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El fuego y el sol: por qué Platón desterró a los artistas: basado en la Romanes Lecture de 1976
La escritora y filósofa Iris Murdoch bucea en la Teoría de la Belleza de Platón y proyecta su filosofía sobre las ideas de otros pensadores.
En este libro, basado en las conferencias que dictó en Roma en 1976, Iris Murdoch examina la visión de Platón sobre el arte y, en particular, las razones de la manifiesta hostilidad del filósofo hacia él.
Para ello la autora, al tiempo que realiza un sintético recorrido por los elementos que fundamentan las teorías platónicas sobre la Belleza, busca una explicación al hecho de que el pensador griego atribuyera tanta importancia en su obra al papel que desempeña la Belleza, pero, paradójicamente, denigrara a los artistas. Apoyándose en el contraste entre las engañosas sombras del fuego de la Caverna y la luz del sol, iluminadora de la Verdad, Murdoch pone de relieve la labor primordial que desempeñan los creadores en la revelación de lo trascendente.
Su certero examen se ve además enriquecido con las ideas sobre esta inagotable y apasionante cuestión de figuras tan destacadas como Kant, Kierkegaard, Freud, Tolstói o Jane Austen.
En este libro, basado en las conferencias que dictó en Roma en 1976, Iris Murdoch examina la visión de Platón sobre el arte y, en particular, las razones de la manifiesta hostilidad del filósofo hacia él.
Para ello la autora, al tiempo que realiza un sintético recorrido por los elementos que fundamentan las teorías platónicas sobre la Belleza, busca una explicación al hecho de que el pensador griego atribuyera tanta importancia en su obra al papel que desempeña la Belleza, pero, paradójicamente, denigrara a los artistas. Apoyándose en el contraste entre las engañosas sombras del fuego de la Caverna y la luz del sol, iluminadora de la Verdad, Murdoch pone de relieve la labor primordial que desempeñan los creadores en la revelación de lo trascendente.
Su certero examen se ve además enriquecido con las ideas sobre esta inagotable y apasionante cuestión de figuras tan destacadas como Kant, Kierkegaard, Freud, Tolstói o Jane Austen.
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
24 people are currently reading
820 people want to read
About the author
Iris Murdoch
142 books2,552 followersDame Jean Iris Murdoch
Irish-born British writer, university lecturer and prolific and highly professional novelist, Iris Murdoch dealt with everyday ethical or moral issues, sometimes in the light of myths. As a writer, she was a perfectionist who did not allow editors to change her text. Murdoch produced 26 novels in 40 years, the last written while she was suffering from Alzheimer disease.
"She wanted, through her novels, to reach all possible readers, in different ways and by different means: by the excitement of her story, its pace and its comedy, through its ideas and its philosophical implications, through the numinous atmosphere of her own original and created world--the world she must have glimpsed as she considered and planned her first steps in the art of fiction." (John Bayley in Elegy for Iris, 1998)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_Mur...
Irish-born British writer, university lecturer and prolific and highly professional novelist, Iris Murdoch dealt with everyday ethical or moral issues, sometimes in the light of myths. As a writer, she was a perfectionist who did not allow editors to change her text. Murdoch produced 26 novels in 40 years, the last written while she was suffering from Alzheimer disease.
"She wanted, through her novels, to reach all possible readers, in different ways and by different means: by the excitement of her story, its pace and its comedy, through its ideas and its philosophical implications, through the numinous atmosphere of her own original and created world--the world she must have glimpsed as she considered and planned her first steps in the art of fiction." (John Bayley in Elegy for Iris, 1998)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_Mur...
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
December 31, 2016
This is a delightful book, which somehow manages to be both imposingly erudite (there are Greek phrases on every page) and at the same time light and witty; I constantly found myself wanting to write down quotations. Murdoch seems to know everything about Plato, and skips around in the dialogues and the vast critical literature as easily as a Tolkien nerd quotes passages from The Lord of the Rings. It's impressive and also very enjoyable to see someone tackle such a difficult subject with this grace and assurance. A pity that so few academics can do it.
The central theme, as the title suggests, is Plato's attitude to art and artists: why did he regard them as undesirable, to the point where he wished to censor or banish them from his imagined utopias? It would be presumptuous of me to try to summarize Murdoch's answer; partly because she uses this as the starting point for a discussion of Plato's entire philosophy, partly because she examines both sides of the question (in the end, my impression was that she decided she didn't agree with him), but mostly because the issues are extremely complicated, and I'm not at all sure I understood them properly. Very roughly, artists are too wrapped up in semblances and illusions. In Plato's myth, they tempt us to stay by the Fire in the Cave, and not venture outside to see the Sun in the real world; but I don't feel confident about my ability to develop this line of reasoning further.
The best way I can find to give you some idea of what the book is about is to mention some of the other thinkers that Murdoch contrasts Plato with. Aristotle of course, but he actually gets little screen time. Murdoch sees the core of Plato's thought as being about the mystical journey of the Self towards the Good, which is also the True, and Aristotle is generally more practical than that. She spends quite a lot of time talking about the Divine Comedy, which she views almost as a dramatization of Plato. She refers frequently to Kant, who (I think) she considers as addressing the same problems, though in a completely different way. But the one which really surprised me was Freud. It had never even crossed my mind to relate Freud and Plato, but she makes it sound utterly plausible and repeatedly suggests connections. Well, I see I must reread several books from this new perspective.
