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Style and "Substance"Main MenuPhilosophy and the ArtsWhat can philosophy do for the arts?Ontological FractalOntological MappingArt CommentaryStudent ObservationsArchaic Eternal ReturnPresocratic ClassicalSocratic Late ClassicalPlatonicNominalist RenaissanceAneesah Ettressaef5effc74a7015f877dd59f557cf7172f5a72eaJmedina29ac3fc10003fb639ac412984b59b01a5b826e161Ian Lehineb028c384a69e4b92166e7791b002fa3f2cee5818Published by Aneesah Ettress
Praxiteles' Aphrodite
12017-06-14T12:30:08-07:00Aneesah Ettressaef5effc74a7015f877dd59f557cf7172f5a72ea148587by Peter Johnsonplain2020-05-08T15:50:57-07:00Aneesah Ettressaef5effc74a7015f877dd59f557cf7172f5a72ea
Praxiteles’ Aphrodite of Kindos captures the “ontology” of the Late Classical by way of its expression of the form of beauty. As Plato describes in the Phaedo, it is the relationship to the transcendent, ideal form of the Beautiful which makes something beautiful. The sculpture maintains the more curved, S-shaped posture one may see, intimating that there is something beyond and above the body. The sculpture captures becoming as described in Plato’s Timaeus, in so far as it is the realization of the image or form into a sensible object, which is defined out of the “space” (chora) and thus can exist. Aphrodite of Knidos then conveys a sense of passed time, which is something distinct about the Late Classical worldview as embodied in art. The simultaneous covering and uncovering of the so-called “modest Venus” generates a sense that their was a time where the figure was covered, and thus extends beyond a lived moment—the robe draped over the vase similarly supports this. This interstitial quality of the sculpture affirms the apparent deficiency between the real (forms) and what is perceived, the transcendent beauty cannot ever be fully represented, but comes through in this single definite figure as the perceptible simultaneously allows for the form to be in something else: the Beautiful is in the becoming of this sculpture. Thus there is a return to transcendence in the Late Classical made clear in this artistic example of the “ontology.”