What was platos say about belief?

Answer 1

Not only is Plato the founder of modern philosophy, he was also the first to systematically philosophize about the arts. Plato used the term techne in his dialogues, which is more akin to craft than to art. Techne is a broad term that encompasses skills from woodcraft to stagecraft. Major discussions of techne appear throughout Plato's works. From his early period (399-387 BC) he talks of the arts in Ion, Symposium and Republic. His later discussions (367-348 BC) are in Laws and Sophists. Plato also addressed the arts in Phaedrus, a work from his middle period.
In order to produce a philosophy of art Plato broke the discussions of art down into several categories. Defining what exactly art is was the necessary first step to analyzing it. After this was established Plato moved on to the problems of art, such as the problem of imitation, questions on beauty and the question of whether art contains or can give anyone knowledge. All of Plato's discussions an art lead up to the value of art in society through education. What good is there in art if there is nothing to be gained from experiencing it.

Plato defines art as all skills in making or doing. So all art forms are included in his discussions, from tool making and carpentry, to music, poetry and dance. Plato believed that productive art was subdivided into production of actual objects and production of images. Images are then further divided into genuine likenesses and apparent likenesses. Apparent likenesses are images that only look like the original but have been altered in some way. An example of this is when an artist draws a flower in the foreground bigger than the flowers in the background to give the illusion of depth to his picture. Defining what is a genuine likeness and what is merely an apparent likeness is a difficult distinction to make, says Plato, since all imitations fall short of the original. With this in mind Plato says that imitation is, in a sense, both true and untrue, has both being and nonbeing. Expanding this idea to Plato's idea of eternal forms, all things that are created (including humans) are imitations of their eternal forms, therefore all things are images. Plato places art on his fourth level of cognition called imagining.