Benoît Castelnérac: The Aesthetics of Smell in Plato

Pozvánka ke stažení

Kolokvium k antické filosofii

Benoît Castelnérac, Université de Sherbrooke, Québec (Canada)

This is an overview of the main passages about Smell and Perfume in Plato (Timaeus 48-53 and 65-66; Republic II 372-373; Philebus 50-53) in hope to explain what is Smell, and how it is considered as an aesthetic experience in his dialogues.

In the Timaeus, Smell is a specific sense, different from Taste, and analogous to Hearing and Sight, as it captures distant “emanations” from sensitive things. In the case of Smell, these emanations correspond to intermediate states of matter (between air and water), which result either from heating or condensation. They capture a toiouton, a quality, not its material support. Plato does not classify smells into different kinds, in the fashion of tastes (i.e. bitter, sweet, acid…) or sounds (i.e. acute, grave, loud, harsh…), but they fall under the two categories of Pleasure or Pain. According to this proposition, the “aesthetic” appreciation of smells does not result from a mixture of pleasures and pains (there is no balance or imbalance between depletion and repletion). A smell is either good or bad, but it is always unmixed and pure.

In the Republic, the First City (a city of “Pigs”) abounds in references to Smell: wine and cheese, mattresses, garlands, cereals and herbs. The Second City provides for all these needs with style and refinery. The Art of Perfumery is included in a baroque list of professions that will have to be reformed to get an Ideal City: Poetry and the Hearding of Pigs, Cooking and Painting, Pedagogy and Weaving among others.

In the Philebus, Smell is mentioned in a key passage about the basic components of a Work of Art: i.e. the unmixed pleasures behind any composition. In the case of Painting and Sculpture, the pure pleasures behind Art are the simple lines, volumes, and colours. Music has its own elements. To buttress his argument, Plato adds the example of Smell, which can lead to the experience of a “pure pleasure”, a pleasant experience with no catharsis behind.

From these four passages, I will argue that Smell has a specific status among the various aesthetic experiences in Plato. As a writer and a philosopher, he outlined the aesthetics of smell in a manner worth closer inspection. It highlights interesting points about his conception of what is Art and its relation to Nature and Matter.

English Hand-Out: from Jowett, The Dialogues of Plato, Random House, NY.

Greek Hand-Out: from Platonis Opera, Oxford, Clarendon Press.