broken down?
Suppose a man collects objects (ready-mades), including a
Brillo carton; we praise the exhibit for variety, ingenuity, what
you will. Next he exhibits nothing but Brillo cartons, and we
criticize it as dull, repetitive, self-plagiarizing-or (more pro-
foundly) claim that he is obsessed by regularity and repetition,
as in Marienbad. Or he piles them high, leaving a narrow path;
we tread our way through the smooth opaque stacks and find it
an
unsettling experience, and write it up as the closing in of con-
sumer products, confining us as prisoners: or we say he is a
modern pyramid builder. True, we don't say these things about
the stockboy. But then a stockroom is not an art gallery, and
we cannot readily separate the Brillo cartons from the gallery
they are in, any more than we can separate the Rauschenberg
bed
from the paint upon it. Outside the gallery, they are pasteboard
cartons. But then, scoured clean of paint, Rauschenberg's bed is
a bed, just what i t was before it was transformed into art. But
then if we think this matter through, we discover that the artist
has failed, really and of necessity, to produce a mere real
object.
He has produced an artwork, his use of real Brillo cartons being

but an expansion of the resources available to arists, a
contribution
to artists' materials, as oil paint was, or t u c h e .
What in the end makes the difference between a Brillo box and
a work of art consisting of a Brillo Box is a certain theory of
art.
I t is the theory that takes it up into the world of art, and keeps
it from collapsing into the real object which it is (in a sense of
i s other than that of artistic identification). Of course, without
the theory, one is unlikely to see i t as art, and in order to see it
as part of the artworld, one must have mastered a good deal of
artistic theory as well as a considerable amount of the history of
recent New York painting. I t could not have been art fifty
years
ago. But then there could not have been, everything being equal,
flight insurance in the Middle Ages, or Etruscan typewriter
erasers.
The world has to be ready for certain things, the artworld no
less
than the real one. I t is the role of artistic theories, these days
as
always, to make the artworld, and art, possible. I t would, I
should
think, never have occurred to the painters of Lascaux that they
were producing a r t on those walls. Not unless there were
neolithic
aestheticians.
582 T H E J O U R N A L OF P H I L O S O P H Y
The artworld stands to the real world in something like the
relationship in which the City of God stands to the Earthly City.
Certain objects, like certain individuals, enjoy a double citizen-

ship, but there remains, the RT notwithstanding, a fundamental
contrast between artworks and real objects. Perhaps this was
already dimly sensed by the early framers of the IT who, in-
choately realizing the nonreality of art, were perhaps limited
only
in supposing that the sole way objects had of being other than
real is to be sham, so that artworks necessarily had to be
imitations
of real objects. This was too narrow. So Yeats saw in writing
"Once out of nature I shall never take/My bodily form from
any natural thing." I t is but a matter of choice: and the Brillo
box of the artworld may be just the Brillo box of the real one,
separated and united by the is of artistic identification. But I
should like to say some final words about the theories that make
artworks possible, and their relationship to one another. In so
doing, I shall beg some of the hardest philosophical questions I
know.
I shall now think of pairs of predicates related to each other
as "opposites," conceding straight off the vagueness of this
demodk
term. Contradictory predicates are not opposites, since one of
each of them must apply to every object in the universe, and
neither of a pair of opposites need apply to some objects in the
universe. An object must first be of a certain kind before either
of a pair of opposites applies to it, and then a t most and a t
least
one of the opposites must apply to it. So opposites are not con-
traries, for contraries may both be false of some objects in the
universe, but opposites cannot both be false; for of some
objects,
neither of a pair of opposites sensibly applies, unless the object
is
of the right sort. Then, if the object is of the required kind, the
opposites behave as contradictories. If P and non-P are op-
posites, an object o must be of a certain kind K before either of

these sensibly applies; but if o is a member of K, then o either
is
P or non-P, to the exclusion of the other. The class of pairs of
opposites that sensibly apply to the (6)Ko I shall designate as
the
class of K-relevant predicates. And a necessary condition for an
object to be of a kind K is that a t least one pair of K-relevant
op-
posites be sensibly applicable to it. But, in fact, if an object is
of kind K, at least and a t most one of each K-relevant pair of
opposites applies to it.
I am now interested in the K-relevant predicates for the class
583 SYMPOSIUM: T H E W O R K OP A R T
K of artworks. And let P and non-P be an opposite pair of such
predicates. Now i t might happen that, throughout an entire pe-
riod of time, every artwork is non-P. But since nothing thus far
is both an artwork and P, it might never occur to anyone that
non-
P is an artistically relevant predicate. The non-P-ness of
artworks
goes unmarked. By contrast, all works up to a given time might
be
G, it never occurring to anyone until that time that something
might both be an artwork and non-G; indeed, it might have been
thought that G was a defining trait of artworks when in fact
something might first have to be an artwork before G is sensibly
predicable of i t i n which case non-G might also be predicable
of
artworks, and G itself then could not have been a defining trait
of this class.

