The Gap between Truth and Artistic Representation of Truth
Immorality of Tragic Pleasure
Conclusion
Response to Socrates with Contemporary Scholarly Analysis
Polarity
Analogy
Sculptural Representation of Analogy
OBJECT β – METAVERSE
The Pros and Cons of Skeuomorphism in the Metaverse
Virtual Functions for Physical
Benefits
Sculptural Representation of Metaverse
Control in the Metaverse
Immoral Simulation of ‘Tragic Preasure
OBJECT α – HOMER
Socratic Attack on Homeric Literature 1
In the fourth century B.C., Socrates has lambasted the unreality of Homeric literature based on two arguments. First, he claimed the dishonest gap between truth and the artistic representation of truth in Homeric poetry. Secondly, he blamed the immorality of Homer to exaggerate the heroic grief for audiences’ pleasure in tragedy (Plato, Republic, lines 595-608). These two claims will be described in Sections 1.1 and 1.2 respectively, contextualising my disagreement in Section 2.
1.1 The Gap between Truth and Artistic Representation of Truth
Socrates first stressed the difference between truth and artistic representation of truth, claiming that ‘artistic products are two stages removed from reality and truth.’ (Plato, Republic, line 597e) He used his bed epitome (see next page) to argue:
Initially, the truth is the one real bed created by God; Next, when a joiner creates his replica of the God’s bed, an appearance of, but not the exact piece, it is one stage removed from truth; And lastly, the painter represents the appearance of, but not exactly the joiner’s bed, becoming a second stage removed from truth.
(meaning from lines 595 & 597)
The God’s bed: Truth
Joiner’s Replica: One stage away from truth
Painter’s Representation: Second stage away from truth
Montage visualising Socratic claim that ‘artistic products are two stages removed from reality and truth’ (line 599a)
Widening the bed’s epitome above, Socrates further claimed that all artistic representations, including Homeric poetry, are removed from truth, ‘since what they are creating are appearances, not reality (line 599a)’. Politely but violently, Socrates asked: Shall we classify all poets, from Homer onwards, as representors of images of goodness, and claim that they don’t have any contact with the truth?
(line 600e)
Politely Socrates asked because of his confessed admiration for Homer (line 595c), but violently because of his attack on Homeric authenticity and traditional Greeks’ recognition of the Olympian gods in Homeric, also Hesiodic, mythology.
Before judging Socrates’ objection against poetic unreality, it is crucial to notice the fact that poetry in the fifth century B.C. has framed the Greeks’ culture, ethics and cosmological reasoning. Lloyd gives an explicit explanation: although a myth is imaginary and perhaps fictitiously false, ancient Greeks were still convinced by, or assumed, its practicality in real life (1987, pp.192-3). More religiously, McKirahan writes that the Greeks domestically but unofficially recognised the Olympian gods from mythology, who analgised human feelings, emotions, desires, motivation and reasoning, also commended beliefs within physical world (1994, pp.7 & 21). Given this deep-seated significance of unrealistic poetry in the fifth century B.C., it was shocking for Socrates, in the fourth, to condemn the gap between truth and representation of truth in Homeric poetry, whom I will oppose in Section 2.
1.2 Irrationality and Immorality of Tragic Pleasure
Arousing the pleasure of audiences has been a goal of Greek tragedy. Aristotle, in Poetics, wrote that:
It is necessary to organise (epic) plots, just like tragic plots, so that they are dramatic ... (the epic) might produce its proper pleasure.
However, Aristotle’s guru Socrates held a different view towards tragic pleasure, claiming Homer’s irrationality and immorality to distort the truth just for hedonist eyes, based on the following two reasons.
