Gebauer and Wulf, “Mimesis”

Since the times of ancient Greece, philosophers have contemplated and developed concepts on art and society and the crucial elements in both that help the development of future generations. One of the key elements of such developments was mimesis. Mimesis is the act of basing analysis on an ideal model of some previous object or action and using this model as a guide to make further developments. For Plato, mimesis was restricted to art, literature, and music. Plato placed great emphasis on the monitoring of the poetry youths were exposed to because as good influences lead to good behavior, bad influences lead to unhealthy behavior. Because mimesis was refined and now centered on an object, or an aesthetic object rather than imitation of behavior, Plato stresses the importance of using discretion when exposing youth to aesthetic objects. He does not believe that young people can get stronger through a negative influence or experiences with negative models. Only positive influence will allow young generations to grow. So members of the “guardian class” are responsible for shielding all negative interference from youth for the betterment of all society. Because poetry plays such an important role for education of young people at this point this is focused on. Aristotle expounds on Plato’s work, emphasizing the significance of mimesis as an act for re-creation but advancement (i.e. embellishment or improvements on existing objects). Mimesis is a good thing. Mimesis not only is the means of imitating a role model but using that role model to make ethical critiques of that model and advancing to the next level of behavior.

Gebauer and Wulf expound on this idea of mimesis and imitation to be illusions. Touching on poets and poetry, they explain that the poet is often praised for his/her understanding of human behavior but put down the question of what is the behavior that must be overcome to understand this behavior. Mimesis now has been corrected to be understood as approximations of what is observed and but must be brought into a physical world for further definition through mimesis over the course of history. Any object or image brought into the physical world by the artist is a phenomenon of some reality only as emulation.

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It becomes very difficult to absorb this perspective if you already have a decided opinion about learning, education, and development. Education in a classic viewpoint really lies on the basis of conformity. “Do” and “Act” like an ideal model and this will lead to intellectual growth, personal growth. This is basically how mimesis is defined here. This is why the close monitoring of all educational material is so important in the classic views. However, philosophy has viewed the world from outside the sphere of experience in order to dissect human experiences and rationalize causalities. The issue that comes arises is discoveries are made and concepts codified and then set down and expected to be seen as truth. In other words, the teacher who finds a truth will then “teach” it as a truth for a student to take it on as there own truth. But, this can’t be beneficial because even if something has the illusion of truth it may not really be the truth for that individual. It can be if we conform to an idea, we give in and follow a dictum according someone or something else’s truth. This comes from early childhood and how we rely heavily on adults to aid us through the dangers of childhood to survive to our own adulthood but what would happen to our perspective if parents did not raise us. Would we be completely ego minded and take complete credit for our survival and existence? If so would we even give credit to mimesis?