Let G be 'is representational' and let P be 'is expressionist'. At
a given time, these and their opposites are perhaps the only art-
relevant predicates in critical use. Now letting '+' stand for a
given predicate P and '-' for its opposite non-P, we may
construct
a style matrix more or less as follows:
The rows determine available styles, given the active critical
vocabulary : representational expressionistic (e.g., Fauvism)
;repre-
sentational nonexpressionistic (Ingres) ; nonrepresentational ex-
pressionistic (Abstract Expressionism) ; nonrepresentational
non-
expressionist (hard-edge abstraction). Plainly, as we add art-
relevant predicates, we increase the number of available styles
at
the rate of 2". I t is, of course, not easy to see in advance which
predicates are going to be added or replaced by their opposites,
but
suppose an artist determines that H shall henceforth be
artistically
relevant for his paintings. Then, in fact, both H and non-H be-
come artistically relevant for all painting, and if his is the first
and only painting that is H, every other painting in existence
be-
comes non-H, and the entire community of paintings is
enriched,
together with a doubling of the available style opportunities. I t
is this retroactive enrichment of the entities in the artworld that
makes it possible to discuss Raphael and De Kooning together,
or
Lichtenstein and Michelangelo. The greater the variety of
artisti-
cally relevant predicates, the more complex the individual
members
of the artworld become; and the more one knows of the entire

584 I'HE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
population of the artworld, the richer one's experience with any
of its members.
I n this regard, notice that, if there are m artistically relevant
predicates, there is always a bottom row with m minuses. This
row is apt to be occupied by purists. Having scoured their can-
vasses clear of what they regard as inessential, they credit them-
selves with having distilled out the essence of art. B u t this is
just
their fallacy: exactly as many artistically relevant predicates
stand
true of their square monochromes as stand true of any member
of
the Artworld, and they can exist as artworks only insofar as
"im-
pure" paintings exist. Strictly speaking, a black square by Rein-
hardt is artistically as rich as Titian's Sacred and P r o f a n e
Love.
This explains how less is more.
Fashion, as i t happens, favors certain rows of the style matrix:
museums, connoisseurs, and others are makeweights i n the
Art-
world. To insist, or seek to, that all artists become representa-
tional, perhaps to gain entry into a specially prestigious
exhibition,
cuts the available style matrix i n half: there are then 2n/2 ways
of
satisfying the requirement, and museums then can exhibit all
these
"approaches" to the topic they have set. B u t this is a matter of

almost purely sociological interest: one row in the matrix is as
legitimate as another. A n artistic breakthrough consists, I sup-
pose, in adding the possibility of a column to the matrix. Artists
then, with greater or less alacrity, occupy the positions thus
opened
up : this is a remarkable feature of contemporary art, and for
those
unfamiliar with the matrix, i t is hard, and perhaps impossible,
to
recognize certain positions as occupied by artworks. Nor would
these things be artworks without the theories and the histories
of the Artworld.
Brillo boxes enter the artworld with t h a t same tonic in-
congruity the commedia dell'arte characters bring into A r i a d
n e
a u f Naxos. Whatever is the artistically relevant predicate in
vir-
tue of which they gain their entry, the rest of the Artworld
becomes
that much the richer in having the opposite predicate available
and applicable to its members. And, to return to the views of
Hamlet with which we began this discussion, Brillo boxes may
re-
veal us to ourselves as well as anything might: as a mirror held
u p to nature, they might serve to catch the conscience of our
kings.
BOOKX
"And, indeed, " I said, "I also recognize in many other aspects
of 595 a
this city that we were entirely right in the way we founded it,

but I say
this particularly when reflecting on poetry."
"What about it?" he said.
"In not admitting at all any part of it that is imitative. For that
the
imitative, more than anything, must not be admitted looks, in
my opin-
ion, even more manifest now that the soul's forms have each
been
separated out." b
"How do you mean?"
"Between us—and you all won't denounce me to the tragic poets
and
all the other imitators—all such things seem to maim the
thought of
those who hear them and do not as a remedy have the
knowledge of how
they really are."
"What are you thinking about in saying that?" he said.
"It must be told," I said. "And yet, a certain friendship for
Homer, and shame before him, which has possessed me since
child-
hood, prevents me from speaking. For he seems to have been the
first
teacher and leader of all these fine tragic things. Still and all, a
man c
must not be honored before the truth, but, as I say, it must be
told."

"Most certainly," he said.
"Then listen, or rather, answer.
"
"Ask."
[ 277 ]
socrates/glaucon the republic
595 c "Could you tell me what imitation in general is? For I
myself
scarcely comprehend what it wants to be."
"Then it follows," he said, "that I, of course, will comprehend
it."
"That wouldn't be anything strange," I said, "since men with
596 a duller vision have often, you know, seen things before
those who see
more sharply."
"That's so," he said. "But vdth you present I couldn't be very
eager to say whatever might occur to me, so look yourself.
"
"Do you want us to make our consideration according to our
customary procedure, beginning from the following point? For
we are,
presumably, accustomed to set down some one particular form

for each
of the particular 'manys' to which we apply the same name. Or
don't
you understand?"
"I do."
"Then let's now set down any one of the 'manys' you please; for
b example, if you wish, there are surely many couches and
tables."
"Of course:"
"But as for ideas for these furnishings, there are presumably
two,
one of couch, one of table."
"Yes."
"Aren't we also accustomed to say that it is in looking to the
idea
of each implement that one craftsman makes the couches and
another
the chairs we use, and similarly for other things? For
presumably none
of the craftsmen fabricates the idea itself. How could he?"
"In no way."
"Well, now, see what you call this craftsman here."
c "Which one?"
"He who makes everything that each one of the manual artisans

makes separately.
"
"That's a clever and wonderful man you speak of.
"
"Not yet. In an instant you'll say that even more. For this same
manual artisan is not only able to make all implements but also
makes
everything that grows naturally from the earth, and he produces
all
animals—the others and himself too—and, in addition to that,
pro-
duces earth and heaven and gods and everything in heaven and
every-
thing in Hades under the earth.
"
d "That's quite a wonderful sophist you speak of," he said.
"Are you distrustful?" I said. "And tell me, in your opinion
could
there be altogether no such craftsman; or in a certain way, could
a
maker of all these things come into being and in a certain way
not? Or
aren't you aware that you yourself could in a certain way make
all these
things?"
278 ]

