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Chapter Title: The Divine Poet: Mimēsis and Homoiosis Theoi in Plato
Chapter Author(s): Marie-Élise Zovko

Book Title: The Many Faces of Mimesis


Book Subtitle: Selected Essays from the 2017 Symposium on the Hellenic Heritage of
Western Greece
Book Editor(s): Heather L. Reid, Jeremy C. DeLong
Published by: Parnassos Press – Fonte Aretusa. (2018)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvbj7g5b.10

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Part II
Mimēsis in Other Platonic Dialogues

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Marie-Élise Zovko1
The Divine Poet:
Mimēsis and Homoiosis Theoi in Plato
… you know that poetry is more than a single thing. For of
anything whatever that passes from not being into being the
whole cause is composing or poetry; so that the productions of
all arts are kinds of poetry, and their craftsmen are all poets.
Symp. 205b-c
It is a divine affair, this engendering and bringing to birth, an
immortal element in the creature that is mortal. Symp. 206c
The paradigm of mimēsis in Plato is the imitation of the forms:
“when Plato speaks of the mimetic character of art, he is thinking in the
first place of the imitation of the forms.”2 Halliwell claims that this
connection is of the utmost importance. For, on the one hand, it implies
that “mimēsis cannot be divorced from the biggest, most serious
problems that confront philosophy.” And, on the other hand, it raises
the question of the opposition between—and perhaps ultimate
irreconcilability of—art and philosophy.3 In this paper, I explore the
relationship of artistic mimēsis to mimēsis in its original sense as
imitation of the ideas/forms, which in Plato forms the basis for
representation of ideas or ideals in human thought and action, language
and behavior, and specifically for the realization of virtue and the
ultimate goal of human striving: becoming like God.4 One of the most
neglected aspects of mimēsis is the analogy to the creative activity of the
Demiurge in the generation of the Cosmos as portrayed in the Timaeus.
This analogy serves as a paradigm for the productive agency of
craftsmen in general, and—with a certain set of restrictions—of poets
and artists in particular.
In the context of Plato’s critique of poetry in Bk. X of the Republic,
God is depicted as the phutourgos—i.e. the original maker of the unique
nature of a thing (e.g. hē phusei klinē) (Rep. 597d). The original creativity
of the phutourgos is opposed to the slavish re-production of an image
‘thrice-removed’ from the reality of the archetypal ideas which Plato
attributes to the artist (Rep. 597e).5 In contrast to the craftsman
(demiourgos)—who “does not make the idea or form which we say is the
real couch, the couch in-itself, but only some particular couch” (596d)—
and the painter who only imitates the appearance of a couch, God

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produces the couch “in nature,”— that is, in its essence, and is thus
rightly called its “true and natural begetter” (phutourgos). In the
framework of Plato’s critique of poetry and art, mimēsis appears thus
not only as derivative (i.e. in the case of the craftsman who produces
not the idea but the image of the idea), but as a deception and
falsification of the true reality of the ideas (597). The painter or the poet,
though not “creator of all things,” is “not only able to make all
implements, but he produces all plants and animals, including himself,
and thereto earth and heaven and the gods and all things in heaven and
in Hades under the earth…,” but as phenomena only and not in truth
(596c-e). By analogy to the productivity of the divine craftsman,
however, a type of mimēsis is alluded to which lies not merely in the
imitation of the ideas, but in our “becoming like God,” by means of a
reenactment of the original creative act by which the cosmos and all
things came to be.6
In Plato, “becoming like God” (homoiosis theoi) constitutes the telos
of the philosophical life.7 This ideal is explicated in a variety of ways,
across numerous dialogues: Phaedrus, Timaeus, Laws, Republic,
Theaetetus, Phaedo and Philebus. Our likeness or similarity to God, and our
8

