Volu m e II - Purdue University Calumet

Spear Bearer (see fig. 3).
The basis of modern Western aesthetic theory coincides with the roots of Western philosophy. The
philosopher Plato, who lived between the years of 384 and 322 BC, discussed art in terms of the beautiful. 3
To Plato, the arts were produced in an attempt to portray an ultimately intangible idea. Beauty, while able
to be captured in an ephemeral creation of man, is essentially infinite in its scope and application. In some
ways, beauty is beyond human tampering – nothing man creates can add to
or detract from the eternal nature of beauty, yet the quest for beauty is an
intrinsic part of being human. 4
Beauty is described by Diotima in Plato’s Symposium as a
progression from the appreciation of the physical to an appreciation of the
metaphysical, suggesting that all tangible beauty is the direct result of some
knowledge that is beyond the immediately apparent. Beauty exists in levels,
and the arts can be appreciated from all of these levels, but not necessarily
understood. 5
Aristotle, a student of Plato, agreed with Diotima to some extent,
but placed the idea of levels of beauty within the sphere of the physical
body, claiming that the pinnacle of beauty, and thus the thing that art
Figure 3, Polykleitos, Spear Bearer,
Roman copy after the original bronze,
Greek High Classical, c. 450-440
should attempt to portray, is the fitness of the human body to do age-appropriate work. A young man is
beautiful because his body is perfectly suited to the athletic activities expected of him, whereas a man in the
prime of his life is beautiful because his body is perfectly suited to the activities of warfare. 6
This conception of art as a manifestation of beauty is somewhat disparate from the governing ideals of
African art. While Aristotle only describes the beauty of a man, only women are venerated as possessing
beauty in many African cultures. However, the beauty of an African woman oftentimes is determined by
her body’s fitness for the appropriate activities expected of her, namely childbearing, just as Aristotle
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