HPhil Seminar: October 27, 2022

The HPhil (History of Philosophy) Research Group of the Centre of Philosophy of the University of Lisbon announces the 2022/23 edition of its permanent seminar on the history of philosophy, devoted to the presentation of conferences by renowned specialists while also creating opportunities to emerging scholars, aiming to promote advanced studies in groundbreaking debates and the permanent training of its academic community.

In this session of the seminar, Tomás N. Castro (Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa) will present a paper entitled “Three evaluation criteria for representations (Plato, Lg. 669a-b)” (abstract bellow).

The session will take place on October 27, 2022, at 5PM, in the Room C201.J (Room Mattos Romão, Department of Philosophy). The entrance is free.

 

Abstract

In Laws 2, Plato discusses again the role of education and the arts in his “second best” state. The accomplishment of the standard of correctness in representational art is measured and evaluated by its truth, the same standard of correctness in learning. The formal proprieties of any object produced by representational arts are to be considered under this teleology, as means to a truthful rendering of reality; representational arts are to be evaluated in terms of their correctness, that is to say, judging them according to the accuracy of their representations. In order to pronounce righteous evaluations of works of art, their judges must know three things, three standards of a general nature that are to be applied to particular artefacts intentionally made to fulfil an end. Special attention will be paid to the third criterion to evaluate representations, which is introduced in Pl. Lg. 669a-b, namely some philosophical consequences involved in the translation of this passage.