Like Plato, Aristotle believed that everything in reality is a copy of the Forms. In Ovid's "The Story of Pygmalion and the Statue," Pygmalion seems to agree with Aristotle. He views human women as uninteresting, imperfect beings. He seems to think that they are imitations of a perfect woman that does not even exist. (Because I wasn't born yet:))While reading about Aristotle, I discovered that he thought "the essential form of anything defines what it is, and provides the driving force for that thing's existence and development. Everything strives to 'grow into' its form, and the form defines what the thing can potentially become." Pygmalion had in mind what the perfect woman was. Since he believed she did not exist, he decided to make a statue of her. He worked at it until he made Galatea. If he was Artistotle, he would have believed Galatea was the Form of the female race. He cloned her! As the story goes, Pygmalion fell in love with her and prayed to Venus, who made Galatea come alive...and they lived happily ever after. This little story goes along with Aristotle's theory that art is an "imitation of the ideal." Galatea was Pygmalion's ideal woman. Too bad it's not that easy for us females to find the perfect man by making him!
Posted by JameeRice at January 24, 2004 04:23 PMYou've hit on one of the biases of the classical world. The muses were female goddesses, and by convention to be inspired to create great art was to be kissed by a muse -- a relationship that implied the artist was male, and that suggests that the goddesses cannot bother to create art on their own. Of course, gods and goddesses don't need to bother much with art -- they work with mortals the way mortals work with rock and chisel.
Posted by: Dennis G. Jerz at January 25, 2004 09:27 PM