When the modes of the music change, the fundamental laws of the State always change with them. —Plato
PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNAL: According to Plato, there were two subjects essential to educate young people for their role in his Republic: music and gymnastic. Gymnastic prepared the body developing muscle and coordination, music prepared the soul by reaching deep inside us. By music, Plato meant also poetry; by extension music might include all artistic expression. As Pater reminds, “All art aspires to the condition of music.”
When Plato talks of the “basic laws of the state” changing, he is looking through the telescope from the opposite end than John Ruskin was (see previous blog post). Ruskin believed art was the truest measure of a society; Plato would agree, but he was more interested in controlling than measuring.
What do we learn about ourselves from the music and the art of our time?
2 comments:
Both of these images leave me speechless, Ted...of a day that is no more. You ask what we learn about ourselves from the music and art of our time. I ask what we learn of ourselves when our places of worship become hollow shells of the past music once played there?!
We mourn this loss, but probably for different reasons/ The population that worshipped here is mostly gone. There are all kinds of ways to be spiritual, and a building like this one tells in many ways of who we were.
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