Book X I 595c-597b glaucon/socrates
"And what," he said, "is that way?" 596 d
"It's not hard," I said. "You could fabricate them quickly in
many
ways and most quickly, of course, if you are willing to take a
mirror and
carry it around everywhere; quickly you will make the sun and
the e
things in the heaven; quickly, the earth; and quickly, yourself
and the
other animals and implements and plants and everything else
that was
just now mentioned."
"Yes," he said, "so that they look like they are; however, they
surely are not in truth."
"Fine," I said, "and you attack the argument at just the right
place. For I suppose the painter is also one of these craftsmen,
isn't
he?"
"Of course he is.
"
"But 1 suppose you'll say that he doesn't truly make what he
makes. And yet in a certain way the painter too does make a

couch,
doesn't he?"
"Yes," he said, "he too makes what looks like a couch."
"And what about the couchmaker? Weren't you just saying that
597 a
he doesn't make the form, which is what we, ofcourse, say is
just a couch,
but a certain couch?"
"Yes," he said, "I was saying that."
"Then, if he doesn't make what is, he wouldn't make the being
but
something that is like the being, but is not being. And if
someone were
to assert that the work of the producer of couches or of any
other
manual artisan is completely being, he would run the risk of
saying
what's not true."
"Yes," he said, "at least that would be the opinion of those who
spend their time in arguments of this kind."
"Therefore, let's not be surprised if this too turns out to be a
dim
thing compared to the truth.
"
"No, let's not." b

"Do you," I said, "want us on the basis of these very things to
investigate who this imitator is?"
"If you want to," he said.
"There turn out, then, to be these three kinds of couches: one
that
is in nature, which we would say, I suppose, a god produced. Or
who
else?"
"No one else, 1 suppose."
"And then one that the carpenter produced."
"Yes," he said.
"And one that the painter produced, isn't that so?"
"Let it be so."
[ 279 ]
597 h "Then painter, couchmaker, god—these three preside over
three
forms of couches
.
"

"Yes, three."
c "Now, the god, whether he didn't want to or whether some
necessity was laid upon him not to produce more than one couch
in
nature, made only one, that very one which is a couch. And two
or
more such weren't naturally engendered by the god nor will they
be
begotten."
"How's that?" he said.
"Because," I said, "if he should make only two, again one would
come to light the form of which they in turn would both
possess, and
that, and not the two, would be the couch that is.
"
"Right," he said.
d "Then, I suppose, the god, knowing this and wanting to be a
real
maker of a couch that really is and not a certain couchmaker of
a cer-
tain couch, begot it as one by nature."
"So it seems."
"Do you want us to address him as its nature-begetter or some-
thing of the kind?"
"That's just at any rate," he said, "since by nature he has made
both this and everything else."

"And what about the carpenter? Isn't he a craftsman of a
couch?"
"Yes."
"And is the painter also a craftsman and maker of such a thing?"
"Not at all."
"But what of a couch will you say he is?"
e "In my opinion," he said, "he would most sensibly be
addressed as
an imitator of that of which these others are craftsmen.
'
"All right," I said, "do you, then, call the man at the third
genera-
tion from nature an imitator?
"
"Most certainly," he said.
"Therefore this will also apply to the maker of tragedy, if he is
an imitator; he is naturally third from a king and the truth, as
are all the other imitators."
"Probably."
"Then we have agreed about the imitator. Now tell me this
598 a about the painter. In your opinion, does he in each case
attempt to

imitate the thing itself in nature, or the works of the
craftsmen?"
"The works of the craftsmen, " he said.
"Such as they are or such as they look? For you still have to
make
this further distinction."
"How do you mean?" he said.
[ 280 ]
Book X I 597b-599c sockates/glaucon
"Like this. Does a couch, if you observe it from the side, or 598
a
from the front, or from anywhere else, differ at all from itself?
Or
does it not differ at all but only look different, and similarly
with the
rest?"
"The latter is so," he said. "It looks different, but isn't."
"Now consider this very point. Toward which is painting
directed b
in each case—toward imitation of the being as it is or toward its
looking
as it looks? Is it imitation of looks or of truth?"

