Plato's Republic

What does Plato have against poets? In what sense may all art (even music) be imitation? Plato's belief was that art is fundamentally based on imitation. It was this imitation which made art inferior, combined with the unsuitable moral content of some art. Plato's condemnation of art is seen by some as too rationalist and "depriving it of all its charms" (Otto Apelt). Modern objections to Plato's theory of art assert that he fails to …

…no real creative element. As Verdenius puts it: "True art does not lapse into flat realism, but it strives to transcend the material world...in true art likeness does not refer to common-place reality, but to ideal Beauty." But the imitation lies on a lower level of reality than its subject -as Plato points out, the painter paints the superficial appearance and so "the art of representation is therefore a long way removed from truth."