Ganesh and Platonic ideal

Howdy,

There is no doubt that we can easily identify a chair, no matter what it is color, raw material or design. An armed chair, a wooden chair, a cushy chair, a sofa-type-chair etc. are all chairs to us. Plato, in his book THE REPUBLIC, argues that this is because we as humans abstract up and identify with a concept called “chairness”. Once we get “chairness” we can easily fit any specific chair into it and label it so; even if it is a very special design that we have not seen before, still the idea of “chairness” will make us to quickly identify it.

In an interesting book on Art and the Brain, author Semir Zeki touches on a concept of Platonic Idealism. He quotes Book X of Plato's Republic and suggests that Plato would consider painting as a “lowly art” because it does not capture the “chairness” or the abstraction of things. Zeki points out that Plato believed that paintings only captured one impression, one viewpoint, one look as seen by the artist. How can painting ever represent the “chairness” could have been the concern of Plato??

Quite a deep thought... What does this have to do Ganesh, you may ask.

Well, in my mind's eye, Ganesha is a symbol, a representation of a thought, an abstraction. He many not be real (?) in the relational sense (?). That is, Ganesha may not be a picture of some “existing entity”. On the other hand, he does represent a symbol of some beliefs, attributes and values. Perhaps the same is true of a national flag. These items are icons, a representation of a entire ideology behind them.

Now, from a Platonic Ideal point of view, these two – a pic of Ganesha and a pic of flag – to me are not just pics of a visual that our eyes capture. No, in my opinion, they represent a bigger mind impression. They stand for something that transcends our eye apparatus.

Bottom line, Ganesha (just as the flag) beats the limit that Plato apparently put on paintings. Do you not agree???

Happy Ganesh Chaturti!!!

Sai G.