In Book X of Platos Republic, Plato examines the relationship between art and truth to conclude that art is at far

remove from the truth because it is merely a representation of the representation of the ideal form and void of any value. Plato arrives to the same conclusion regarding poetry and, therefore, condemns the artist and poet from entering his ideal state due to the threats art and poetry pose on the republic and its constituents. In The Book of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche, Nietzsche values the illusory quality of art that, in his opinion, satisfies natures need for redemption and delight. Unlike Plato, Nietzsche concludes that the more illusory a representation is, the more its value increases. Plato argues that art has no inherent value and that artists lack knowledge about the objects they represent through their work. Plato gives the example of the bed to demonstrate the relationship between truth and each of God, the craftsman, and the artist. God is considered closest to the truth because he creates the original form of the bed in nature according to which all other beds are made (363). The carpenter manufactures a representation of the real form of the bed and is, therefore, a step farther from truth because his representation merely resembles the form and is not the form itself (362). The artist, meanwhile, is farthest from the truth because he produces a likeness of the carpenters representation of the original form of the bed, making his product a representation of a representation of a real form (363). The artists product is even further detached from truth because it merely represents a single aspect of the object in question determined by the artists perspective (364). Artists owe their ability of reproducing everything to their lack of knowledge about anything. Therefore, Plato warns anyone from believing that artists are all-knowing a claim based on, according to Plato, the artists inability to distinguish knowledge, ignorance, and representation (364). Plato argues that poets, like artists, have a superficial understanding of the objects they represent. Otherwise, poets like Homer would have devoted themselves to producing objects or applying real knowledge, had they any, rather than representing the objects they claim to know so much about (365). Plato introduces yet another relationship: one between the user, manufacturer, and the artist and knowledge. The user is the most knowledgeable out of the three because he identifies the use that ultimately determines the form of the object takes. The manufacturer relies on this users knowledge to create the object in question. Meanwhile, the artist has neither knowledge the user acquires through experience with the object nor contact with someone knowledgeable to refer to for his representation (368). Artists and poets alike, therefore, produce representations of things they have limited knowledge about. Plato argues that the inferior and irrational part of our nature is concerned with art and poetry. Art exploits the weakness of the mind that falls prey to deceptive appearances in the absence of our superior rational nature that arrives to truth regarding objects through empirical measurements, whereas poetry encourages dramatic representation of internal emotional states that our rational and superior nature would usually overcome. Poetry, in this sense, corrupts individuals by encouraging and strengthening primitive desires that should be conquered for our own

good instead. Plato, therefore, concludes that the artist and the poet should be banned from a properly run state because they represent a threat to the Republic: they risk spoiling virtuous reason by promoting the inferior and irrational part of the mind, guiding the state farther away from truth. Plato, however, welcomes poetry in the form of hymns to the gods and paeans in praise of good men (375) as well as arguments demonstrating that poetry is worthy of entering Platos ideal state.

In The Birth of Tragedy, by Friedrich Nietzsche, Nietzsche challenges Platos claim that art is at far remove from the truth. Nietzsche begins by questioning the Platonic assumption that tragedy and myth were signs of weakness and decline in Greek culture and proposes that Socratic ethics were the symptoms of this weakness instead. Nietzsche even goes as far to ask whether Socrates developed the inquiring mind as a means of avoiding truth Nietzsche equates with pessimism. Nietzsche then asks about the motives that prompted Greek fascination with tragedy. Nietzsche begins to answer these questions by, first, justifying existence through esthetic rather than ethical means: God redeems himself of his embarrassing excesses by realizing himself through the world of forms, consistently materializing into this world and dematerializing back into his original and essential state. The world, in this sense, becomes a testimony to Gods act of redemption. Nietzsche considers that his doctrine opposes the Christian interpretation of life and the world whose entire doctrine is based on the assumption that moral values are the only values and that the ultimate testament to the greatest threat against Gods truth is the illusion of the world manifested in the condemnable arts. Nietzsche, therefore, accuses morality and Christian ethics of destroying life and inspiring contempt and resistance in all those who take part in it. It is against this doctrine that Nietzsche situates his own: one interested in justifying existence through esthetic meaning. Nietzsche attributes the evolution of art to the duality between the gods Apollo and Dionysos. Tragedy, according to Nietzsche, is the result of the union between the opposing forces of Apollo and Dionysos, the former embodying the plastic or concrete arts and the latter representing non-visual arts such as music. The unity that arises out of the paradoxically chaotic order between both Gods is characterized by art. Nietzsche clarifies the relationship between Apollo and Dionysos by comparing it to the relationship between the separate art realms of dream and intoxication. According to Nietzsche, each individual succeeds as an artist in the realm of dreams because experiences the manifestation of forms as images in his dreams. These forms, whether pleasant or not, are what allow an individual to interpret life and experience it. Nevertheless, there is a separate part in each individual that is aware of the illusory nature of the dream. Because this conscious aspect of human beings decides to sustain the dream in spite of its illusory nature, Nietzsche concludes that these dreams are necessarily and pleasurably experienced. This pleasure and necessity is what characterizes Apollo, the lucent god. According to Nietzsche, the condition in the dream world is a perfect condition where we intuitively interpret the direct images that are relayed to us through our dreams, unlike our condition in the waking reality where we have an incomplete understanding of the world around us. According to Nietzsche, the arts represent this perfect condition, and is therefore valuable because it [makes] life possible and worth living. Nietzsche warns, however, that Apollo must not cross the thin line between recognizing the dream world as illusory and mistaking it for reality. Apollo must