"Of looks," he said.
"Therefore, imitation is surely far from the truth; and, as it
seems, it is due to this that it produces everything—because it
lays
hold of a certain small part of each thing, and that part is itself
only a
phantom. For example, the painter, we say, will paint for us a
shoe-
maker, a carpenter, and the other craftsmen, although he doesn't
understand the arts of any one of them. But, nevertheless, if he
is a c
good painter, by painting a carpenter and displaying him from
far
off, he would deceive children and foolish human beings into
think-
ing that it is truly a carpenter."
"Of course."
"But, in any event, I suppose, my friend, that this is what
must be understood about all such things: when anyone reports
to
us about someone, saying that he has encountered a human
being
who knows all the crafts and everything else that single men
several-
ly know, and there is nothing that he does not know more
precisely
than anyone else, it would have to be replied to such a one that
he d
is an innocent human being and that, as it seems, he has
encountered

some wizard and imitator and been deceived. Because he
himself is
unable to put knowledge and lack of knowledge and imitation to
the
test, that man seemed all-wise to him."
"Very true," he said.
"Then, next," I said, "tragedy and its leader, Homer, must be
considered, since we hear from some that these men know all
arts e
and all things human that have to do with virtue and vice, and
the
divine things too. For it is necessary that the good poet, if he is
go-
ing to make fair poems about the things his poetry concerns, be
in
possession of knowledge when he makes his poems or not be
able
to make them. Hence, we must consider whether those who tell
us
this have encountered these imitators and been deceived; and
whether, therefore, seeing their works, they do not recognize
that
these works are third from what is and are easy to make for the
man 599 a
who doesn't know the truth—for such a man makes what look
like
beings but are not. Or, again, is there also something to what
they
[ 281 ]

socrates/gi^ucon the republic
599 a say, and do the good poets really know about the things
that, in the
opinion of the many, they say well?"
"Most certainly," he said, "that must be tested."
"Do you suppose that if a man were able to make both, the thing
to be imitated and the phantom, he would permit himself to be
serious
about the crafting of the phantoms and set this at the head of his
own
b life as the best thing he has?"
"No, I don't."
"But, I suppose, if he were in truth a knower of these things that
he also imitates, he would be far more serious about the deeds
than the
imitations and would try to leave many fair deeds behind as
memorials
of himself and would be more eager to be the one who is lauded
rather
than the one who lauds."
"I suppose so," he said. "For the honor and the benefit coming
from the two are hardly equal."
"Well, then, about the other things, let's not demand an account
c from Homer or any other of the poets by asking, if any one of
them was

a doctor and not only an imitator of medical speeches, who are
the men
whom any poet, old or new, is said to have made healthy, as
Asclepius
did; or what students of medicine he left behind as Asclepius
did his
ofiFspring.^ Nor, again, will we ask them about the other arts,
but
we'll let that go. But about the greatest and fairest things of
which
Homer attempts to speak—about wars and commands of armies
and
d governances of cities, and about the education of a human
being—it
is surely just to ask him and inquire, 'Dear Homer, if you are
not
third from the truth about virtue, a craftsman of a phantom, just
the
one we defined as an imitator, but are also second and able to
recog-
nize what sorts of practices make human beings better or worse
in
private and in public, tell us which of the cities was better
governed
thanks to you, as Lacedaemon was thanks to Lycurgus, and
many
e others, both great and small, were thanks to many others?
What
city gives you credit for having proved a good lawgiver and

ben-
efited them? Italy and Sicily do so for Charondas, and we for
So-
lon;2 now who does it for you?' Will he have any to mention?
'
"I don't suppose so," said Glaucon. "At least, the Homeridae
themselves do not tell of any."
"Well, is any war in Homer's time remembered that was well
600 a fought with his ruling or advice?"
"None."
"Well, then, as is appropriate to the deeds of a wise man, do
they
tell of many ingenious devices for the arts or any other
activities,
just as for Thales the Milesian or Anacharsis the Scythian?"^
"Not at all; there's nothing of the sort."
[ 282 ]
Book X I 599a-601a socrates/glaucon
"Well, then, if there is nothing in public, is it told that Homer,
600 a

while he was himself alive, was in private a leader in education
for
certain men who cherished him for his intercourse and handed
down
a certain Homeric way of life to those who came after, just as
Py- b
thagoras himself was particularly cherished for this reason, and
his
successors even now still give Pythagoras' name to a way of life
that
makes them seem somehow outstanding among men."
"Again," he said, "nothing of the sort is said. For Creophylos,
Homer's comrade, would, Socrates, perhaps turn out to be even
more ridiculous in his education than in his name,^ if the things
said about Homer are true. For it is told that Homer suffered
consid-
erable neglect in his own day, when he was alive." c
"Yes, that is told," I said. "But, Glaucon, if Homer were really
able to educate human beings and make them better because he
is in
these things capable not of imitating but of knowing, do you
suppose
that he wouldn't have made many comrades and been honored
and
cherished by them? But Protagoras, the Abderite, after all, and
Prot
dicus, the Cean,^ and very many others are able, by private in-
tercourse, to impress upon the men of their time the assurance
that they
will be able to govern neither home nor city unless they
themselves d
supervise their education, and they are so intensely loved for
this

