Professional paper
Plato's Notion of Art in Croatian Systematic Overviews of Aesthetics and Philosophy
Juraj Bubalo
Abstract
The intention of this article is to remind a reader how Croatian philosophers wrote about Plato’s notion of art (approximately from 1870 till 1980). Besides stating how much and how has been written about the subject, the article tends to show the nature of intellectual positions in which the writings were rooted, and for that purpose the cultural context of Croatia in that historical scope was not neglected. Every attempt in treating Plato’s notion of art, i.e., is interpreted as related to the historical circumstances in which it was produced: intellectual and philosophical horizon of every author concerned is looked upon in connection to wider socio-cultural and ideological factors.
Because of the lack of monographical studies on the subject in Croatian language, it was approached to from the expositiones included in the systematical works on Aesthetics and Philosophy in general. After treating some more or less qualified works on Plato’s Philosophy, dated in the second half of 19th century, the years that for a short while preceeded the reconstruction of »Croatian University« which took place in 1874, the author traces the appearance of early systematical expositions, extracting the treatings of Plato’s Aesthetics, and gives some critical remarks on the subject. In that sequence, the detailed exposition of the theoretical positions concerning the given subject, include Franjo Marković (in his work »The development and system of the universal Aesthetics«, 1903), Albert Bazala (»A history of philosophy«, 1942), Branko Bošnjak (»Greek philosophy«, a first volume of philosophical anthology, 1993) and Danko Grlić (»Aesthetics – a history of philosophical problems«, 1974). In the appendix to an article two cases of treating Plato in the works in theory of literature in Croatian language are noted. The fact that past decade produced no philosophicaly relevant expositions of Plato’s theory of art, i.e., no monography or sistematical-historical inquiery by itself, stresses the need for a reafirmation of this important subject in a new, contemporary, context, and from a standpoint free from at least some of ideological prejudices that threw shade on past few decades in the Croatian history.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
75006
URI
Publication date:
4.12.2000.
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