First, Socrates argued that it is easier and more favoured for a poet to exaggerate the heroes’ grief and suffering in hamartia than the happiness in hubris, which opposes mens’ rational way of
‘banishing mourning by means of medicine’
(Plato, Republic, line 604d)
during misfortune. Using an ironic metaphor of bestowing political power into ruffians rather than civilised community (line 605b), Socrates highlighted his blame on the irrationality of tragedy to indoctrinate audiences in distorted truth rather than truth; Secondly, while the former is concerning irrationality, Socrates also claimed the immorality of tragic pleasure to deform good people, arguing that representational poetry unethically quench the human thirst for grief and suffering:
When Homer or another tragedian represents the grief of one of the heroes, they have him deliver a lengthly speech of lamentation... even the best of us, as I’m sure you’re aware, feels pleasure.
(line 605c and d)
From his claim, Socrates did not deny the natural desire of men to see others’ grief and sorrow, whom Greek tragedians manipulated. Yet, what Socrates denied was the difference when misfortune happens to men’s own lives:
... when we afflicted by trouble in our own lives, then we take pride in the opposite — in our ability to endure pain without being upset. We think that this is manly behaviour...
(line 605e)
1.3 Conclusion
Suggesting the dishonest gap between truth and representation of truth, as well as tragic irrationality to distort truth and immorality to bring somatic pleasure with others’ suffering, Socrates, in the fourth, discouraged Homeric literature being the Greeks’ belief despite its cultural, ethical, cosmological influences since the fifth century B.C. He believed that only hymns to the gods and eulogies of virtuous men can be admitted (line 607a). This will be argued in Section 2 with my personal thoughts and contemporary scholary analysis on Greek being through poetry.
2 Response to Socrates with Contemporary Scholarly Analysis
Some might argue that contemporary scholarly analysis, from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, is chronologically and culturally in a further and less accurate position than Socrates, in the fourth, to judge Homer’s literature in the fifth century B.C. This argument would have overlooked the soberness and fairness of contemporary analysis, compared to the contradictory modes of thinking in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.
In the fifth century B.C., goodness of mortal men were taught by literature and mythology based on differentiation, mainly: Greek-barbarian, malefemale, and human-animal (duBois, 1991, pp.4). This dichotomic thinking – distinction of black or white, has framed the Greeks’ culture, ethics, and cosmology in the fifth century B.C.; Moving on to the fourth century B.C., Greeks’ reasoning and speculation have shifted from difference-based to hierarchy-based, from literary differentiation to rational questioning of philosophy and science (duBois, 1991, pp.144-145).
With this shift, it is understandable for Socrates to discover the unreality in his ancestors’ poetry. However, it was his absurdity to apply philosophical reasoning forcefully to the superficial words of poetry and the on-stage acting of tragedy, and blindly conclude the immorality of the untruth.
In his study on early Greek argumentation, Lloyd classifies two literary approaches to the fifth-century
B.C. literature. They accounted for poetic unreality that, the former polarises objects based on their opposite characteristics and the later adopts unrealistic metaphors to represent this polarisation. They will be explained seperately to proof the inapplicabiltiy of Socratic superficial reasoning, and thus the inappropriateness of his attack on Homeric literature in Section 1.
2.1 Polarity
Lloyd has stressed the cosmological doctrines that ‘most human things go in pairs’, and they are in opposite principles such as hot and cold, wet and dry (1987, pp.15). This method of differentiation, according to Page duBois, has highlighted the superiority of Greek over barbarian, male over female, and human over animal (1982, pp.4). A quote of Thales explicitly explains this dichotomy:
First, that I was born a human being and not one of the brutes; next, that I was born a man not a woman; thirdly, a Greek and not a barbarian.
(Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, line 1.33, cited in duBois, 1982, pp.6)
2.2 Analogy
The term ‘analogy’ can be vocally understood as ‘comparison between things that have similar features, often used to help explain a principle or idea’ (Cambridge Dictionary, n.d.). But more specifically, G.E.R. Lloyd has categorised three
usages of analogy in early Greek argumentation: Interpretation of superstitious beliefs and omens; similes for comparison; and iconological metaphor and imagery (pp.180-209).