adhere to the metaphorical rowboat by relying on his awareness that recognizes the tumultuous waves of the sea and life as beautiful yet ephemeral and insignificant. Apollo therefore embodies this realization of wisdom, pleasure, and beauty in the illusory world of forms. Nietzsche explains that there is an even deeper realm of joy and ecstasy that individuals access either through physical intoxication or full engrossment in the powerful approach of spring. The metaphor of the Apollonian individual lying separately in his boat experiencing the world as it goes by is dropped here, where the Dionysiac forces compel man to lose himself completely in the union with other men and their union with their mother, nature, achieved through the bacchich miraculous and powerful rites. The original state of Oneness is thus restored, whereas the veil of Maya is torn apart. Nietzsche explains that in such a state, the universe is finally capable of expressing itself directly and powerfully through man in a manifestation of wild song and dance. Therefore, unlike the previous case where the individual is an artist who experiences manifestation of forms in dreams, the individual now himself becomes the work of art as he himself is the manifestation of divine force. As presented so far, Apollo and Dionysos satisfy an internal esthetic need in the individual in two different ways: Apollo through the manifestation of dreams, and Dionysos through manifestation of divinity directly through the individual. Because these esthetic tendencies arise naturally without contribution on the part of the individual, Nietzsche argues that every artist must appear as an imitator, either as the Apollonian dream artist or the Dionysiac dream artist or the Dionysiac ecstatic artist, or finally (as in Greek tragedy, for example) as dream and ecstatic artist in one (333). After laying out the difference between Apollo and Dionysos, Nietzsche examines the extent to which their characteristics were expressed in Greeks. Nietzsche argues that the Greek individual invariably experienced dreams. Nietzsche distinguished between the Dionysiac Greeks and the Dionsysiac barbarians. Unlike the Dionysiac barbarians who were completely overwhelmed by the ecstasy of joy and lust, the Dionysiac Greeks safely avoided such extremes due to Apollos grounding wisdom that allowed the Dionysiac Greeks to rise out of the chaos of barbarism into an ordered reconciliation between the opposing forces of Apollo and Dionysos. In the Greek case, this reconciliation promotes transfiguration rather than a throwback of the individual. Nietzsche considers this situation an esthetic triumph because the individual is capable of experiencing the liberating forces of Dionysos within the limits of Apollos grounding ones. The Apollonian Greek was, however, terrified of the Dionysiac music that called upon unity and the disintegration of the illusory veil of Maya through representation of nature by means of symbolic forces such as dance, music, and the spoken word. Nietzsche argues that because the Apollonian Greeks were oblivious to the Dionysiac state of being, they could not embrace the unity Dionysos professed until they themselves became aware that theyre Appolonian consciousness separated them from their true Dionysiac reality. Nietzsche explains how art is more valuable than truth in an analogy between art and dreams. Although it is generally assumed that the realm of dreams is the illusory and inferior world while the waking realm is the real and important realm, Nietzsche argues otherwise. According to Nietzsche, individuals naturally enjoy dreams because they contemplate their dreams without disturbing them although they are aware of their illusory nature. Moreover, these dreams arise out of natural

tendencies. Nietzsche therefore concludes that the spontaneous manifestation of dreams and the pleasure derived from them are testament to the fact that nature needs these dreams, and therefore a realm of illusion, to redeem itself and to derive pleasure from them. Because individuals are the product of this realm of illusion, they are illusory themselves. Therefore, concrete reality is, in Nietzsches eyes, a mere illusion created by natures omnipotent formative tendencies. Because nature derives pleasure from illusions, the more illusory a realm is, the more pleasure nature will derive from it. This is why nature derives pleasure mostly from the realm of dreams that is an illusion of the illusory world of concrete reality. Based on this argument, Nietzsche concludes that nature also derives the most pleasure from art which is, like the realm of dreams, an illusion of the illusory world.