Art Through Devine Inspiration
Plato believed poets did not create by skill in art but through divine inspiration. Technique and understanding had no control over divine inspiration.
What a poet was able to do was only through manifestation of a god taking over their minds.
In order to create the poet alone would be ineffective.
The moment the poet receives the inspiration from the divine source the poet would become divinely insane.
In that moment of divine inspiration, the poet is capable of delivering their prescribed art.
Plato used magnets and rings to describe this phenomenon.
If the poet was a ring attracted to the divine represented by the magnet the poet would take on some of the magnetic properties.
The manifestation of the poet’s art is the fulfillment of those magnetic properties that for a time stick with the poet.
Even after the attraction has ceased the poet and their divine inspirer acquire a familiarity.
Inspired By A Devine Source
Nietzsche thought more outside of the restrictions of poets being inspired from a divine source.
He believed that the individual alone was responsible for manifesting creativity.
The individual had to break themselves apart from the restrictions of their current constriction.
If there was going to be a divine influence that divinity had to be self-created.
There was no room for inspiration coming from divinity you could not even construct or destroy in thought.
Nietzsche provides the overman, because the idea of a god was beyond reach but the overman was obtainable.
In order to obtain this self-possessed overman state, the individual would have to go through death, rebirth, and take on the birth pangs of the experience many times over.
Always willing their way to create. Creating the self was imperative to Nietzsche and only once the self was created could self-expression be possible.
Our Ideas Manifest Themselves Through Inspiration
Plato and Nietzsche had completely contrasting ideas about self-actualization and how that manifested itself through inspiration.
Both men carefully crafted their convictions to appeal highly to the development of the individual’s ideal state being.
Plato attributed an individual’s sell-dispossession to the credit of a divine intermediary. Nietzsche attributed creativity and inspiration entirely to self-possession.
For Nietzsche this had to be obtained through a rigorous process of breaking away from ideals of the herd.
Final Insights On Core Matters Of Creativity
Neither would have prescribed to the others core belief systems as they related to the matters of creativity, inspirations, and possession.
Plato would imply to Nietzsche that the overman was ultimately a copy of the ideal form that the individual was able to imitate.
Nietzsche would have rejected this notion on the basis Plato could not access this ideal form thus making it unfit to be discussed.
If Plato were willing to accept that the ideal form was self-constructed, then he would compromise his position.
If Nietzsche were willing to accept that the overman was inspired by some external divinity, then he too would be compromising his stance.
The way Plato and Nietzsche fashion their perspective makes no room for compromise between the two perspectives. Super fascinating.