Sanchita Mukherjee

Graphic Design, B.des 2018

22 February 2021
Faculty: Dr. Deepak Kannal

Comparative Aesthetics
Day 4

In today’s class we shifted the focus to western aesthetics where we brie y focused on Socrates
and then moved to aesthetic theorisation of Plato.
Plato believes that the ultimate goal of human life is the search of truth. Plato is trying to
visualise a world that is ideal. He says that the world that we live in is an imitation of the
archetypal world. We compared this thought with the example that when we create
something, it is going to be different from what is there in our mind because ideas are intricate
and the technical resistance or the material may not allow us to achieve the idea that is
present in our mind.
Plato then talks about casualty and creation. There are four causes in a creation. We start
with the nal cause, that is an idea. Once we get the idea, we think of the material. Then we
think of the form, and to put these things together we need an ef cient cause, that is the
person who is making the creation. In the process of creation, you keep chasing that idea and
you imitate the idea as closely as possible.
When it comes to creation of this world, Plato believes that this world is an imitation of the
ideal world. Considering the art in his times, Plato says the work of art is an actual imitation
of the world and the real world is also the imitation of the ideal world, if that is true then the
art is an imitation of an imitation which means it is twice removed from reality.
In philosophical exercise, the conclusions aren’t important because conclusions are altered
according to the surroundings and the time. Plato teaches us that the methods and questions
we raise are more important than the conclusions to them.
He also talks about moralities. He says that art takes liberties from ethics and morals. We are
introduced with Plato’s allegory of the cave where plato distinguishes between people who
mistake sensory knowledge for the truth and people who really do see the truth.

In Psychoanalysis, we started with the understanding of the psychology. Psychology is a study

of human behaviour. You can study the abstract of human mind with human behaviour and
to study an abstract thing, you would have to study the mundane.

In this class we focused more on freud’s vision than the data that he has collected. Freud’s
methodology tells us about human mind, human behaviour and human expression.
Freud conceive the mind as an iceberg in which only the tip of the iceberg is visible. The tip
of the iceberg is the conscious mind and the subconscious mind is a part of what’s below and
unconscious is a big part of the iceberg. There is a barrier between the subconscious and
unconscious which is known as sensor governed the ego. The unconscious mind is governed
by id. The id is the animal instinct. According to Freud, everyone is born as an animal, it is

COMPARATIVE AESTHETICS 1
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the culture and the civilisation that makes us human. The unconscious is governed by desires
and most of the times, these desires aren't granted by the society. Freud talks about the
Oedipus complex. This desires are pushed into the unconscious mind and it possible that they
might revolt and to keep them under-control, they are sometimes allowed to sneak into the
preconscious mind using a mechanism called dream.
Dream is a mechanism that provides peace and protects the mind. Dream is very properly
fabricated. They can be deconstructed using different stages like Dream symbolisation where
the dreams wear a mask of different symbols and is allowed to go to the subconscious mind.,
Dream displacement and Dream condensation.
Carl Jung said that the symbolism changes culturally.
We also discussed the difference between daydream and night dream where a night dream is
involuntary and daydream is voluntary (imaginary grati cation of desire), daydream is
governed by logic. Children need external stimuli to daydream.
When we write a play or make a lm, we follow the same process as a dream. This is how
freud explains the creative process of an art. Artist is a compulsive dreamer.
Using the example of Moses sculpture, Freud meant that things are understood differently by
different people and interpretations can be different.

COMPARATIVE AESTHETICS 2
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