wisdom that their comrades do everything but carry them about
on
their heads. Then do you suppose that if he were able to help
human
beings toward virtue, the men in Homer's time would have let
him or
Hesiod go around being rhapsodes and wouldn't have clung to
them
rather than to their gold? And wouldn't they have compelled
these
teachers to stay with them at home; or, if they weren't
persuaded, e
wouldn't they themselves have attended^ them wherever they
went,
until they had gained an adequate education?"
"In my opinion, Socrates," he said, "what you say is entirely
true."
"Shouldn't we set down all those skilled in making, beginning
with Homer, as imitators of phantoms of virtue and of the other
sub-
jects of their making? They don't lay hold of the truth; rather, as
we
were just now saying, the painter wdll make what seems to be a
shoemaker to those who understand as little about shoemaking
as he 601 a
understands, but who observe only colors and shapes."
"Most certainly.
"
"Then, in this way, I suppose we'll claim the poetic man also

uses names and phrases to color each of the arts. He himself
doesn't
understand; but he imitates in such a way as to seem, to men
whose
condition is like his own and who observe only speeches, to
speak
very well. He seems to do so when he speaks using meter,
rhythm.
[ 283 ]
socrates/glaucon the REPUBLIp
601 a and harmony, no matter whether the subject is
shoemaking, general-
b ship, or anything else. So great is the charm that these things
by na-
ture possess. For when the things of the poets are stripped of
the
colors of the music and are said alone, by themselves, I suppose
you
know how they look. For you, surely, have seen."
"I have indeed," he said.
"Don't they," I said, "resemble the faces of the boys who are
youthful but not fair in what happens to their looks when the
bloom
has forsaken them?"
"Exactly," he said.
"Come now, reflect on this. The maker of the phantom, the

imitator, we say, understands nothing of what is but rather of
what
c looks like it is. Isn't that so?"
"Yes."
"Well, then, let's not leave it half-said, but let's see it
adequately."
"Speak," he said.
"A painter, we say, will paint reins and a bit."
"Yes."
"But a shoemaker and a smith will make them."
"Certainly."
"Then does the painter understand how the reins and the bit
must
be? Or does even the maker not understand—the smith and the
leather-
cutter—^but only he who knows how to use them, the
horseman?"
"Very true."
"And won't we say that it is so for everything?"
"How?"
d "For each thing there are these three arts—one that will use,
one
that will make, one that will imitate."
"Yes."

"Aren't the virtue, beauty, and rightness of each implement,
animal, and action related to nothing but the use for which each
was
made, or grew naturally?"
"That's so."
"It's quite necessary, then, that the man who uses each thing be
most experienced and that he report to the maker what are the
good or
bad points, in actual use, of the instrument he uses. For
example, about
flutes, a flute player surely reports to the flute-maker which
ones would
e serve him in playing, and he will prescribe how they must be
made, and
the other will serve him."
"Of course."
"Doesn't the man who knows report about good and bad flutes,
and won't the other, trusting him, make them?"
"Yes."
[ 284 ]
f Book X / 601a-602d socrates/glaucon
r

? "Therefore the maker of the same implement will have right
trust 601 e
• concerning its beauty and its badness from being with the man
who
I knows and from being compelled to listen to the man who
knows, while
the user will have knowledge." 602 a
"Certainly."
"And will the imitator from using the things that he paints have
knowledge of whether they are fair and right or not, or right
opinion
due to the necessity of being with the man who knows and
receiving
prescriptions of how he must paint?"
"Neither."
"Therefore, with respect to beauty and badness, the imitator will
neither know nor opine rightly about what he imitates."
"It doesn't seem so."
"The imitator, in his making, would be a charming chap, so far
as
wisdom about what he makes goes."
"Hardly."
_
"But all the same, he will imitate, although he doesn't know in b
what way each thing is bad or good. But as it seems, whatever
looks to

be fair to the many who don't know anything—that he will
imitate."
"Of course he will."
"Then it looks like we are pretty well agreed on these things:
the
imitator knows nothing worth mentioning about what he
imitates;
imitation is a kind of play and not serious; and those who take
up tragic
poetry in iambics and in epics are all imitators in the highest
possible
degree."
"Most certainly."
"In the name of Zeus," I said, "then, isn't this imitating con- c
cerned with something that is third from the truth? Isn't that
so?"
"Yes."
"Now, then, on which one of the parts of the human being does
it
have the power it has?"
"What sort of part do you mean?"
"This sort. The same magnitude surely doesn't look equal to our
sight from near and from far."
"No, it doesn't."
"And the same things look bent and straight when seen in water
and out of it, and also both concave and convex, due to the

sight's
being misled by the colors, and every sort of confusion of this
kind is
plainly in our soul. And, then, it is because they take advantage
of this d
affection in our nature that shadow painting, and puppeteering,
and
many other tricks of the kind fall nothing short of wizardry."
True.
"And haven't measuring, counting, and weighing come to light
as
[ 2S5 ]
sockates/glaucon THEREPUBLI
602 d most charming helpers in these cases? As a result of
them, we are not
ruled by a thing's looking bigger or smaller or more or heavier;
rather
we are ruled by that which has calculated, measured, or, if you
please
weighed."
"Undeniably."
e "But this surely must be the work of the calculating part in a
soul."
"Yes, it is the work of that part."