Damn, Iris Murdoch was a seriously gifted person. I can't understand why The Fire and the Sun is so obscure; not one of my nearly four thousand Goodreads friends has read it. If you like imaginative, wide-ranging discussions of philosophy and literature, order a copy now. It's only a hundred pages long, but you'll feel measurably more intelligent when you've finished.
The central theme, as the title suggests, is Plato's attitude to art and artists: why did he regard them as undesirable, to the point where he wished to censor or banish them from his imagined utopias? It would be presumptuous of me to try to summarize Murdoch's answer; partly because she uses this as the starting point for a discussion of Plato's entire philosophy, partly because she examines both sides of the question (in the end, my impression was that she decided she didn't agree with him), but mostly because the issues are extremely complicated, and I'm not at all sure I understood them properly. Very roughly, artists are too wrapped up in semblances and illusions. In Plato's myth, they tempt us to stay by the Fire in the Cave, and not venture outside to see the Sun in the real world; but I don't feel confident about my ability to develop this line of reasoning further.
The best way I can find to give you some idea of what the book is about is to mention some of the other thinkers that Murdoch contrasts Plato with. Aristotle of course, but he actually gets little screen time. Murdoch sees the core of Plato's thought as being about the mystical journey of the Self towards the Good, which is also the True, and Aristotle is generally more practical than that. She spends quite a lot of time talking about the Divine Comedy, which she views almost as a dramatization of Plato. She refers frequently to Kant, who (I think) she considers as addressing the same problems, though in a completely different way. But the one which really surprised me was Freud. It had never even crossed my mind to relate Freud and Plato, but she makes it sound utterly plausible and repeatedly suggests connections. Well, I see I must reread several books from this new perspective.
Damn, Iris Murdoch was a seriously gifted person. I can't understand why The Fire and the Sun is so obscure; not one of my nearly four thousand Goodreads friends has read it. If you like imaginative, wide-ranging discussions of philosophy and literature, order a copy now. It's only a hundred pages long, but you'll feel measurably more intelligent when you've finished.
June 13, 2025
Plato And The Poets
Iris Murdoch (1919 -- 1999) was educated as a philosopher and taught philosophy at Oxford from 1948 -- 1963. In her high regard for Plato, and in her struggles with him, Murdoch was somewhat out of step with the leading trends in philosophy of her day in Britain and the United States and on the Continent as well. Murdoch's difficult relation to Plato may be seen in this short, dense book "The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banished the Artists". Published in 1977, the book is out of print but available in a compilation of Murdoch's philosophical writings. I have the original book, not the compilation, and there is much in it to discuss. The book is based on the Romanes Lecture Murdock gave at Oxford in 1976. Founded in 1892, the Romanes Lectures are a series of free public lectures on a variety of subjects in science, art, or literature which aim to appeal to lay people as well as to scholars. In her lecture, Murdoch tried to explain Plato's views of art and artists, to understand the reasons Plato gave for his views, and to try to respond to them.
The theme of the book derives from the title "The Fire and the Sun", a figure which in turn derives from Plato's allegory of the cave in Book VII of the Republic. In his allegory, Plato, pictures a group of people chained deep inside a dark cave facing a wall. With their chains, they can barely turn their heads. There are images on the wall of the cave that can be seen because they are illuminated by a fire in the back. The people looking at the passing images think they are real -- and that they exhaust reality -- because they don't see or know anything else. Outside the cave and barely visible from inside is the sun. With their chains and perspective of shadows, those in the cave have little conception of the sun and of reality outside the cave. It is the task of wisdom, for Plato, to free people from their attachment to the images on the wall, from their own partial and misshapen perceptions, to work their way from the cave and its fire, and to understand the sun and reality rather than their own images.
Plato remains a complex, elusive thinker and his philosophy may not be of a single piece. In much of his work, Plato evidences skepticism if not outright hostility towards much poetry and art which, in Plato's Greece, remains some of the greatest that has been produced. Murdoch tries to explain why. Broadly speaking, Plato criticizes artists for taking the easy, unenlighted, egotistical way out. Artists produce images and imitations, for Plato. These images derive from the shadows on the cave illuminated by the fire. Their products are even more removed from reality that the illuminations seen by the people chained to look at the wall. Artists mislead and seduce by portraying images of images without the requisite enlightenment and training to see things as they are.
Much of Murdoch's study elaborates this criticism as she moves through Plato's changing views of the nature of reality, his theory of Forms, as it develops and is qualified in his later works such as the "Philebus" "Parmenides", "Sophist", "Timaeus", and "Laws". It is always rewarding for me to be reminded of these writings. As Plato's thought deepened, it move somewhat away from a sharp divide between the abstract world of the form and the barren images on the wall. In "Sophist" and "Timaeus" in particular, Plato saw that there was interpenetration in reality. The sharp divide between image and reality suggested in the Cave allegory and in earlier dialogues is only part of the story.
