Even if one attributes to Plato a conscious decision in this matter, as does Stephen Halliwell in his recent The Aesthetics of Mimesis (Princeton 2002), by talking of Plato’s «anti-aestheticism», that is to say, of his tendency «to reject the idea of autonomous artistic criteria of value and, with it, the acceptability of appraising artistic styles or techniques from within a purely artistic perspective rather than from a wider angle of ethiocultural judgement» (op. On the basis in fact of the assertions that have just been expounded one would have to claim not just that he looked at the object of aesthetics from a point of view which was different from that of modern aesthetics but that the very object of aesthetics did not exist for him.Ĥ This paradox comes less, but not all difficulties, if one adopts the alternative view that it makes sense to talk of an ancient aesthetics but that Plato had a negative attitude to it. In brief, aesthetics is to be regarded as a modern discipline to which Plato could not give a proper contribution.ģ Yet at this point it becomes rather paradoxical to admit that Plato had a particular interest in this field and gave significant and influential contributions to it while excluding, at least implicitly, that he could have recognized it as a distinct field. Beyond this one would have to register that, in Kristeller’s words, «such dominating concepts of modern aesthetics as taste, sentiment,genius, originality, and creative imagination did not assume their definite modern meaning before the eighteenth century» ( Origins of Aesthetics, cit., p. The way in which he classified the «arts» ( technai ), including under this heading artisanal crafts or skills and even mathematical disciplines, precluded in any case the identification of a sufficiently homogeneous group corresponding to the modern system of «fine arts». Ancient authors like Plato himself did not recognize this affinity, because they were not able or willing to talk of beauty in a recognizedly distinct aesthetic sense of the word and did not establish a privileged link between beauty (thus understood) and the arts. Kristeller’s influential article on «The Modern System of the Arts» 2 ) that only in modern times there has arisen the recognition that between the «fine arts» ( beaux arts ), which are represented, at least primarily, by painting, sculpture, architecture, music and poetry, there is an affinity such that they can be said to constitute a «system» and that this fact has to do with their being a source of aesthetic pleasure through the beauty realized in the works they produce.

2 Appeared in Journal of the History of Ideas 12, 1951, pp. 496-527, and 13, 1952, pp. 17-46 see als (.)Ģ It is often admitted (following, in the main, P.O.

Aristotle on the art of poetry