ability to assimilate ourselves to God, is grounded in the original


relationship of the divine paradeigma or archetype as “progenitor,” and
its image or progeny, as established in the generation of the Cosmos.
The connection between homoiosis (“becoming-like”) and mimēsis
(“imitation”) is grounded similarly in the original analogy between
human poiēsis, and the creative activity of our eternal model or
archetype. In its moral aspect, assimilation to God is achieved through
the practice of virtue, which differs from artistic mimēsis in that it entails
instantiation of the essence of virtue in reality and truth, and not in a
portrayal of the appearance of a thing or essence. In acting on our ideas
to bring forth a physical or intellectual product such as a work of poetry
or art, however, we are likening ourselves to God in a specific respect:
namely, that of our creative agency. We participate thereby in a creative
process, which is a reflection and genuine continuation of the original
generation of the cosmos from its archetype, recreating the world “in
our image,” so to speak, and becoming thereby, each in our own way,
divine poets.
In Plato, it is the original analogy between image and archetype
which establishes the real existence of things, but also the basis for

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perception, belief, and knowledge of reality and of the forms. The
presence (parousia) of ideas in particular things which derives from that
original relationship, and the participation (metexis) of things in the
ideas make individual things what they are, enable their existence, and
also make possible recognition of what each thing is according to its nature
and how it behaves—a conviction prefigured in Heraclitus's first fragment
regarding the logos (DK12B1).
The “good poet” must create with knowledge, if he is to create
“beautifully” (kalōs, cf. Rep. 598e-599a); and while artistic mimēsis is
criticized for purveying the mere appearance of knowledge “thrice-
removed” from the original, Plato did not, as Adam recognized,
“condemn poetic and artistic imitation as such, but would have
admitted it where the model was good” (cf. Rep. 396e, 397d, 398b, 401-
402c). The question is what this type of mimēsis has to do with artistic
production as we know it.
Plato was “a consummate literary artist.”9 His philosophical
production took the form not of theoretical treatises, but of dialogues—
literary inventions unique in the history of human culture. The
dialogues permit the reader to re-imagine a living encounter of Socrates
with his interlocuters, to re-discover a philosophical dilemma arising
from a given set of circumstances, and to re-enact in a series of stages the
unfolding of a philosophical argument. It is not surprising, therefore,
that, despite the “ancient quarrel” between poetry and philosophy,
Socrates signals his willingness to readmit the poets to the ideal city if
they can show that their poetry “is not only delightful, but beneficial to
orderly government and all the life of man” (Rep. 607d, cf. 607a-e). This
bond of pleasure and goodness is crucial to “divine poetry,” and to a
positive conception of mimesis—if such a one exists in Plato. For the aim
of our striving is ultimately happiness, and not a type of goodness
divorced from satisfaction.
In the Symposium, Diotima depicts love as mediating between gods
and humans. As a desire for immortality, eros naturally leads to what
Diotima calls “procreation in beauty” (Smp. 206 b: tokos en kaloi kai kata
to soma kai kata tēn psuhēn). In considering Plato’s theory of “intellectual
creativity” as advanced in the Symposium, Asmis highlights how Plato
here presents poetry in a more positive light than anywhere in his
earlier dialogues—subsuming “poetic activity under the Form of
beauty,” and making “love its motive force…an act of communication