Much modern philosophy rejects Plato and Platonizing, but Murdoch sees the force of Plato's criticism of art because she shares some of his underlying beliefs. She sees the purpose of thought and of philosophy as a movement beyond egoism and selfishness and grasping towards reality. And she shares in broad outline Plato's vague portrayal of a transcendent good to be contemplated and brought to bear in human life. She does not do so in any Christian or Western religious way. Her view is more akin to Plato's pagan view, or to that of Eastern religion from which she also learned much. Thus, Murdoch is able to present Plato's criticism of art with force, finding that it is of "a fundamentally religious nature." (p. 65)
In the final pages of the book, Murdoch tries to respond to Plato on his, and her, own terms. The world of the forms and of transcendent reality is mixed in a way difficult to explain with the world of images. Art, in common with every human endeavor, is a mixture of the two. High art is directed to the good and to the transcendent and in taking the viewer, hearer, outside of the binds of ego and illusion. It is a short cut, perhaps, but one democratically open to all. When illuminating goodness and reality it is valuable. Murdoch's portrayal of a Platonically valuable art too adopts a philosophical basis that is not entirely contemporary. This can be thoughtful and valuable. It is interesting to read Murdock's novels, such as "The Sea The Sea" with an understanding of her philosophical perspectives and her conflicted relationship to Plato and to claims for a transcendent reality.
This book is short, difficult, and includes many insightful parallels to thinkers such as Freud and Kant in addition to its exploration of Plato's writing. I enjoyed revisiting this book and thinking about Plato.
Robin Friedman
Iris Murdoch (1919 -- 1999) was educated as a philosopher and taught philosophy at Oxford from 1948 -- 1963. In her high regard for Plato, and in her struggles with him, Murdoch was somewhat out of step with the leading trends in philosophy of her day in Britain and the United States and on the Continent as well. Murdoch's difficult relation to Plato may be seen in this short, dense book "The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banished the Artists". Published in 1977, the book is out of print but available in a compilation of Murdoch's philosophical writings. I have the original book, not the compilation, and there is much in it to discuss. The book is based on the Romanes Lecture Murdock gave at Oxford in 1976. Founded in 1892, the Romanes Lectures are a series of free public lectures on a variety of subjects in science, art, or literature which aim to appeal to lay people as well as to scholars. In her lecture, Murdoch tried to explain Plato's views of art and artists, to understand the reasons Plato gave for his views, and to try to respond to them.
The theme of the book derives from the title "The Fire and the Sun", a figure which in turn derives from Plato's allegory of the cave in Book VII of the Republic. In his allegory, Plato, pictures a group of people chained deep inside a dark cave facing a wall. With their chains, they can barely turn their heads. There are images on the wall of the cave that can be seen because they are illuminated by a fire in the back. The people looking at the passing images think they are real -- and that they exhaust reality -- because they don't see or know anything else. Outside the cave and barely visible from inside is the sun. With their chains and perspective of shadows, those in the cave have little conception of the sun and of reality outside the cave. It is the task of wisdom, for Plato, to free people from their attachment to the images on the wall, from their own partial and misshapen perceptions, to work their way from the cave and its fire, and to understand the sun and reality rather than their own images.
Plato remains a complex, elusive thinker and his philosophy may not be of a single piece. In much of his work, Plato evidences skepticism if not outright hostility towards much poetry and art which, in Plato's Greece, remains some of the greatest that has been produced. Murdoch tries to explain why. Broadly speaking, Plato criticizes artists for taking the easy, unenlighted, egotistical way out. Artists produce images and imitations, for Plato. These images derive from the shadows on the cave illuminated by the fire. Their products are even more removed from reality that the illuminations seen by the people chained to look at the wall. Artists mislead and seduce by portraying images of images without the requisite enlightenment and training to see things as they are.
Much of Murdoch's study elaborates this criticism as she moves through Plato's changing views of the nature of reality, his theory of Forms, as it develops and is qualified in his later works such as the "Philebus" "Parmenides", "Sophist", "Timaeus", and "Laws". It is always rewarding for me to be reminded of these writings. As Plato's thought deepened, it move somewhat away from a sharp divide between the abstract world of the form and the barren images on the wall. In "Sophist" and "Timaeus" in particular, Plato saw that there was interpenetration in reality. The sharp divide between image and reality suggested in the Cave allegory and in earlier dialogues is only part of the story.
Much modern philosophy rejects Plato and Platonizing, but Murdoch sees the force of Plato's criticism of art because she shares some of his underlying beliefs. She sees the purpose of thought and of philosophy as a movement beyond egoism and selfishness and grasping towards reality. And she shares in broad outline Plato's vague portrayal of a transcendent good to be contemplated and brought to bear in human life. She does not do so in any Christian or Western religious way. Her view is more akin to Plato's pagan view, or to that of Eastern religion from which she also learned much. Thus, Murdoch is able to present Plato's criticism of art with force, finding that it is of "a fundamentally religious nature." (p. 65)
In the final pages of the book, Murdoch tries to respond to Plato on his, and her, own terms. The world of the forms and of transcendent reality is mixed in a way difficult to explain with the world of images. Art, in common with every human endeavor, is a mixture of the two. High art is directed to the good and to the transcendent and in taking the viewer, hearer, outside of the binds of ego and illusion. It is a short cut, perhaps, but one democratically open to all. When illuminating goodness and reality it is valuable. Murdoch's portrayal of a Platonically valuable art too adopts a philosophical basis that is not entirely contemporary. This can be thoughtful and valuable. It is interesting to read Murdock's novels, such as "The Sea The Sea" with an understanding of her philosophical perspectives and her conflicted relationship to Plato and to claims for a transcendent reality.
