A Comparative Study on the Use of Art Forms in Platonic and Buddhist Traditions

Abstract

Art, having been used and being interpreted in different ways since the pre-historic times, both in the east and west, highlights the homo-aesthetics quality of humans, advocating the inseparable connection between the art and the humans, especially in the socialization and cognizing process. The purpose of this study is to perform a comparative philosophical analysis between two different standpoints on the relationship between art and education; which are chronologically similar, but geographically different; the treatment of Plato and Buddhist traditions towards art and education. Plato, the first systematic interpreter of art in the western philosophical history, goes to the extremes of banishing art form his ideal state, as stated in his masterpiece; ‘The Republic’, posing that art is a mere representation, therefore it can never hold the ability to deliver truth or knowledge of the ‘Forms’, but merely having the dangerous capacity to corrupt even the most virtuous mind. On the other hand, in the Buddhist practice, art forms are used in order to teach the exemplary Buddhist virtuous life style. The Jathaka Stories in the Khuddaka Nikaya of the Sutta Pitaka in the Pali Canon, are a great example of the positive use of art forms in the in the Buddhist tradition.