Philosophy Meets Acting

By: Nick Dart | Updated: March 25, 2022 7:11 AM

I met Nick in an acting class pre-pandemic. The class was abysmal, but Nick stood out. His demeanor struck me as someone who enjoyed the craft and understood it on a deeper level. His piece got me thinking about the history and lineage of theatre. Nick combines his appetite for philosophy and acting, in a clamorous collage of ideas and phrases. Thank you Nick for taking us on this journey. —E.R.

Originally titled “The Actor and the Tripartite Soul”

Have you ever heard this before?

“Do the work and throw it away.”

It’s a phrase that gets thrown around in acting classes, and often during the rehearsal process for a play. I think it holds a lot of truth.

Building an elaborate backstory, identifying keywords or thoughts, digging deep into a text are helpful and necessary practices.

Unmistakenly, the latter half of the command, “throw it away” is an equally important part of the process. You have to leave the work in the wings. Comfortable knowing the work has your back, however, the work should never be a burden or distraction when you step on stage.

Introducing Philosophy In Acting

I believe the same goes for philosophy. It is remarkably undervalued in society, and it is a tragedy that we rarely spend any time dedicated to “doing the work” of philosophy. I think reading and examining our own existence is an important practice, and just as the actor braves the spotlight leaving their work behind, we should step onto the stage of life having thrown away our philosophical work, yet still painted by it.

Prepare yourself for a short and heady article rife with pretense and strange words neither you nor I know the meaning of. It’s rare these days, at least for me it’s rare, to willfully engage in thoughts about existence and meaning. Because, I don’t know about you, I am easily seduced by this constant stream of idle stimulation pouring out of my phone. Nevertheless, if you’re anything like me, you want to break the cycle.

So if nothing more, allow these words to drag you through some delayed gratification, like broken glass.

What Are The Transcendentals Of Being?

We are going to talk about Truth, Goodness, and Beauty also known as the “transcendentals of being.” What the heck does that mean? We’ll try to cook up a surface level understanding of these ancient concepts, and after taking them in, mixing them into our souls and letting them simmer for a while, we can step away from them as better actors who can hopefully live better lives.

Remember Plato? The dude’s sick. It wasn’t until he came around, that the concepts of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty became intertwined into what is known as the “Socratic Trinity.”

Now, Plato never really did a deep dive into each of these concepts, so a lot of the way I’ll be talking about Truth, Goodness, and Beauty (aka the transcendentals) comes from the Medieval philosophers, such as Thomas Aquinas, and their interpretations of Plato’s writing.

The way I would give an “armchair explanation” of these ideas is this: All things only exist because they are held up by the Transcendentals of being. That means all things, from the sublime mountain range to the beautiful flower. The mathematical proof of 2+2 = 4 all the way down to the smallest subatomic particle, only exists because they have some share of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.

Now, if we are to really “get” what’s going on here, we need a slightly more robust understanding of metaphysics than what I am capable of providing. But I’ll attempt that another time.

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How Can I Apply This To Acting?

In Plato’s Timaeus, the human soul is imagined as a microcosm of the universe, and because the universe comes into being through the transcendentals (The Socratic Trinity: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty,) humans have a tripartite soul that corresponds to the Trinity. Follow me here.

The human soul has three parts:

Logos — corresponds to our rational capacities.

Ethos — (literally translates to “character”) which corresponds to our emotional and ethical capacity.

Eros — corresponds to our desires and aesthetic capacity.

So how might this vision of the human soul influence the Modern Actor?

The actor should ensure that their character too, has a tripartite soul. The character should have logos and appear to act in a rational way for the story. The actor should give the character a clear ethical standpoint: ethos. And the character should have their own eros or desires.

I would be remiss not to mention Plato’s apparent disdain for art and performance. He called it mimesis, saying that theatre was a very poor imitation of reality. He found it quite repulsive— that theatre and fiction were able to create an emotional response in viewers, despite it’s not being “real.”

Plato is likely rolling in his grave already, nevertheless, I will continue to butcher his ideas in order to apply them to our art form. Plato’s primary complaint about theatre was that the characters don’t exist. They’re just actors pretending!

So I would like to propose an alternative view.

What if we thought of the characters as metaphysically real? In order for them to be “real,” they have to be held up by the transcendentals.

So I propose, the Socratic Trinity of Acting

Truth in conviction, Goodness in character, and Beauty in performance. The actor should speak their lines with Truth, or the character can not exist. The actor should embody a Good version of the character, or the performance will combat the text. Lastly, the performance should be Beautiful, or the audience won’t want to watch it, and that really is the point.

Think About It

This short article likely raises more questions than it answers. That too is the point of philosophy. Perhaps you don’t subscribe to the worldview suggested by the transcendentals. Perhaps you don’t even believe in souls. There are ways around these hurdles, and I will be happy to elaborate in future articles.

But for now. You can just throw it away.

What do you think about Nick’s approach to creating a character? Would you use his method? Follow Nick on Instagram @nickdart_ and on IMDb.