Aristotle

Aristotle on tragedy and character, and Aeschylus and Plato on the shared theme of our common humanity

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

Three functions of reason:

1. theoretical (theoria): grasping the eternal truths which are so basic that they cannot be derived from any higher premises and reasoning rigorously to conclusions.

2. making (poesis): bringing something into existence; techne as know-how. Note that poesis in the broad sense includes all the arts (just like “art,” in the broad sense in English).

3. doing (praxis): fully human action, pursuing reflectively chosen goals through reflectively chosen means, exercising excellence (e.g., courage, self-mastery, justice) so as to activate the potentials of a noble life.

Aristotle, Poetics

Classification and description of the arts is the basis of (philosophic) science. Comedy, Epic, Tragedy (definition, p. 70) (which has three unities:

· the unity of time “endeavors to keep as far as possible within a single circuit of the sun” (70),

· the unity of plot: an action that is complete in itself, a whole with a beginning, middle, and end (72);

· the unity of character: the person must act in a way that would be probable or necessary, given that type of character.

“The character of the protagonists should be consistent, and the action should be the sort of action those characters would produce under those circumstances. The time of the action should also be unified, so that the plot can be held in memory as one action.” http://www.rowan.edu/philosop/clowney/Aesthetics/philos_artists_onart/aristotle.htm

November 7, 2005.

“Imitation” (mimesis) means setting forth, representing in a broad sense (not necessarily copying). The term does not have the connotations of superficiality that it has in Plato. Neither is Aristotle as idealistic as Plato. The poet represents actions of persons with various kinds of character. Note that even when the things themselves are painful to see, “we delight to view the most realistic representations of them in art” (68).

“To be beautiful, a living creature and every whole made up of parts must not only present a certain order in its arrangement of parts, but also be of a certain definite magnitude. Beauty is a matter of size and order . . . .” “In poetry the story, as an imitation of action, must represent one action, a complete whole, with its several incidents so closely connected that the transposal or withdrawal of any one of them will disjoin and dislocate the whole. For that which makes no perceptible difference by its presence or absence is no real part of the whole.”

The Suppliant Maidens by Aeschylus begins with the arrival of a ship bringing fifty Egyptian women and their father/spokesman to the shores of Argos. They seek protection from pursuing Egyptian men who would force them into “impious marriage.” The women introduce themselves to Pelasgus the king of Argos by revealing their kinship with the Argives, their special claim to protection. They narrate their genealogy, a lineage that Aeschylus may not have meant the discerning among the audience to take literally. To portray these dark Egyptian women as kin to the Argives, as equally the descendants of Zeus, is Aeschylus’ spiritual insight. In modern terms, the universal fatherhood of God is the source of the brotherhood of man. Even after accepting that the women and their father are originally also Argives, the king has a decision to make, and he is in the throes of uncertainty. From the outset we were reminded that the will of Zeus is “not easily traced. Everywhere it gleams, even in blackness.” The king acknowledges, “I am at a loss, and fearful is my heart.” The king’s dilemma is that if he protects the women, he risks destructive war with the pursuing Egyptians; if the king does not protect them, the women threaten suicide upon the altar for suppliants, a move that would bring and divine retribution. What is needed to clarify the decision? “We need profound, preserving care, that plunges/ Like a diver deep in troubles seas,/ Keen and unblurred his eye, to make the end/ Without disaster for us and for the city . . . .” In the moment of decision, the crucial factor is “the height of mortal fear,” making the king unwilling to offend Zeus, who is also a suppliant like these maidens. As the king turns to appeal to the people (who sustain his request), he expresses his discovery of the principle of goodness that governs this situation: “Everyone,/ To those weaker than themselves, is kind.”

In the Republic Socrates fantasizes a useful and noble lie to be told by the leaders in the political community he is imagining (Book III 414b-415c) “I'll first try to persuade the rulers and the soldiers and then the rest of the city that the upbringing and the education we gave them, and the experiences that went with them, were a sort of dream, that in fact they themselves, their weapons, and the other craftsmen's tools were at that time really being fashioned and nurtured inside the earth, and that when the work was completed the earth, who is their mother, delivered all of them up into the world. Therefore, if anyone attacks the land in which they live, they must plan on its behalf and defend it as theier mother and nurse and think of the other citizens as their earthborn brothers [adelphoi—literally, from the same womb, thus: siblings]. . . . “All of you in the city are brothers,” we’ll say to them in telling our story, but the god who made you mixed some gold into those who are adequately equipped to rule, because they are most valuable. He put silver in those who are auxiliaries and iron and bronze in the farmers and other craftsmen. For the most part you will produce children like yourselves, but, because you are all related, a silver child will occasionally be born from a golden parent, and vice versa, and all the others from each other. So the first and most important command from the god to the rulers is that there is nothing that they must guard better or watch more carefully than the mixture of metals in the souls of the next generation. It an offspring of theirs should be found to have a mixture of iron or bronze, they must not pity him in any way, but give him the rank appropriate to his nature and drive him out to join the craftsmen and farmers. But if an offspring of these people is found to have a mixture of gold or silver, they will honor him and take him up to join the guardians or the auxiliaries . . . .”