"And to it, when it has measured and indicates that some things
are bigger or smaller than others, or equal, often contrary
appearances
are presented at the same time about the same things."
"Yes."
"Didn't we say that it is impossible for the same thing to opine
contraries at the same time about the same things?"
"And what we said is right."
603 a "Therefore, the part of the soul opining contrary to the
measures
would not be the same as the part that does so in accordance
with the
measures."
"No, it wouldn't."
"And, further, the part which trusts measure and calculation
would be the best part of the soul."
"Of course."
"Therefore, the part opposed to it would be one of the ordinary
things in us."
"Necessarily."
"Well, then, it was this I wanted agreed to when I said that
paint-
ing and imitation as a whole are far from the truth when they

produce
their work; and that, moreover, imitation keeps company with
the part
h in us that is far from prudence, and is not comrade and friend
for any
healthy or true purpose."
"Exactly," he said.
"Therefore, imitation, an ordinary thing having intercourse with
what is ordinary, produces ordinary offspring."
"It seems so."
"Does this," I said, "apply only to the imitation connected with
the sight or also to that connected with the hearing, which we
name
poetry?"
"It is likely," he said, "that it applies also to this."
"Well, then," I said, "let's not just trust the likelihood based on
painting; but let's now go directly to the very part of thought
with
^ which poetry's imitation keeps company and see whether it is
ordinary
or serious."
[ 286 ]

Book X / 602d-604b glaucon/socrates
"We must." 603 c
"Let's present it in this way. Imitation, we say, imitates human
beings performing forced or voluntary actions, and, as a result
of the
action, supposing themselves to have done well or badly, and in
all of
this experiencing pain or enjoyment. Was there anything else
beyond
this?"
"Nothing."
"Then, in all this, is a human being of one mind? Or, just as
with
respect to the sight there was faction and he had contrary
opinions in d
himself at the same time about the same things, is there also
faction in
him when it comes to deeds and does he do battle with himself?
But I
am reminded that there's no need for us to come to an agreement
about
this now. For in the previous arguments we came to sufficient
agree-
ment about all this, asserting that our soul teems with ten
thousand
such oppositions arising at the same time."
"Rightly," he said.

"Yes, it was right," I said. "But what we then left out, it is now
necessary to go through, in my opinion." e
"What was that?" he said.
"A decent man," I said, "who gets as his share some such chance
as losing a son or something else for which he cares
particularly, as we
were surely also saying then, will bear it more easily than other
men."
"Certainly."
"Now let's consider whether he won't be grieved at all, or
whether
this is impossible, but that he will somehow be sensible in the
face of
pain."
"The latter," he said, "is closer to the truth."
"Now tell me this about him. Do you suppose he'll fight the pain
604 a
and hold out against it more when he is seen by his peers, or
when he is
alone by himself in a deserted place?"
"Surely," he said, "he will fight it far more when seen."
"But when left alone, I suppose, he'll dare to utter many things
of
which he would be ashamed if someone were to hear, and will
do many
things he would not choose to have anyone see him do."

"That's so," he said.
"Isn't it argument and law that tell him to hold out, while the
suf-
fering itself is what draws him to the pain?" h
True.
"When a contradictory tendency arises in a human being about
the same thing at the same time, we say that there are
necessarily two
things in him."
"Undeniably."
[287 ]
socrates/gi^ucon the REPUBLIq
604 h "Isn't the one ready to be persuaded in whatever direction
the law
leads?"
"How so?"
"The law presumably says that it is finest to keep as quiet as
possi-
ble in misfortunes and not be irritated, since the good and bad
in such
things aren't plain, nor does taking it hard get one anywhere,
nor are
c any of the human things worthy of great seriousness; and
being in pain

is an impediment to the coming of that thing the support of
which we
need as quickly as possible in these cases."
"What do you mean?" he said.
"Deliberation," I said, "about what has happened. One must ac-
cept the fall of the dice and settle one's affairs accordingly~in
whatever way argument declares would be best. One must not
behave
like children who have stumbled and who hold on to the hurt
place and
spend their time in crying out; rather one must always habituate
the
d soul to turn as quickly as possible to curing and setting aright
what has
fallen and is sick, doing away with lament by medicine."
"That," he said, "at all events, would be the most correct way
for
a man to face what chance brings."
"And, we say, the best part is willing to follow this
calculation—"
"Plainly."
"—whereas the part that leads to reminiscences of the suffering
and to complaints and can't get enough of them, won't we say
that it is
irrational, idle, and a friend of cowardice?"
"Certainly we'll say that."

e "Now then, the irritable disposition affords much and varied
imitation, while the prudent and quiet character, which is
always
nearly equal to itself, is neither easily imitated nor, when
imitated,
easily understood, especially by a festive assembly where all
sorts of
human beings are gathered in a theater. For the imitation is of a
condi-
tion that is surely alien to them."
605 a "That's entirely certain."
"Then plainly the imitative poet isn't naturally directed toward
any such part of the soul, and his wisdom isn't framed for
satisfying
it—if he's going to get a good reputation among the many—but
rather
toward the irritable and various disposition, because it is easily
imitated."
"Plainly."
"Therefore it would at last be just for us to seize him and set
him
beside the painter as his antistrophe. For he is like the painter in
mak-
ing things that are ordinary by the standard of truth; and he is
also
b similar in keeping company with a part of the soul that is on
the same

[ 288 ]
^ook X I 604b-606b socrates/glaucon
ilevel and not with the best part. And thus we should at last be
justified 605 b
Ijn not admitting him into a city that is going to be under good
laws, be-
^cause he awakens this part of the soul and nourishes it, and, by
making
lit strong, destroys the calculating part, just as in a city when
someone,
|by making wicked men mighty, turns the city over to them and
cor-
Irupts the superior ones. Similarly, we shall say the imitative
poet pro-
Induces a bad regime in the soul of each private man by making
phan-
^toms that are very far removed from the truth and by gratifying
the c
soul's foolish part, which doesn't distinguish big from little, but
believes the same things are at one time big and at another
little."
"Most certainly."
"However, we haven't yet made the greatest accusation against
imitation. For the fact that it succeeds in maiming even the
decent
men, except for a certain rare few, is surely quite terrible."

