§7. Elements of somatic terminology in Plato's aesthetics{87}

1. Introductory remarks

The traditional understanding of Plato, and especially of his doctrine of ideas (and, as we know, it is precisely the main kernel of Plato's aesthetics{88} is distinguished by a very sublime, idealistic, and even spiritualistic character. Indeed, this is a very lofty philosophy. However, the sublime everywhere in history had its own character; and if these characters are taken from the Ancient East, then there will be a lot of these characters and it is difficult to combine them with one another. As far as antiquity is concerned, from the time of Winckelmann, if not from the time of the Renaissance, antiquity has usually been regarded as something plastically beautiful, humanly noble, calm, and even majestic. Fr. Nietzsche did very little to shake this general modern European view of antiquity. The "spirit of music" from which he derived Greek classical tragedy itself arose in him not only from Apollo, but also from Dionysus. However, the orgiastic essence of Dionysus, which coincided so deeply with Apollo plasticity, was characterized by blood, insane ecstasies, and in general something pre-cultured, pre-civilized. The sublime character of Attic tragedy not only diminished from this, but, perhaps, became even more significant and spiritual. After Nietzsche, the Greek classics not only did not decline, but even Socrates and his disciples, whom Nietzsche himself regarded as the fall of the classics, began to be considered in an even higher style.

The importance of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle only increased with the passage of centuries, and with the advent of Christianity, after a certain hiccup, these philosophers entered deeply into Christian, Jewish, and Mohammedan theology, received a Neoplatonic deepening, and forever remained representatives of the philosophy of the absolute spirit, who could be compared only with German idealism.

At the same time, they usually forgot absolutely everything that was specific to them. For example, Plato was very rarely and very little characterized as a thinker of antiquity. Of course, his idealism and his spiritualism are difficult to question. But there is its own specificity in ancient idealism (and materialism) and in ancient spiritualism. But it was precisely this specificity that was taken into account the least.

They taught about Plato's ideas. But the fact that Plato's ideas were only a generative model for material things, and that therefore the whole of Platonism was, properly speaking, only a cosmology, was said very little about this.

Plato was considered a religious thinker. But even if we consider his philosophy to be religious (which is often done only with a great stretch), then in all school textbooks we read that ancient religion and mythology are the deification of the forces of nature.

And if this is taken seriously, then it is obvious that Plato's religious philosophy will have to be greatly reduced and will no longer be a philosophy of the spirit. In that case it would be a philosophy of nature, or even of matter, rather than a philosophy of pure and absolute spirit.

Plato's philosophy was also often associated with slavery, in the depths of which it was born. But slavery is again a very earthly and very corporeal socio-historical formation. After all, the slave was understood as a domestic animal, as an instrumentum vocale (which, of course, was not always the case, very sporadic and conditional, and which at present can only be spoken of with great reservations). However, if the traditional doctrine of the slave as a domestic animal, which is still widespread in public circles, contains at least some truth, then a philosophical doctrine that has arisen on such a limited socio-historical soil can by no means have broad horizons, and even the most absolute Platonism can in no case be a philosophy of pure and absolute spirit.

We would like to depict Plato as a purely ancient thinker, as a pagan thinker, and as a thinker deeply connected with the thousand-year-old worldview of his people. This task is enormous and requires a large number of voluminous studies. Here we can only make a few hints, which, of course, will require both a fundamental verification and an exhaustive review of all other Platonic materials related to this.

2. General statistics of Plato's philosophical and aesthetic terminology

First of all, we would like to draw attention to the current state of terminological studies relating to Plato's doctrine of ideas. Terminologically, the doctrine of ideas is very poorly recorded in Plato. If we use all sorts of conjectures, hypotheses, and conjectures, then the general modern result of the centuries-old study of Plato's terminology is that Plato, properly speaking, does not even have any doctrine of ideas.