It is evident that Homer allegorically represents the Greek culture and ethics with iconological metaphor and imagery of the Olympian gods. Lloyd suggests an example of the gods’ ceremonial behaviour of eating together in mythology, which resonates with the Greek hospitability in reality;
Hera (an Olympian goddess) handed her (Thetis, a goddess of water) a cup of gold and spoke a comforting word. When she had drunk, Thetis held out the cup again to Hera.
(Homer, Iliad, book 24 line 93)
2.3 Sculptural Representation of Analogy
In contrast to the civilised hospitability of Greek mortal men, analogised by the Olympian god’s coeating and greeting in mythology, another myth of Homer, Centauromachy, oppositely represents the barbarous, uncivilised Persian-War invadors (duBois, 1991, pp.61).
The centaurs, bestial combinations of human torso and equine lower body, was the offspring created when Thessalian king Ixion mated with the Heralike cloud, a trick by god Zeus after Ixion’s sexual advances on his consort Hera. When invited to the wedding feast of their relative Pirithous, Ixion’s son, the uncivilised centaurs were not used to the wine and became drunk. They tried to carry off and
rape the bride, as well as other Lapith women and children presented. They also refused to share the wine with the Lapiths (Lawrence, 1994, pp.57-8). These barbarous and non-hosbitable behaviours of the centaurs have ironically portrait the uncivilised Persian-War invadors. Moreover, their promiscuouse, anti-marriage behaviour has analogised the uncivilised foreigners’ lack of legal exchange of women.
The myth Centauromachy was immortalised by Phidian metopes, which documents Lapith men fighting against centaurs in Centauromachy. According to duBois, the metope is a sculptural piece of analogy, focusing on the ‘difference between the bodies of Lapiths and Centaurs, on the hybrid bestiality of the horse/men, poised in eternal contrast to the beautiful, youthful forms of the lapiths.’ (duBois, 1991, pp.65)
Object α, a 3-D print of Phidian Centauromachy metope, seeks to support my argument against Socretic claim that ‘artistic products are two stages removed from reality and truth.’ (Plato, Republic, line 597e) While it is the representation of Phidian interpretation of Homeric mythology, but replicated purely by machines of 3-D scanning and printing, should the gap between it and the original marble metope be counted as a stage removed from reality?
Top left: Photograph showing pins distribution behind Object α
Bottom left: Photograph of Object α and β in Mid-Term Review
OBJECT β – METAVERSE
The Metaverse, a virtual 3-D world, is the trendly epitome of unrealistic representation in our time. Its name and concept are from Snow Crash, a sci-fi novel written by Neal Stephenson in 1992, which authored a cyberpunk story under a computergenerated, controlling, and dystopian capitalism. Since the publication of Snow Crash, companies seem competing to generate and commercialise the Metaverse.
As concluded in Section 2, the dishonest gap between truth and representation of truth is acceptable in poetry, because the unrealistic analogies attractively and accurately communicate the ancient culture and ethics. I would like to discuss with Socrates our Metaverse, focusing on the pros and cons of skeuomorphism – mimicking physical world – in Section 3; as well as the ethics of virtual ‘tragic pleasure’ – the rights and wrongs of simulating immoral contents unrealistically – in Section 4.
3
The Pros and Cons of Skeuomorphism in the Metaverse
The unreality of the Metaverse is based on skeuomorphism, a design approach that new invention mimics existing and common objects –such as iPhone’s notepad apps imitating traditional pen and paper. Nick Rosa, in Understanding the Metaverse, stated two reasons for skeuomorphism: familiarity for users and applicability to practical situations (2023, pp.30-32). Despite the pursuit of them, the need for Metaverse’s to mimic the
physical world is questionable, which will be debated with some pros and cons framed by Socratic concern on representational unreality.