"Certainly, if it does indeed do that."
"Listen and consider. When even the best of us hear Homer or
any other of the tragic poets imitating one of the heroes in
mourning
and making quite an extended speech with lamentation, or, if
you like, d
singing and beating his breast, you know that we enjoy it and
that we
give ourselves over to following the imitation; suffering along
with the
hero in all seriousness, we praise as a good poet the man who
most puts
us in this state."
"I know it, of course."
"But when personal sorrow comes to one of us, you are aware
that, on the contrary, we pride ourselves if we are able to keep
quiet
and bear up, taking this to be the part of a man and what we
then e
praised to be that of a woman."
"I do recognize it," he said.
"Is that a fine way to praise?" I said. "We see a man whom we
would not condescend, but would rather blush, to resemble, and,
instead of being disgusted, we enjoy it and praise it?"
"No, by Zeus," he said, "that doesn't seem reasonable."
"Yes, it is," I said, "if you consider it in this way." 606 a

"In what way?"
"If you are aware that what is then held down by force in our
own
misfortunes and has hungered for tears and sufficient lament
and
satisfaction, since it is by nature such as to desire these things,
is that
which now gets satisfaction and enjoyment from the poets. What
is by
nature best in us, because it hasn't been adequately educated by
argu-
ment of habit, relaxes its guard over this mournful part because
it sees
another's sufferings, and it isn't shameful for it, if some other
man who b
claims to be good laments out of season, to praise and pity him;
rather
[ 289 ]
606 b it believes that it gains the pleasure and wouldn't permit
itself to be
deprived of it by despising the whole poem. I suppose that only
a cer-
tain few men are capable of calculating that the enjoyment of
other
people's sufferings has a necessary effect on one's own. For the

pitying
part, fed strong on these examples, is not easily held down in
one's own
sufferings."
c "Very true," he said.
"Doesn't the same argument also apply to the laughing part? If
there are any jokes that you would be ashamed to make
yourself, but
that you enjoy very much hearing in comic imitation or in
private, and
you don't hate them as bad, you do the same as with things that
evoke
pity. For that in you which, wanting to make jokes, you then
held down
by argument, afraid of the reputation of buffoonery, you now
release,
and, having made it lusty there, have unawares been carried
away in
your own things so that you become a comic poet."
d "Quite so," he said.
"And as for sex, and spiritedness, too, and for all the desires,
pains, and pleasures in the soul that we say follow all our
action, poetic
imitation produces similar results in us. For it fosters and
waters them
when they ought to be dried up, and sets them up as rulers in us
when
they ought to be ruled so that we may become better and happier
in-
stead of worse and more wretched."

"I can't say otherwise," he said.
e "Then, Glaucon," I said, "when you meet praisers of Homer
who
say that this poet educated Greece, and that in the management
and
education of human affairs it is worthwhile to take him up for
study
and for living, by arranging one's whole life according to this
poet, you
607 a must love and embrace them as being men who are the
best they can
be, and agree that Homer is the most poetic and first of the
tragic poets;
but you must know that only so much of poetry as is hymns to
gods or
celebration of good men should be admitted into a city. And if
you ad-
mit the sweetened muse in lyrics or epics, pleasure and pain
will jointly
be kings in your city instead of law and that argument which in
each
instance is best in the opinion of the community."
"Very true," he said.
b "Well," I said, "since we brought up the subject of poetry
again,
let it be our apology that it was then fitting for us to send it
away from
the city on account of its character. The argument determined
us. Let

us further say to it, lest it convict us for a certain harshness and
rusticity, that there is an old quarrel between philosophy and
poetry.
For that 'yelping bitch shrieking at her master,' and 'great in the
empty
c eloquence of fools,' 'the mob of overwise men holding sway,'
and 'the
refined thinkers who are really poor'^ and countless others are
signs of
290 ]
Book X / 606b-608c socrates/glaucon
this old opposition. All the same, let it be said that, if poetry
directed 607 c
to pleasure and imitation have any argument to give showing
that they
should be in a city with good laws, we should be delighted to
receive
them back from exile, since we are aware that we ourselves are
channed by them. But it isn't holy to betray what seems to be
the truth.
Aren't you, too, my friend, channed by it, especially when you
con-
template it through the medium of Homer?" d