This book is short, difficult, and includes many insightful parallels to thinkers such as Freud and Kant in addition to its exploration of Plato's writing. I enjoyed revisiting this book and thinking about Plato.
Robin Friedman
October 20, 2016
Delicious book, perversely out of print.
February 21, 2024
★★☆☆☆
Iris Murdoch was one of the greatest writer/philosopher of the last century and I was really excited to read this work of hers.
I don't make a secret of the fact that I found Plato's Republic really long and pointlessly so. Therefore, I was pumped to read Murdoch's take on him and compare notes, so to speak. Unfortunately, even though the book started off great, it soon became just as long and pointlessly so, as Plato.
Really.
Didn't people in the past believe in editing their work so that they could speak more in fewer pages?
*sigh*
Iris Murdoch was one of the greatest writer/philosopher of the last century and I was really excited to read this work of hers.
I don't make a secret of the fact that I found Plato's Republic really long and pointlessly so. Therefore, I was pumped to read Murdoch's take on him and compare notes, so to speak. Unfortunately, even though the book started off great, it soon became just as long and pointlessly so, as Plato.
Really.
Didn't people in the past believe in editing their work so that they could speak more in fewer pages?
*sigh*
July 16, 2019
Three stars because lots of this went over my head (My fault, not the book’s). This is Iris in full university philosopher mode. I was attracted because of the irony of an artist philosopher considering the artful philosopher Plato’s banning of artists; it’s short (based on a series of lectures Murdoch gave in 1976); and I was keen to pay due homage to her philosophical work as well as her creative writing in the 100th anniversary of her birth (as I write her centenary was yesterday).
Some juicy quotes towards the end on what la Murdoch considers art to be. She also affectionately probes Plato’s outrageous authoritarianism and shows just how self-consciously vexed he was by his own artfulness.
Some juicy quotes towards the end on what la Murdoch considers art to be. She also affectionately probes Plato’s outrageous authoritarianism and shows just how self-consciously vexed he was by his own artfulness.
January 12, 2022
"Oh, solo es una novela..., solo una obra en la que se despliegan las más grandes potencias de la mente, en la que el más exhaustivo conocimiento de la naturaleza humana, la más feliz y precisa cuenta de su variedad, y la más vívida de las efusiones de ingenio y de humor son trasmitidos al mundo con el lenguaje mejor escogido".
Resulta paradójico que unas conferencias que, en principio, iban a defender a Platón en su eterna lucha con Homero, acaben dando la razón al último. Y es que el talento narrativo y la fe en la creatividad le traicionan a Murdoch.
Me ha parecido muy curioso. Aunque reconozco que me perdí leyendo sobre metafísica. Esa parte se me hizo algo pesada y confusa.
No sólo una buena escritora de ficción, sino una auténtica intelectual. 🎩
Resulta paradójico que unas conferencias que, en principio, iban a defender a Platón en su eterna lucha con Homero, acaben dando la razón al último. Y es que el talento narrativo y la fe en la creatividad le traicionan a Murdoch.
Me ha parecido muy curioso. Aunque reconozco que me perdí leyendo sobre metafísica. Esa parte se me hizo algo pesada y confusa.
No sólo una buena escritora de ficción, sino una auténtica intelectual. 🎩
November 28, 2018
Wonderful! A powerful (and thorough) appraisal of the "ancient quarrell" between philosophy and literature from the unique point of view of a master of both disciplines.
“Art, especially literature, is a great hall of reflection where we can all meet and where everything under the sun can be examined and considered. For this reason it is feared an attacked by dictators, and by authoritarian moralists such as the one under discussion.”
“Art, especially literature, is a great hall of reflection where we can all meet and where everything under the sun can be examined and considered. For this reason it is feared an attacked by dictators, and by authoritarian moralists such as the one under discussion.”
April 10, 2020
Packs quite a punch in just 89 pages. Murdoch's argument, boiled down to its essential and very crudely put, is that Plato needs morality (goodness) and intelligibility (truth) to be transcendent; art always fosters the illusion of their immanence (the work of beauty); therefore it tends to distort or demote the ideal of our spiritual perfection.
Her defense of art against Plato, which occurs in the last several pages, if I am not mistaken, is that the highest art investigates what she calls "necessity," that is, the inevitable and unavoidable circumstances in which humans find themselves in their struggle to become human and retain and not lose their humanity. The revelation of these forces, the mysterious workings of fate, shows that art does serve the function of truth, but not truth about the good, but the truth of the powers and varieties of real evils. And Plato by his own demands cannot be blind to these evils or simplify them as he tends to, because he demands that "virtue is knowledge" or at least that true virtue must be based on self-knowledge, which includes one's awareness of oneself and the world one lives in. Such self-knowledge is acquired from the best works of art.
Kind of a shame that this book is OOP.
