The concept of the image in Plato's philosophy and its variations in the history of culture

This article examines the most important provisions of Plato's concept of the image, in which the philosopher carefully separates the image (eikon) and the pseudo-image (phantasma), which allows Plato to identify the ontological status of the image and thereby link it with the integrity of the universe. The Platonic concept of the image is considered in the following aspects: image and pseudo-image; image in relation to an idea and a thing; image as a pictorial image; natural (not man-made) image; medial image; geometric image. The problem of similarity, which includes the problem of the involvement of things in ideas, remained explicitly unresolved for Plato. The article suggests what place Kant's teaching (which often appealed to Plato) on transcendental schemes of imagination can occupy in understanding this problem. Some variations of Plato's theme of the image in subsequent culture are considered: understanding of image-making as an ontological process; "studies of the visual", referring in the theory of the image to the theme of the invisible; the tendency of deanthropomorphization in the art of minimalism of the 20th century. The main methodological principle of the study is the hermeneutic principle of "better understanding", which includes not only reconstruction, but also the construction of meaning. The theme of the image in Plato's philosophy is interesting and relevant today in the context of those influences, sometimes indirect, that the subsequent evolution of thought and culture experienced and absorbed. In this regard, the author refers to the Plato's concept of the image, to Kant's teaching on transcendental schemes of imagination and other topics. This makes it possible to include the Platonic concept of the image in subsequent clearly related concepts (in particular, in modern "visual studies") and cultural practices (in particular, the art of minimalism of the 20th century) in order to "better understand" them (the hermeneutic principle), as well as "better understand" some problematic aspects of the Platonic theory of ideas (in particular, the problem of the similarity of a thing and an idea, the connection of Plato's theory of ideas with geometry).