Mimesis as imitation, resemblance to truth and deception (Plato)

This, in turn, has to do with the fact that the “basic meaning” of ‘μιμέομαι’ [miméomai], as Koller proves on the basis of a number of passages, has (as yet) “nothing to do with deception.” “It is only with Plato,” says Koller, “that μιμεῖσθαι [mimeîsthai] in the tenth Book of the State takes on the secondary meaning of ‘representing something untrue’ and the like,” and only a later philosophical reflection, in comparison to the original meaning still largely preserved in Aristotle, “compares the object of mimesis with the underlying ‘truth’.”⁶⁸ In other words, the younger Aristotle represents an older, namely performative, concept of mimesis, whereas the later Plato represents a historically younger, truth-oriented concept of mimesis.

Put differently, only since Plato has it been possible to speak meaningfully of mimesis as a more or less ‘similar’ ‘imitation’. And it is only with Plato that categories such as “unintentional or intentional deception”, “lack of similarity” or “adulteration” (Thomas Mann) come into play⁶⁹; Umberto Eco even ends up defining “semiotics” as “the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie.” ⁷⁰ In principle, however, this now established idea of mimesis as imitation and deception is always based on the notion of a ‘depth’ and a ‘behind’, i.e. an immaterial truth or immaterial meaning hidden ‘behind’ or ‘under’ a material surface. The truth lies in the depth, the surface only ‘represents’ it. Conversely, this means that only the truth in the depths enables deception on or through the surface. According to this logic, however, the pure surface—like Baudrillard’s simulacrity, Hanslick’s absolute music, abstract espressionism or dance—is either completely deceptive or completely free of deception, depending on your point of view.

Notes

1. ⁶⁸Ibid. p. 13f.
2. ⁶⁹“Wagnerian, on the level of adulteration [Verhunzung]”, was Hitler’s “artistry”; Thomas Mann: Bruder Hitler, in: ders.: Gesammelte Werke in dreizehn Bänden, vol. XII: Reden und Aufsätze 4, Frankfurt a.M. 2/1974, pp. 845-852, p. 848. “Adulteration“ as the “fundamental category of Thomas Mann’s aesthetic theory of fascism” presupposes, as Hermann Kurzke has noted, “the distinction between the genuine and the corrupt”. Hermann Kurzke: “‘Brother’ Hitler. Thomas Mann and the Third Reich”, in: Schopenhauer-Jahrbuch 71 (1990), pp. 125-135, p. 131.
3. ⁷⁰Umberto Eco: A Theory of Semiotics, Bloomington 1976, p. 7. On this statement and its tradition, see Dieter Mersch: Medientheorien zur Einführung, Hamburg 2006, pp. 22-27.