Her defense of art against Plato, which occurs in the last several pages, if I am not mistaken, is that the highest art investigates what she calls "necessity," that is, the inevitable and unavoidable circumstances in which humans find themselves in their struggle to become human and retain and not lose their humanity. The revelation of these forces, the mysterious workings of fate, shows that art does serve the function of truth, but not truth about the good, but the truth of the powers and varieties of real evils. And Plato by his own demands cannot be blind to these evils or simplify them as he tends to, because he demands that "virtue is knowledge" or at least that true virtue must be based on self-knowledge, which includes one's awareness of oneself and the world one lives in. Such self-knowledge is acquired from the best works of art.
Kind of a shame that this book is OOP.
Read
January 8, 2025"A reading of Plato helps us to see how good art is truthful. Dream is the enemy of art and its false image. As pictured in the Republic, the higher level is reflected as an image in
the lower level. The high-temperature fusing power of the creative imagination, so often and eloquently described by the Romantics, is the reward of the sober truthful mind which, as it reflects and searches, constantly says no and no and no to the prompt easy visions of self-protective self-promoting fantasy [...] The artist’s ‘freedom’ is hard won, and is a function of his grasp of reality."
June 1, 2022
you might want to have platon's works near while reading this, especially the constitution, laws and symposion
February 2, 2017
En este libro publicado por la editorial Siruela se recogen una serie de conferencias que Iris Murdoch dictó en Oxford en 1976 y en las que se nos exponen las ideas platónicas de la belleza. Murdoch nos expone la teoría de las ideas de Platón y cómo ésta ya estaba en nosotros antes de nacer, así como la idea de Bien, que representa el sol y el fuego dentro de la caverna, a la que Murdoch hace referencia en el título del libro. Aquella explica las ideas representadas a las que nos hallamos sometidos y que todo conocedor de este mito, el cual se basa en que es realmente fuera de la caverna donde hallamos la verdad, es adonde debemos remitirnos para así encontrar la profunda verdad y llevar a nuestros compañeros de la caverna la sabiduría y el conocimiento.
Platón considera la belleza como algo principal en su filosofía, pero aquí toma a los artistas como personas de una doble moralidad que no precisamente toman a la belleza como filosofía en su hacer. Así, Murdoch extrae a través de sus escritos las ideas sobre el arte que Platón escribiría en prácticamente casi todas sus obras. Cuando se reflexiona sobre el arte nunca estamos ante algo fácil, como podría parecer a simple vista cuando nos hallamos ante una obra que por su estética es pura y nos transmite emoción, sino que hay que tener en consideración la separación del aspecto estético de lo no estético. Murdoch compara la concepción del arte entre Platón, Tolstoi y Kant, haciéndonos ver así las diferencias y contrastes que la estética nos ofrece. De este modo, se nos presentan unos ensayos rigurosos sobre Platón y también sobre otros filósofos que nos enseñan cómo ahonda en el arte y los artistas para así sacar aprendizajes e ideas que nos llevan a la verdad, al conocimiento y al desconocimiento.
Los textos de Platón están plagados de referencias a la belleza, y Murdoch hace acopio de ellas para ilustrarnos de una manera esclarecedora al respecto. En La República, por ejemplo, Platón dice que el artista hace que lo mejor del alma afloje la vigilancia; podría decirse que lo que produce el artista son imágenes errantes. Murdoch también hace acopio de las ideas de Platón en este aspecto, la reminiscencia, la anámnesis, es algo que tenemos desde antes de nacer y es algo que olvidamos al venir aquí. Murdoch expone esta idea haciéndonos partícipes de que debemos ahondar en lo que creamos para así volver a lo ya creado, lo ya indicado en nuestra alma que estaba predispuesto a hacerse.
Para Platón, el arte carece de disciplina, y la verdad en él es muy difícil de valorar críticamente. La belleza es algo demasiado importante como para dejarla en manos de artistas. En sus palabras, la naturaleza nos educa, el arte no. Para este filósofo, el arte es sólo una parte creada por la parte inferior del alma, y es la belleza la que nos da una imagen inmediata del deseo bueno, del deseo de bondad y del deseo de verdad. Según Platón, la actividad a la que se debería dedicar el artista es a la de discernir, enfatizar y extender la armonía de la creación divina, y según él, esto sólo se da en la música.
En resumen y haciendo una vista subjetiva más que objetiva entre las diversas teorías de Platón, de Murdoch y de los demás autores que conforman este libro, el amor a la belleza y el deseo de crear nos inspiran actividades que incrementan nuestro conocimiento y entendimiento de lo real. Y este amor es un amor espiritual, donde el arte debiera y hubiera de ser algo sagrado.
Platón considera la belleza como algo principal en su filosofía, pero aquí toma a los artistas como personas de una doble moralidad que no precisamente toman a la belleza como filosofía en su hacer. Así, Murdoch extrae a través de sus escritos las ideas sobre el arte que Platón escribiría en prácticamente casi todas sus obras. Cuando se reflexiona sobre el arte nunca estamos ante algo fácil, como podría parecer a simple vista cuando nos hallamos ante una obra que por su estética es pura y nos transmite emoción, sino que hay que tener en consideración la separación del aspecto estético de lo no estético. Murdoch compara la concepción del arte entre Platón, Tolstoi y Kant, haciéndonos ver así las diferencias y contrastes que la estética nos ofrece. De este modo, se nos presentan unos ensayos rigurosos sobre Platón y también sobre otros filósofos que nos enseñan cómo ahonda en el arte y los artistas para así sacar aprendizajes e ideas que nos llevan a la verdad, al conocimiento y al desconocimiento.