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between a lover and his beloved.” The lover, like the poet, is thereby
characterized by “a desire for the creation of an immortal good in
something beautiful.”10
The desire to create a thing of beauty is perhaps the clearest expression
of the natural desire for immortality, which is in turn an expression of
our natural desire for what is good, and of the good for the sake of
happiness, desire for which is shared by all human beings (cf. 204e,
205a-d, 206a-b).11 And while Diotima distinguishes between those who
procreate in a bodily sense and those who do so intellectually, and
though bodily procreation alone is inadequate for the achievement of
true immortality, the two are intimately tied to one another. “All men,”
says Diotima, go about pregnant, “both in body and soul,” and “on
reaching a certain age our nature yearns to beget” (206c; cf. 208b). This
“engendering and bringing to birth” is “a divine affair, an immortal
element in the creature that is mortal” (206c, cf. 206e). “In only one
way,” and “by no other means,” can the creature “partake of
immortality,” which is the key to happiness, “and that is by generation”
(tē genesei), which is the equivalent of poiēsis in the broadest sense (207d,
208b; cf. 205b-c). This process, moreover, involves a fundamental form
of mimēsis. For it is not by staying always the same, “like the divine,”
that the mortal creature achieves immortality, but by leaving behind
something new “in the semblance of the original” (literally “like it was”
– οἷον αὐτὸ ἦν, cf. 208a-b). Among those “who in their souls still more
than in their bodies conceive those things which are proper for soul to
conceive and bring forth,” namely, “prudence, and virtue in general,”
Diotima (surprisingly, in light of Bk. II and X of the Republic) counts “all
the poets,” as well as those craftsmen who are called “inventors” (ὧν δή
εἰσι καὶ οἱ ποιηταὶ πάντες γεννήτορες καὶ τῶν δημιουργῶν ὅσοι
λέγονται εὑρετικοὶ εἶναι). Here, the analogy between the creative
agency of the poets (as poiētai gennētores) and inventors (dēmiourgoi
heuretikoi) and divine creativity is made explicit. This mode of striving
for and participating in immortality serves as the basis for the deep
connection between a positive concept of poetic mimēsis (as imitation of
virtue and the ideas) and the idea of homoiosis theoi. In this regard,
Homer and Hesiod, who are counted here among the “good poets” and
their “fine offspring,” deserve our emulation.
Because of their role in realizing the greatest of virtues—i.e.
“sobriety” (sōphrosunē) and justice (dikaiosunē)—especially through their

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role as educators, lawgivers come closer to achieving the goal of
immortality than those who procreate in the body and the poets who
produce only an image of the virtues (cf. Symp.209a-e).12 In this respect,
lawgivers achieve the role of “divine poets” in a manner that is superior
to that of poets in the stricter sense. Thus, in the Laws, when the tragic
poets approach the lawmakers and ask if they may bring their poetry
into the city, the lawmakers characterize themselves as “authors of a
tragedy at once superlatively fair and good.” The lawmakers, “as artists
and actors in the fairest drama…true law” (Laws 817 b-c), rival the
tragedians insofar as their “polity is framed as a representation of the
fairest and best life (mimēsis tou kallou kai aristou biou), which is in
reality…the truest tragedy (ontōs tragōidian ten alethestaton).”13 Both
poets and lawmakers, then, “are at once “makers” (the etymological
meaning of poietai, “poets”) and “imitators” of moral values.”14
Nevertheless, lawmakers have the clear advantage in that the laws
appeal to reason and moderation, whereas poets appeal to emotion,
inclining us towards pity and grief (cf. Rep. 602a, 605a, 606d; cf. 387d-
388e).15
“Procreation” in the above sense is made possible by participation
in and imitation of divine agency—as exercised and propogated in the
creation of the world and the soul. The demiurge brings forth the
cosmos and individual souls as a moving image of eternity (Tim. 37d-e).
In their striving for immortality, human beings bring forth physical,
moral, political, and intellectual progeny. Mimēsis in this context is
comprised by the act of bringing forth an image of the forms; but the act
of procreation itself is at the same time an image of the creative agency
of the creator, as imitator of the phutourgos and progenitor of the forms.
The procreative act is thereby clearly not to be understood as a slavish,
illusionistic copying or duplication of a fixed model, but rather as an
original affirmation our “god-likeness.”
In Halliwell’s discussion of the Cratylus, likeness is determined to
be “a defining property of all mimēsis.”16 Halliwell highlights the
distinction drawn by Socrates between the “name-object relationship”
and “picture-object relationship,” which he then respectively associates
with the distinction between a propositional and a non-propositional
kind of truth. The “correctness” of artistic images—with respect to the
reality they represent—appears in this context as a “‘truth-to” the
general appearances of things, rather than “truth about” their