"Very much so."
"Isn't it just for it to come back in this way—when it has made
an
apology in lyrics or some other meter?"
"Most certainly."
"And surely we would also give its protectors, those who aren't
poets but lovers of poetry, occasion to speak an argument
without
meter on its behalf, showing that it's not only pleasant but also
benefi-
cial to regimes and human life. And we shall listen
benevolently. For
surely we shall gain if it should turn out to be not only pleasant
but also e
beneficial."
"We would," he said, "undeniably gain"
"But if not, my dear comrade, just like the men who have once
fallen in love with someone, and don't believe the love is
beneficial,
keep away from it even if they have to do violence to
themselves; so we
too—due to the inborn love of such poetry we owe to our
rearing in
these fine regimes—we'll be glad if it turns out that it is best
and truest. 608 a
But as long as it's not able to make its apology, when we listen
to it,
well chant this argument we are making to ourselves as a coun-
tercharm, taking care against falling back again into this love,

which is
childish and belongs to the many. We are, at all events, aware
that such
poetry mustn't be taken seriously as a serious thing laying hold
of truth,
but that the man who hears it must be careful, fearing for the
regime in b
himself, and must hold what we have said about poetry."
"Entirely," he said. "I join you in saying that."
"For the contest is great, my dear Glaucon," I said, "greater than
it seems—this contest that concerns becoming good or bad—so
we
mustn't be tempted by honor or money or any ruling office or,
for that
matter, poetry, into thinking that it's worthwhile to neglect
justice and
the rest of virtue."
"I join you in saying that," he said, "on the basis of what we
have
gone through. And I suppose anyone else would too."
"And, yet," I said, "we haven't gone through the greatest
rewards c
and prizes proposed for virtue."
"You are speaking of an inconceivable greatness," he said, "if
there are others greater than those mentioned."
"What that is great could come to pass in a short time?" I said.
[ 291 ]

socrates/glaucon the REPUBLIp
608 c "For surely, the whole of the time from childhood to old
age would h
short when compared with all time."
"Rather, it's nothing at all," he said.
"What then? Do you suppose that an immortal thing ought to be
d serious about so short a time and not about all time?"
"I do suppose so," he said. "But what do you mean by this?"
"Haven't you perceived," I said, "that our soul is immortal and
is
never destroyed?"
And he looked me in the face with wonder and said, "No, by
Zeus, I haven't. Can you say that?"
"If I am not to do an injustice," I said. "And I suppose you can
too, for it's nothing hard."
"It is for me," he said. "But I would gladly hear from you this
thing that isn't hard."
"You must hear it," I said.
"Just speak," he said.
"Do you," I said, "call something good and something bad?"
"I do."
e "Then do you have the same understanding of them as I do?"

"What's that?"
"What destroys and corrupts everything is the bad, and what
saves
and benefits is the good."
"I do," he said.
"And what about this? Do you say there is something bad and
something good for each thing—for example, ophthalmia for the
eyes,
609 a and sickness for the entire body, blight for grain, rot for
wood, rust for
iron and bronze, and, as I say, for nearly all things is there an
evil and
illness naturally connected with each?"
"I do," he said.
"When one of these attaches itself to something, doesn't it make
the thing to which it attaches itself bad and, in the end, wholly
dissolve
and destroy it?"
"Undeniably."
"Therefore the evil naturally connected with each thing and its
particular badness destroys it, or if this doesn't destroy it,
surely there
h is nothing else that could still corrupt it. For surely the good
would

never destroy anything, nor, again, would what is neither bad
nor
good."
"How could they?" he said.
"Therefore, if we find any existing thing that has an evil that
makes it bad but is, however, not able to dissolve and destroy it,
then
won't we know that for a thing that is naturally so there is no
destruc-
tion?"
[ 292 ]
Short Paper “SP” Explanation
Three (3) short papers will be due this session—basically one
paper every two weeks.
SPs should in some way touch upon at least one of the required
readings, and attending themes, that we have addressed during
the given timeframe. You may also wish to bring in other
readings/sources, whether from or beyond those covered in the
course. Finally, you also may want to [hint, hint] draw upon
other relevant research and scholarship in these papers, which
will entail a certain “added” initiative (a trip to the actual or
virtual library, perhaps?) on your part. The ultimate goal of
writing SPs is to cultivate the development of your own critical,
analytical, and creative voice.

Things to consider in writing your SPs:
· Isolate a specific concept/theme/topic in the text(s) that most
piqued your interest.
· How is this concept/theme/topic analyzed by the author?
· How is this concept/theme/topic relevant to the author’s
overall argument or claim?
· What questions or concerns do you have about this
concept/theme/topic? (Your questions or concerns constitute the
beginning of your own argument and analysis. In other words,
your argument and analysis will ultimately be your attempt to
address these questions or concerns.)
· Offer your own argument and analysis concerning the specific
concept/theme/topic you have isolated.
· What is your “take”?
· Support your argument (consider examples).
· Consider contemporary applications of ideas discussed in
reading (e.g. through art, music, literature, film, other media;
through social/cultural/political themes and discourses; etc.)
· What’s at stake? (Who cares? Would anyone disagree with
what you’re arguing?)
· Focus, focus, focus.
Technical requirements for SPs:
1. Use footnotes or endnotes. [In Microsoft Word, this should
be as easy as choosing “References” in the top menu and then
choosing either “Insert Footnote” or “Insert Endnote.” In
scholarly parlance, this mode of citation is typically called
Chicago style. I have included sample paper using Chicago style
in the Content area of our Blackboard course.]
2. 4 pages minimum (excluding any bibliography, title page,
etc.)
3. “Common” font (e.g. Times New Roman, Garamond)
4. 12” font size
5. Double-spaced

6. Left-justified
7. 1” margins
8. Paginated (header or footer acceptable)

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