Los textos de Platón están plagados de referencias a la belleza, y Murdoch hace acopio de ellas para ilustrarnos de una manera esclarecedora al respecto. En La República, por ejemplo, Platón dice que el artista hace que lo mejor del alma afloje la vigilancia; podría decirse que lo que produce el artista son imágenes errantes. Murdoch también hace acopio de las ideas de Platón en este aspecto, la reminiscencia, la anámnesis, es algo que tenemos desde antes de nacer y es algo que olvidamos al venir aquí. Murdoch expone esta idea haciéndonos partícipes de que debemos ahondar en lo que creamos para así volver a lo ya creado, lo ya indicado en nuestra alma que estaba predispuesto a hacerse.
Para Platón, el arte carece de disciplina, y la verdad en él es muy difícil de valorar críticamente. La belleza es algo demasiado importante como para dejarla en manos de artistas. En sus palabras, la naturaleza nos educa, el arte no. Para este filósofo, el arte es sólo una parte creada por la parte inferior del alma, y es la belleza la que nos da una imagen inmediata del deseo bueno, del deseo de bondad y del deseo de verdad. Según Platón, la actividad a la que se debería dedicar el artista es a la de discernir, enfatizar y extender la armonía de la creación divina, y según él, esto sólo se da en la música.
En resumen y haciendo una vista subjetiva más que objetiva entre las diversas teorías de Platón, de Murdoch y de los demás autores que conforman este libro, el amor a la belleza y el deseo de crear nos inspiran actividades que incrementan nuestro conocimiento y entendimiento de lo real. Y este amor es un amor espiritual, donde el arte debiera y hubiera de ser algo sagrado.
March 9, 2017
I love that she writes with clarity. She explains where she got her impressions of the things she's talking about from, so you can understand her point of view and trace it back to the source.
March 12, 2025
"La receta para el arte es, por tanto, la misma que para la dialéctica: superar la fantasía personal, la ansiedad egótica y el soñar despierto autoindulgentes. Ordenar y separar y distinguir el mundo con justedad".
Análisis de Iris Murdoch de los motivos por los que Platón quería expulsar a los artistas no-virtuosos de la ciudad ideal de La República. Si bien la organización del ensayo es muy caótica y el discurso de Murdoch tiende a la digresión, no deja de resultar admirable el conocimiento que poseía sobre cada obra y cada argumento planteado por Platón, precisión con la que también expone la evolución y contradicciones de sus escritos. Me gustó que dialogara abiertamente con el filósofo como si se tratara de un colega de profesión más. Además, su visión del trabajo del artista me ha resultado muy acertada: "Aprender un arte es aprender toda suerte de extraños artificios pero, sobre todo, es aprender a hacer la declaración formal de una verdad que se ha percibido, y aprender a hacerla espléndidamente digna de una atención adiestrada y purificada sin falsearla durante el proceso".
Análisis de Iris Murdoch de los motivos por los que Platón quería expulsar a los artistas no-virtuosos de la ciudad ideal de La República. Si bien la organización del ensayo es muy caótica y el discurso de Murdoch tiende a la digresión, no deja de resultar admirable el conocimiento que poseía sobre cada obra y cada argumento planteado por Platón, precisión con la que también expone la evolución y contradicciones de sus escritos. Me gustó que dialogara abiertamente con el filósofo como si se tratara de un colega de profesión más. Además, su visión del trabajo del artista me ha resultado muy acertada: "Aprender un arte es aprender toda suerte de extraños artificios pero, sobre todo, es aprender a hacer la declaración formal de una verdad que se ha percibido, y aprender a hacerla espléndidamente digna de una atención adiestrada y purificada sin falsearla durante el proceso".
May 1, 2023
In Fire and Sun, Iris Murdoch attempts to unravel the mystery of why Plato banished artists from his utopian Republic. This brilliant little book is a tour de force of philosophical inquiry. Plato's allegory of the cave serves as the backdrop for Murdoch's exploration of the role of art in society. The human condition, according to Plato, is akin to being trapped in a dark cave, where we can only see distorted shadows of reality. Artists, with their ability to create illusions and deceive the senses, tempt us to remain in this cave and forsake the pursuit of truth and wisdom. Plato's metaphor of the soul as a chariot explains it, Plato feared art arousing the black horse of the soul. Murdoch, however, offers a spirited defense of art, arguing that it has the power to deepen our understanding of reality and inspire us to transcend our limitations. She suggests that rather than arousing the black horse of the soul, as Plato feared, art can actually arouse the white horse of reason and nobility. Murdoch suggests that art can be a force for good when it is guided by reason and used to elevate the soul rather than degrade it.
March 8, 2023
“A Platón le preocupaba la ambigüedad espiritual del arte, su vinculación con el subconsciente «ilimitado», su uso de la ironía y su interés por el mal. Pero esa ambigüedad misma y esa voraz ubicuidad del arte son su característica libertad. El arte, y especialmente la literatura, es una gran sala de reflexión donde todos podemos reunirnos y donde todo lo que hay bajo el sol puede examinarse y considerarse. [...] El artista es un gran informante: por abajo un cotilla y por arriba un sabio, y muy querido en ambos papeles. Da cobijo y nombre a lo particular escurridizo. Pone el mundo en orden y nos da jerarquías hipotéticas e imágenes intermedias [...]. El arte es, con mucho, lo más educativo que tenemos, mucho más que cualquiera de sus rivales: la filosofía, la teología o la ciencia."