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underlying nature.”17 Mimēsis, “whether visual or musicopoetic,”
“pictures” things found in the the actual world, although it does not
“tell us the (philosophical) truth about these things,” whereas
“language-as-naming” addresses essence, “the true reality of things.”18
This leads Socrates to consider the possibility of “a conception of
mimetic art as both modeled on, and yet incapable of truly grasping”
reality.19 Thus, while “linguistic mimēsis” takes a form that is necessarily
propositional, the image-archetype relationship—which underlies
Plato’s vision of reality—permits artistic mimēsis to express reality in a
different way. According to this conception, artistic mimēsis expresses
reality not through a striving for sameness (eg. of a true proposition,
which states what a thing is or what is the case), and not through mere
duplication of reality (a senseless impossibility and a point of criticism
which is also applied to the theory of ideas in the Parmenides). Rather, it
expresses truth/reality through assimilation of an image to its model. A
different standard is thereby required for judgment of the adequacy of a
likeness, as Socrates explains:
Do you see, then, my friend, that we must look for a different
standard of correctness for images . . . and not make the
presence or absence of particular features a necessary
condition for something to be an image? Surely you realize
that images are far from having the same properties as the
things whose images they are? (Cratylus, 432c-d)
This passage appears to intimate something like a positive idea of
mimēsis, and one clearly opposed to the idea of mimēsis as an activity
thrice-removed from reality, as presented in Bk. X of the Republic. In the
Cratylus, both primary and secondary representation of reality prove
ultimately to be inadequate to reality, since neither naming of things,
nor their imitation in other media, but only the things themselves, are
fully what they are.20
Narrative storytelling makes use of a “quasipropositional” form,
and poets “‘say’ or ‘mean’ (legein) certain things… conveying ideas
about and attitudes to the world” that can have a positive or negative
effect on their audiences. Plato, as Halliwell notes, “does not have
separate terms to denote … ‘fiction’ and ‘falsehood,’”21 so that fiction
easily becomes associated with a propositional and rational untruth—
and so with the opposite of goodness, virtue, and so forth.22 The
modelling of a likeness or image which is at the heart of mimēsis,
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however, brings to light a paradigmatic kind of reality and truth which
can only be fully embodied in a story or myth, but whose effect is not
that of rational propositional argument.
The premise of Bk. II and III of the Republic’s critique of poetry is
that “(poetic) narratives induce and shape belief in their audiences,”
particularly with respect to the portrayal of gods and heroes, who are
the central characters of myths.23 When Socrates proposes that any
depiction of unseemly behaviour among heroes (e.g. grief) in poetry
needs to be censored (377e-78e), he justifies the ban on the grounds that
the Guardians must be prevented from emulating a false model. This is
particularly the case “when anyone images badly (eikazēi kakōs) in his
speech the true nature of gods and heroes, like a painter whose
portraits bear no resemblance to his models” (377e), since gods and
heroes ought to embody the highest virtues toward which human
striving should aim.24
It is a human tendency to model behaviour on a living or fictive
example, and poetry’s facility for providing—often inappropriate—
models (tupoi) for imitation forms the basis for Plato’s critique of
poetry. Above all, tragedy and epic poetry endanger their audiences
with exemplary "untruth" in this regard; that is, with a model or models
which don’t square with a rationally justifiable system of norms, and in
many cases oppose the ideal of true virtue, seducing their audiences
thereby to imitate an ‘unjust standard.’25
In Rep. 420c-d, the construction of the just state is compared to the
portrayal of a human figure by a sculpture, and the assignment of
pigment to its various parts. The relationship of the image to its model
is judged thereby “in terms of ‘appropriateness’ (to proshēkon) as well as
likeness” (420c–d). In this case, as Halliwell notes, “‘appropriateness’
modifies the requirement of likeness by putting it in the context of a
mimetic work’s structure and coherence (cf. Gorg. 503d–e),” although
“appropriateness may sometimes be synonymous with close likeness,
as with eicastic mimēsis at Soph. 235e1.”26
In Plato, becoming virtuous requires imitation of an ideal of virtue
and of goodness. Modelling or imitation of virtue forms the
counterbalance to the negative influence of false mimetic models at the
heart of Plato’s critique of poetry. The critique of Homeric poetry in Bk.
II of the Republic follows, accordingly, the scheme of the cardinal virtues

