Key Arguments

• Perceptual relativity: the same bed looks different from different viewpoints though reality is unchanged; painting targets these appearances.
• Definition: painting is of 'appearance' not 'reality'; hence the imitator is 'a long way off the truth.'
• Deception argument: a skilled painter can depict a craftsman and 'deceive children or simple persons,' demonstrating that imitation need not include any knowledge of the subject.
• Epistemic caution: claims that poets 'know all the arts' confuse imitation with knowledge due to ignorance of 'the nature of knowledge and ignorance and imitation.'

Source Quotes

What do you mean? I mean, that you may look at a bed from different points of view, obliquely or directly or from any other point of view, and the bed will appear different, but there is no difference in reality. And the same of all things.

Yes, he said, the difference is only apparent. Now let me ask you another question: Which is the art of painting designed to be—an imitation of things as they are, or as they appear—of appearance or of reality? Of appearance. Then the imitator, I said, is a long way off the truth, and can do all things because he lightly touches on a small part of them, and that part an image.

Of appearance. Then the imitator, I said, is a long way off the truth, and can do all things because he lightly touches on a small part of them, and that part an image. For example: A painter will paint a cobbler, carpenter, or any other artist, though he knows nothing of their arts; and, if he is a good artist, he may deceive children or simple persons, when he shows them his picture of a carpenter from a distance, and they will fancy that they are looking at a real carpenter.

Then the imitator, I said, is a long way off the truth, and can do all things because he lightly touches on a small part of them, and that part an image. For example: A painter will paint a cobbler, carpenter, or any other artist, though he knows nothing of their arts; and, if he is a good artist, he may deceive children or simple persons, when he shows them his picture of a carpenter from a distance, and they will fancy that they are looking at a real carpenter. Certainly.

And so, when we hear persons saying that the tragedians, and Homer, who is at their head, know all the arts and all things human, virtue as well as vice, and divine things too, for that the good poet cannot compose well unless he knows his subject, and that he who has not this knowledge can never be a poet, we ought to consider whether here also there may not be a similar illusion. Perhaps they may have come across imitators and been deceived by them; they may not have remembered when they saw their works that these were but imitations thrice removed from the truth, and could easily be made without any knowledge of the truth, because they are appearances only and not realities? Or, after all, they may be in the right, and poets do really know the things about which they seem to the many to speak so well?

Key Concepts

• you may look at a bed from different points of view, obliquely or directly or from any other point of view, and the bed will appear different, but there is no difference in reality.
• Which is the art of painting designed to be—an imitation of things as they are, or as they appear—of appearance or of reality? Of appearance.
• Then the imitator, I said, is a long way off the truth
• he may deceive children or simple persons
• these were but imitations thrice removed from the truth, and could easily be made without any knowledge of the truth, because they are appearances only and not realities?

Context

Refines the mimesis critique by shifting from ontology to epistemology and psychology of perception and deception.

Perspectives

Plato

Connects perceptual relativity to epistemic unreliability: mimetic arts amplify doxa and illusion, undermining philosophical cognition.

Socrates

Warns the audience against mistaking lifelike portrayals for expertise; imitation trades on surface likeness and spectator naivete.