December 14, 2017
'Words lead to deeds and we ought not to brutalize our minds by abusing and mocking other people.' I don't like making a fool of other people nor their being made fools of but I do use irony a lot and have found people amusing while keeping a straight face. "Are you laughing at me?" Mum asked. "I'm not laughing, Mum." I certainly don't abuse other people but one has to be able to defend oneself against abuse or others' absurdity. A laugh can clear their minds because it makes them see from another perspective. ‘There is something anti-authoritarian about violent laughter,’ and Plato is nothing if not authoritarian and po-faced.
Plato has Socrates say that fields and trees have nothing to teach him. I exclaim at that. Fields maybe but trees?
Okay, a little bit of abuse here. 'Philosophy is a training for death, when the soul will exist without the body.' 'Balls' I've commented. Since the soul is what is life, when the body dies it dies with it. To think otherwise is the wishful thinking of a deflated ego wanting in importance; it's its form of self-importance. Plato's excuse is he's trying to bring the stability of the eternal into the flux of life, so is making out the soul comes from wherever the eternal resides and goes back there on death. That also gives rise to the idea the body is at odds with the soul, corrupting it, when the two are in fact one in the here and now.
'Writing spoils the direct relationship to truth in the present.' Okay. When my man composed art from my life then, with my, Mum's and everybody's collaboration, it wasn't written but in duologue form that when decades later it was realised intact from unconscious memory where it was stored and as it was being written, the writing did not spoil the direct relationship to truth in that past present and wasn't being untrue to the present it was being realised in either. That 'world rediscovered in anamnesis is the world of, she says Plato says, 'the Forms'.
The soul, psyche, is equated with mind. Maybe, but not just conscious mind.
Sex or Eros is a ...universal energy ...which may be destructive or can be used for good. It's the most common manifestation of the spirit, made matter so to speak, and an indication of the unity of souls with body.
Truth in art is ...hard to estimate critically. This is gone into in 'the book' and ultimately it's a matter for the reader to decide whether it's true or not though any decision it's not reflects on the reader's inability to realise truth from writing. It's a matter ultimately of faith.
‘There is only one true artist ...and only one true work of art, the cosmos,’ which evoked from me ‘oh for god’s sake.’ That fabricator is the demiurge, who ‘is active nous, best translated as mind,’ evoking ‘oh god’. Iris Murdoch believes, ‘The image of a morally perfect but not all-powerful Goodness seems ...better to express some ultimate ...truth about our condition.’ She suggests the demiurge ‘realized his limitations at the start whereas Jehovah realized his later and was correspondingly bad-tempered.’ Her favourite word, ‘muddle’, makes its appearance. Either she can’t spell ‘harass’ or the OUP can’t; the misspelling occurs twice. She sells the pass, as do the religious and – god help them! - scientists by regarding us as created beings. ‘Form in art is for illusion and hides the true cosmic’ ie ordered ‘beauty and the ...real forms of necessity and causality, and blurs with fantasy.’
Plato has Socrates say that fields and trees have nothing to teach him. I exclaim at that. Fields maybe but trees?
Okay, a little bit of abuse here. 'Philosophy is a training for death, when the soul will exist without the body.' 'Balls' I've commented. Since the soul is what is life, when the body dies it dies with it. To think otherwise is the wishful thinking of a deflated ego wanting in importance; it's its form of self-importance. Plato's excuse is he's trying to bring the stability of the eternal into the flux of life, so is making out the soul comes from wherever the eternal resides and goes back there on death. That also gives rise to the idea the body is at odds with the soul, corrupting it, when the two are in fact one in the here and now.
'Writing spoils the direct relationship to truth in the present.' Okay. When my man composed art from my life then, with my, Mum's and everybody's collaboration, it wasn't written but in duologue form that when decades later it was realised intact from unconscious memory where it was stored and as it was being written, the writing did not spoil the direct relationship to truth in that past present and wasn't being untrue to the present it was being realised in either. That 'world rediscovered in anamnesis is the world of, she says Plato says, 'the Forms'.
The soul, psyche, is equated with mind. Maybe, but not just conscious mind.
Sex or Eros is a ...universal energy ...which may be destructive or can be used for good. It's the most common manifestation of the spirit, made matter so to speak, and an indication of the unity of souls with body.
Truth in art is ...hard to estimate critically. This is gone into in 'the book' and ultimately it's a matter for the reader to decide whether it's true or not though any decision it's not reflects on the reader's inability to realise truth from writing. It's a matter ultimately of faith.