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(courage, moderation or self-control, piety, justice; cf. 387b, 387d, 391a,
392b)
The central thrust of Plato’s critique of poetry concerns the true
nature of the gods and of heroes, who should serve as standards of
goodness and justice, courage and self-control, respectively. In contrast,
the poets falsely represent the gods as committing injustice and heroes
as fearing death, that is, lacking courage, whose essence is to fear
slavery more than death (cf. 377e ff.; cf. 392a-b). This is the basis for
Socrates’s comparison of the poets to a painter who portrays his model
badly (377e). The guardians, who are to become “craftsmen of civil
liberty” (dēmiourgoi eleutherios tēs poleos, 395c), if they are to imitate at
all, must imitate what is suitable to them (ta toutois proshēkonta), namely,
the example of “men who are brave, sober, pious and free” (395c).27
The guardians, in their imitation of virtue, begin the ascent to
becoming like God. Assimilation to God in Plato has a twofold aspect,
depending on whether what is being considered is the realization of
justice in the polis or in the individual soul (i.e. personal perfection). A
fundamental tension thereby emerges, between a life of virtue in a civic
or worldly sense, and the ideal of a life which might be called
otherworldly insofar as it turns our attention away from the mundane,
social, or political realm, and toward purely intellectual pursuits,
thereby constituting a flight from the world.28 Elsewhere, I argue that
these two accounts form parts of an integral whole, in keeping with
Plato’s cosmological, ontological, epistemological and ethical theory.29
Likewise, alongside his critique of the negative aspects of mimēsis in
poetry, art and technē, Plato entertains a positive perspective on mimetic
creativity, the origin of which lies in the original relationship of
paradigm and image.
An interesting related passage from Book X of the Laws discusses
the “naturalness” of art, in opposition to those who deny the gods’
existence, or insist that laws and the arts (tehnai) are products of mere
convention. In defense of the laws, it is of the utmost importance, the
Athenian argues, that arguments for the existence of the gods should be
convincingly persuasive, since “living well” is contingent on “holding a
right view about the gods” (Laws 888b; cf. 887b-c). The myth of the
golden age of the God Kronos from Book IV of the Laws, which forms
part of an imagined address to the prospective colonists of Magnesia,

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and serves as a prelude to the laws (715e–718a), illustrates the nature of
the god whom humans are called to follow,
…that God who, as old tradition tells, holdeth the beginning,
the end, and the center of all things that exist, completeth his
circuit by nature's ordinance in straight, unswerving course.
With him followeth (sunepetai) Justice, as avenger of them that
fall short of the divine law; and she, again, is followed
(sunepetai) by every man who would fain be happy, cleaving to
her with lowly and orderly behavior. (715e–716a)30
To say that Justice follows (sunepetai) God, and human beings who
would ensure their happiness necessarily follow Justice, is another way
of saying that each models itself upon, is informed by, or in some
manner imitates, Justice’s paradigm. As Mayhew sees it, this
description highlights the nature of God as “productive cause”
(poiētikon aition), his presence in all things, and extension “to the limits
or outer reaches of the cosmos,” including human existence, as well as
his role as the “ultimate standard of orderliness and virtue.”31 God’s
“straight course revolving according to nature” (kata phusin
periporeuomenos ) provides the archetype for the rightly ordered activity
of the human intellect which brings it into line with the motions of the
cosmos.32 The activity that is “dear to” God (philos theoi) in humans who
are called upon to follow virtue, by which we also become “like gods,”
is expressed by the simple ancient saying: “like is dear to like, if it is
measured” (tôi homoiôi to homoion onti metriôi philon an eiē ). As the
Athenian explains:
… immoderate things (ta ametra—things that lack measure) are
dear neither to one another nor to things moderate (tois
emmetrois—“things that possess measure”). In our eyes God
will be “the measure of all things” (ho theos hēmin pantôn
chrēmatôn metron an eiē)33 in the highest degree—a degree much
higher than is any “man” they talk of. He, then, that is to
become dear to (prosphilē) such a one must needs become, so
far as he possibly can, of a like character (toiouton gignesthai);
and, according to the present argument, he amongst us that is
temperate is dear to God (philos theoi), since he is like him
(homoios gar), while he that is not temperate is unlike
(anoimoios) and at enmity—as is also he who is unjust, and so

