Plato, Mimesis, and Balzac’s Frenhofer
There are questions that have been subject of discussions for humanity through ages, such as “What is the purpose of art?”, “Why do we produce or experience it?” or “Can we reach to the truth by art?”. Many philosophers, who were concerned about art, tried to answer such questions in their own thought system. One and the more basic, important of them was definitely Plato from the Ancient Greece. His definition of the concept “mimesis” was one attempt to answer about the place of art in our lives. This answer was so influential that the following philosophy of art was built on Plato’s ideas and many art works gave references to Plato and mimesis. In this short essay, I will summarize Plato’s philosophy on art and explain the mimesis concept, along with analysing one of Balzac’s stories which can be read in Platonian thought as an example.