‘There is only one true artist ...and only one true work of art, the cosmos,’ which evoked from me ‘oh for god’s sake.’ That fabricator is the demiurge, who ‘is active nous, best translated as mind,’ evoking ‘oh god’. Iris Murdoch believes, ‘The image of a morally perfect but not all-powerful Goodness seems ...better to express some ultimate ...truth about our condition.’ She suggests the demiurge ‘realized his limitations at the start whereas Jehovah realized his later and was correspondingly bad-tempered.’ Her favourite word, ‘muddle’, makes its appearance. Either she can’t spell ‘harass’ or the OUP can’t; the misspelling occurs twice. She sells the pass, as do the religious and – god help them! - scientists by regarding us as created beings. ‘Form in art is for illusion and hides the true cosmic’ ie ordered ‘beauty and the ...real forms of necessity and causality, and blurs with fantasy.’
July 13, 2022
What an incredibly engaging, lucidly written delight of a book! Murdoch explains Plato so well, so generously, that her counterargument is made all the stronger for taking the time to really examine the development of Plato's thinking.
I think Murdoch loved Plato as he informed much of her own philosophy which informed much of her fiction. But it’s the kind of love where she can call him out on all the ways in which he was wrong & mock him a little. Plato, an artist, was hostile to art, calling it “a sham, a false transcendence, a false imitation of another world,” claiming it “defaces beauty by mixing it with personal sorcery.” What he failed to see, or refused to admit, is that discerning good from bad art is vital moral education, free art is essential for a free society & it has “unique truth-conveying capacities.”
"Plato feared the consolations of art. He did not offer a consoling theology." But as far as Murdoch is concerned, "Art is by far and away the most educational thing we have, far more than its rivals, philosophy and theology and science."
I think Murdoch loved Plato as he informed much of her own philosophy which informed much of her fiction. But it’s the kind of love where she can call him out on all the ways in which he was wrong & mock him a little. Plato, an artist, was hostile to art, calling it “a sham, a false transcendence, a false imitation of another world,” claiming it “defaces beauty by mixing it with personal sorcery.” What he failed to see, or refused to admit, is that discerning good from bad art is vital moral education, free art is essential for a free society & it has “unique truth-conveying capacities.”
"Plato feared the consolations of art. He did not offer a consoling theology." But as far as Murdoch is concerned, "Art is by far and away the most educational thing we have, far more than its rivals, philosophy and theology and science."
December 12, 2023
Iris Murdoch, although she has been able to cover the different aspects of Plato and his views in comparison with other thinkers, fails to set a basic foundation and organises her arguments in a disruptive manner, lacking connections or sudden emergence of concepts in places. Despite these, it is evident that art, whether by Plato or Murdoch, can be expressed in different ways and under different circumstances without the interference of the larger reality or that thought overpowers writing. Thought and writing can also be partnered together without any barrier, hence focusing on art as an aesthetic element in the modern world.
June 4, 2024
Not bad. I have never really looked at Plato's thoughts about the arts, and I like the genealogy that Murdoch gives as well as really pointing out the tension that exists in Plato's own life and teaching about it. Really the final third of the book is the strongest because it is there that Murdoch gives her own thoughts in conversation with Plato about what makes art good.
For ninety something pages this isn't bad. If you would find a small treatise on art and Plato interesting, check it out.
For ninety something pages this isn't bad. If you would find a small treatise on art and Plato interesting, check it out.
May 26, 2024
Iris Murdoch explores the age old question of whether art is, in fact, shit, by looking at Plato's heavily entitled and weird critique of it. This was a good read for someone who hasn't read any of Murdoch's works, or the source material from Plato that she analyses (primarily The Republic), albeit at times it was quite dry (which isn't unexpected given the topic).
Notwithstanding, "authoritarian moralist" is such a good insult that should be in everyone's vocab.
Notwithstanding, "authoritarian moralist" is such a good insult that should be in everyone's vocab.
January 26, 2018
Honestly excellent.
June 11, 2023
okumadı keyifliydi sma platona her zaman oldugumdan daha fazla kuruldum
June 20, 2024
Este es un ensayo en el que Murdoch trata de comprender las razones que llevaron a Platón a desterrar a los artistas de la Ciudad ideal. Para tal fin rastrea el lugar que estos tienen dentro de la teoría de las formas y el modo en que sus producciones resultan o no congruentes con la idea de bien y belleza que Platón tiene. Al final, la autora hace una defensa, más bien débil, de la importancia del arte y de cómo este puede tener un valor insoslayable para la humanidad.
May 31, 2015
This was one of the only books in the library that referenced Plato's view of art and aesthetics in general, and it didn't fail to provide a lot of depth and detail in its analysis. This isn't a book I'd recommend to someone new to Plato's philosophy, but in that way it wastes less time explaining basic concepts and focuses on what's important in terms of aesthetics. It sometimes repeats itself, but it soon found its way to get back on track pretty quickly. Definitely would recommend to those interested in Plato and aesthetics!
February 29, 2016
Murdoch's erudite monograph impresses me first by her command and control of the field--she had a fluent grasp of Plato and tours through his works with ease. Second, she leaves no doubt about the status of the arts in relation to the sheer beauty of rational contemplation of the reality of logic.
June 16, 2007
A very well written and argued account of Plato's hesitation to artists.The central unifying theme is that Plato holds that artists deceive through imitation and there is something both immoral and sacrilegious about the deception.
June 30, 2007
Puts a new twist on Plato's analogy of the artist as deceiver & master of light entertainment. Murdoch shifts the perspective, bringing light on the human need for narrative and focusing less on the means to that end.
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