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likewise with the rest, by parity of reasoning. (716c–d; cf. 792
c-d; 818 b-d)
Here likeness (to homoion) forms the proper basis for imitation, or
“becoming like,” an appropriate model—in this case, temperate,
virtuous and so “dear to” or “like” God. Whilst imitation of the divine
measure here is referred primarily to the practice of virtue, its
cosmological aspect, and association with the original creative agency
of the divine, should not be ignored.
Being “like the gods” in measure is to participate in the right
manner in that divine activity. While in the Laws, Plato never explicitly
refers to God as the “demiurge” or “craftsman,” he compares “mortal
craftsmen” to gods, who are “better…the more accurately and perfectly
they execute with one art the small and the large aspects of the work
that is proper to them” (902e; cf. 903c).34 In his consideration of
measures to prevent impiety among the young, and for this purpose of
arguments for the existence of the gods (Laws 884a ff.), the Athenian
describes the kinship of the soul to God as comprised by its “self-
moving motion” (Laws 895c– 896a) and its role as “cause of all change
and of motion in all things” (Laws 896a–b).35 The Athenian addresses a
group of Atomists, who believe that things come into existence “partly
by nature, partly by art, and partly owing to chance” (888d), and see
“the greatest and most beautiful things” in “the work of nature and of
chance,” whereas art they see as a producer of lesser things (889a).
Atomists such as Democritus and Leucippus, who view justice and
belief in the gods as a product of convention, argue in this sense for a
life “according to nature,” “which consists in being master over the rest
in reality, instead of being a slave to others according to legal
convention” (890a; cf. 888a-889e). Art, in their portrayal, “being mortal
itself and of mortal birth,” is depicted as “later” than natural or material
things. Art begets “later playthings” only, “which share little in truth,
being images of a sort akin to the arts themselves—images such as
painting begets, and music, and the arts which accompany these” (889c-
d). Technai like medicine, agriculture, gymnastic, as well as politics and
legislation to a lesser extent, come off somewhat better, since they
“really produce something.” In fact, as the Athenian will demonstrate,
the atomists have “fallen into error regarding the real nature of divine
existence” and of the soul (891e). For as “first cause of becoming and
perishing in all things,” the divine cannot be later than what it
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generates; just as soul “which governs all changes and modifications of
bodies,” must be “prior in origin” to what belongs to these (891e-892a).
Consequently, the activities and products of the soul,
opinion and reflection and thought and art and law will be
prior to things hard and soft and heavy and light; and further,
the works and actions that are great and primary will be those
of art, while those that are natural, and nature itself which they
wrongly call by this name—will be secondary, and will derive
their origin from art and reason (892b).
Thus, Plato returns to a view of art and other products of reason as
products of a “higher nature”—i.e. “as things which exist by nature or
by a cause not inferior to nature, since according to right reason they
are the offspring of mind” (890d). In this way the human artist is most
like the divine poet, the phutourgos who is the original maker of the
forms.