3.1a Virtual Functions for Physical Benefits
One of the advantages of skeuomorphism in the Metaverse – mimicking appearance of physical world – is users’ familiarity of the virtual functions, bringing realistic benefits. In classical literature and tragedy, the artistic scenes imitate scenarios of the physical world closely and reflectively, directing audiences to the the creators’ purposes and concern (Taplin, 2005, pp.117-118). Taplin writes that:
It is the life-sized actions of personal dimesion which are the dramatist’s concern, and which he puts on stage. (2005, pp.118)
Similarly in the Metaverse, skeuomorphism –the mimicry of physical world – familars users with its virtual functions, accounting for realistic benefits. Take Meta, formerly Facebook’s, Horizon Workrooms as an example (Hitechglitz.com, n.d.):
Although the chairs around the island table are unnecessary, given no gravity in the Metaverse, they vividly portait the conventional meeting room, so that users can seamlessly simulate physical meetings for remote coordination. From this example, we may suggest the role skeuomorphism plays in the Metaverse: familiaring men with virtual functions for realistic benefits.
Top left: My sketches studying light-shadow interplay on artist’s pencil sketch found in Broomhall House, Dunfermline Bottom left: Object β draft presented in Mid term Review
3.1b Sculptural Representation of Metaverse
Presented in Mid Term Review, Object β draft expresses skeuomorphism of the Metaverse that, men create the digital unreality based on our perception of the physical reality, and thus the unreality interacts with our ways of life in reality. Positive and negative thresholds, achieved by patterning, is used to express this interwoven relationship between the surreal and the real.
The use of negative threshold in Object β draft was inspired by an artist’s pencil sketch of Phidian metope, which makes use of dark shadow to frame the subjects – the Lapith man and centaur – who require less pencil shading. This has influenced my use of emptyness in the left dancing man, defined by the densely patterned background.
The patterns of Object β draft, orientated differently, communicate the difference between physical world and unrealistic Metaverse: On the right, the rigidness and straightness analogies our physical world defined by laws of nature and human; On the left, the fluid pattern analogies the free-flowing, currently ungoverned Metaverse.
The dancing of Object β draft, symbolises the interwoven influences of physical world and Metaverse on each other that, men’s perception of the physical world defines the virtual world, where virtual avatars interact and bring back information for physical world.
Right: Simulation of control in the Metaverse from Centauromachy metope
Further right: Sculptural representation of immoral ‘tragic pleasure’ in the Metaverse
3.2 Control in the Metaverse
Despite functional benefits it seeks to offer the physical world, skeuomorphism of the Metaverse can be capitalists’ trick of greedy financial control over the easilymanipulated crowd.
Rosa, in Understanding the Metaverse, writes that the Metaverse will not be owned by any major corporation. Yet, ironically in the same book, he describes that there are currently centralised platforms, owned by major creators like Meta; and decentralised platforms owned by everyone in the Metaverse (2023, pp.52).
Considering the fact that one has to pay a fortune, using money from the real world, to purchase a digital property from the centralised platform of the Metaverse, he or she might have fallen into the ‘societies of control’ Deleuze has
described (1992), where the price of the virtual properties is determined and modulated by the coorporation for its financial benefits. In my Object β, this society of control is simulated as inflating bubbles, which swallow. The choices of plastic is a metaphor of the fact that the unreality is acreation based on perception of the physical world, while the transparency symbolised the emptiness and vituality of the Metaverse.
3.3 Immoral
Simulation of ‘Tragic Preasure’
Without legistration currently, it is still controversial whether it is moral for one to simulate harmful contents, such as pornography, in the Metaverse. Unlike being an audience in a Greek tragedy, one could immerse himself into the community of the Metaverse and exercise sexual assault to other avators played by human. In this case, is he or she illegal in our physical world, as other avators is offended? Or it is encouraged as it virtualises a potential crime in the physical world?
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Deleuze, G. (1992). Postscript on the Societies of Control. The MIT Press [online] 59, pp.3-7. Available at http://www.jstor.org/ stable/778828 [Accessed 30 March 2023].
