Socrates's metaphor of the three beds
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- | In Book X of ''[[The Republic]]'', Plato tells of '''Socrates's metaphor of the three beds''': one [[bed]] exists as an idea made by God (the [[Platonic ideal]]); one is made by the carpenter, in imitation of God's idea; one is made by the artist in imitation of the carpenter's. | + | In [[Book X of The Republic|Book X of ''The Republic'']], Plato tells of '''Socrates's metaphor of the three beds''': one [[bed]] exists as an idea made by God (the [[Platonic ideal]]); one is made by the carpenter, in imitation of God's idea; one is made by the artist in imitation of the carpenter's. |
So the artist's bed is [[twice removed from the truth]]. The copiers only touch on a small part of things as they really are, where a bed may appear differently from various points of view, looked at obliquely or directly, or differently again in a mirror. So painters or poets, though they may paint or describe a carpenter or any other maker of things, know nothing of the carpenter's (the craftsman's) art, and though the better painters or poets they are, the more faithfully their works of art will resemble the reality of the carpenter making a bed, nonetheless the imitators will still not attain the truth (of God's creation). | So the artist's bed is [[twice removed from the truth]]. The copiers only touch on a small part of things as they really are, where a bed may appear differently from various points of view, looked at obliquely or directly, or differently again in a mirror. So painters or poets, though they may paint or describe a carpenter or any other maker of things, know nothing of the carpenter's (the craftsman's) art, and though the better painters or poets they are, the more faithfully their works of art will resemble the reality of the carpenter making a bed, nonetheless the imitators will still not attain the truth (of God's creation). |
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In Book X of The Republic, Plato tells of Socrates's metaphor of the three beds: one bed exists as an idea made by God (the Platonic ideal); one is made by the carpenter, in imitation of God's idea; one is made by the artist in imitation of the carpenter's.
So the artist's bed is twice removed from the truth. The copiers only touch on a small part of things as they really are, where a bed may appear differently from various points of view, looked at obliquely or directly, or differently again in a mirror. So painters or poets, though they may paint or describe a carpenter or any other maker of things, know nothing of the carpenter's (the craftsman's) art, and though the better painters or poets they are, the more faithfully their works of art will resemble the reality of the carpenter making a bed, nonetheless the imitators will still not attain the truth (of God's creation).
The poets, beginning with Homer, far from improving and educating humanity, do not possess the knowledge of craftsmen and are mere imitators who copy again and again images of virtue and rhapsodise about them, but never reach the truth in the way the superior philosophers do.
See also