1 Marie-Élise Zovko is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy,


Zagreb and doctoral advisor at the University of Zadar. She was Fulbright
fellow to Germany 1981/82, Visiting scholar, Center for Hellenic
Studies/Harvard Univ., 1999, Visiting scholar, Humanities Center/Johns
Hopkins University 2010, Visiting fellow, CRASSH/ Wolfson College,
Cambridge Univ. 2016. Her research interests include: Ancient Greek
philosophy, history of Platonism, Spinoza, Kant, German Idealism, German
Romantic philosophy, metaphysics, aesthetics, and philosophizing with
children/in life contexts. The author’s participation in the “Third
Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Heritage of Western Greece—Many
Faces of Mimēsis,” and publication of this article, was made possible by
the Croatian Science Foundation, under the project "Relevance of
Hermeneutic Judgment.”
2 Cf. Jure Zovko’s article, “Mimēsis in Plotinus’s Philosophy of Art,” elsewhere
in this volume. Halliwell differentiates, in this sense, “primary” and
“secondary” mimēsis. Cf. Stephen Halliwell, The Aesthetics of Mimēsis.
Ancient Texts and Modern Problems (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2002), 3. In Halliwell’s view, Plato oriented “questions of mimetic art
around larger philosophical concerns with the relationship between mind
and reality,” thus bringing artistic or “secondary” mimēsis “within the
overarching framework of a philosophy of ‘primary’ representation (as
embodied in human thought, perception, and language as a whole).”

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3 Halliwell, The Aesthetics of Mimēsis, 37.
4 On the concept of “becoming like God,” see: Marie-Élise Zovko, “Worldly
and Otherworldly Virtue: Likeness to God as Educational Ideal in Plato,
Plotinus and Today,” Bildung and Paideia: Philosophical Models of Education,
Educational Philosophy and Theory (Taylor & Francis: Routledge, 2018).
(DOI:10.1080/00131857.2017.1373340)
5 Rep. 598b. It is “far-removed,” if we consider that only the appearance of a

thing is imitated, and not the thing itself.


6 The comparison of poetry with poiēsis in the broadest sense appears in the

Symposium 205b-c: “…you know that poetry is more than a single thing. For
of anything whatever that passes from not being into being the whole cause
is composing or poetry; so that the productions of all arts are kinds of
poetry, and their craftsmen are all poets.”
7 Cf. David Sedley, “The Ideal of Godlikeness,” Oxford Readings in Philosophy,

Plato 2: Ethics, Politics, Religion, and the Soul, ed. Gail Fine (NewYork:
Oxford University Press, 1999), 309-32. 309. H. Merki, Ὁμοίωσις θεῷ Von
der platonischen Angleichung an Gott zur Gottähnlichkelt bei Gregor von Nyssa
(Freiburg, Paulusverlag, 1952); I. Passmore, The Perfectibility of Man
(London: Duckworth, 1970); D. Roloff, Gottähnlichkeit und Erhöhung zum
seligen Leben. Untersuchungen zur Herkunft der platonischen Angleichung an
Gott (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1970); Julia Annas, “Becoming like God: Human
Nature and the Divine,” Platonic Ethics, Old and New (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
Univ. Press, 1999). W. Beierwaltes, Proklos. Grundzüge seiner Metaphysik
(Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann,1979), 294-306.
8 See esp. Phaedrus: 246d, 248a, 249c; Timaeus: 47c, 89e–90d; Laws IV, 716b–d;

Republic X, 613a–b; Theatetus: 176a–c; Phaedo 78b–84b; Philebus. 28c–30e. Cf.


Alcinous, Handbook of Platonism, transl. with introduction and
commentary by John Dillon (New York: Clarendon Press, 1993), 28; Daniel
C. Russell, “Virtue as ‘Likeness to God’ in Plato and Seneca,” Journal of the
History of Philosophy, 44 (2004): 241-60., 241.
9 Elizabeth Asmis, “Plato on Poetic Creativity,” Cambridge Companion to Plato

(Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2006), 338-364. 339.


10 Ibid., 339.

11 The desire for the beautiful is at first passed over in the discussion, in favor

of an analysis of the desire for good things as the means to happiness. This
fundamental natural drive must first pass through a kind of education in
order to produce the desire for the beautiful itself, and for what is truly
good, not which merely appears to be so.

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12 Immortality is achieved ultimately by the philosopher, by the purification of
love and ascent to the vision of beauty itself and the eternal ideas. Cf.
Symposium 210a-212a.
13 Asmis, 2006, 338.

14 Ibid., 338-339.

15 Halliwell, The Aesthetics of Mimēsis, 111ff.; On the particular effect of tragic

poetry, 112.
16 Halliwell, The Aesthetics of Mimēsis, 44: “these arts ‘show’ (dēloun) and

‘signify’ (sēmainein) a sensorily perceptible world; but they do not address


the ‘essence.’” Cf. Cratylus. 423a, 424d; cf. 430c, 434a–b (likeness); sēmainen:
422e4; dēloun: 422e3, 423a-b.
17 Halliwell, The Aesthetics of Mimēsis 46, cf. 45f.

18 Ibid. 44, 45.

19 Ibid. 45.

20 Cratylus 439a–b. Cf. Halliwell, The Aesthetics of Mimēsis 47: “philosophical

truth, in other, words, would have to transcend representation altogether.”


21 Halliwell The Aesthetics of Mimēsis, 50

22 Cf. Halliwell, The Aesthetics of Mimēsis 50f. and 50, fn. 33; 49; Cf. Stephen

Halliwell, “Plato and the Psychology of Drama.” In Antike Dramentheorien


und ihre Rezeption, ed. B. Zimmermann, (Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 1992), 55–73.
23 Halliwell, The Aesthetics of Mimēsis, 51.

24 It is interesting to note that Socrates uses the verb eikazo to critique the

process of modelling. In the Analogy of the Line, eikasia, a production or


reception of images (eikones), is the lowest, but also the indispensable
preliminary function of the soul, in the ascent to knowledge and the vision
of the Good. Cf. Rep. 509e
25 Cf. Theatetus 176e-177a: “My friend, there are standards (paradeigmata) set up

in reality. The divine standard is supremely happy, the godless one is


supremely wretched. Because they don't see that this is so, their folly and
extreme stupidity blind them to the fact that their unjust behaviour is
making them become like (homoioumenoi) the one standard and unlike
(anomoioumenoi) the other. The penalty they pay for this is to lead a life
resembling the standard which they are making themselves become like.”
Cf. Halliwell’s analysis of four “quasi-propositional attitudes” by which
poetic muthoi negatively influence the formation of the individual, The
Aesthetics of Mimēsis, 108-9: the gods are responsible for evil, “death is an
evil to be feared,” death is an “ultimate loss,” and justice does not ensure
happiness.
26 Cf. Halliwell, The Aesthetics of Mimēsis, 46, fn. 25.

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27 Thus, the guardians should only be exposed to mimetic poetry insofar as it
serves to represent virtuous characters. Cf. Halliwell, The Aesthetics of
Mimēsis, 51.
28 Annas identifies a tension between accounts of virtue which foresee an active

role of the individual in a political context, and accounts which advise the
philosopher to flee the connection to the body and the world. Cf. the
opposition between accounts of the philosophical life in the Theaetetus and
the Republic, between the ideal philosophical life in the Republic, the
portrayal of Socrates in other dialogues, the ideal of ‘becoming like God’ in
the Theaetetus, and the more traditional ideal of “following God” portrayed
in the Laws. Annas 1999, 54-55; M.-É. Zovko, “Worldly and Otherworldly
Virtue.”
29 M.-É. Zovko, “Worldly and Otherworldly Virtue”.

30 Robert Mayhew, “The Theology of the Laws,” Plato’s ‘Laws’: A Critical Guide,

ed. Christopher Bobonich (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 197-
216. 200.
31 Mayhew, “Theology of the Laws,” 201-202.

32 Cf. Sedley, “Godlikeness,” 316. Since the world is a product of divine

intelligence, and intelligence thus controls the cosmos from the world-soul
down to the individual soul, observation of the heavenly motions, if we
follow the path of astronomy and mathematics, enables us “eventually to
assimilate the disordered revolutions of thought within our own heads to
the perfect celestial revolutions of the divine intellect.”
33 As opposed to the view of Protagoras reported by Plato in Theaetetus, 152a.

Cf. Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos VII 60 (= D-K80B1), that


“man is the measure of all things”.
34 Mayhew, “Theology of the Laws,” 207.

35 Ibid., 205

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