I'm going to start this thread with some of my thoughts, but, as the abstract indicates, anything related to Aristotle's Poetics, including other philosophers that might be in conversation with this work, are open for discussion.
I'll start off with a basic question. Why did Aristotle write Poetics?
It may be because Plato was so critical of “the imitative arts.” The first argument Plato makes against those imitations is that they seek to imitate appearances rather than reality. The particulars we find in this world are imitations of the universal forms, and paintings or plays are imitations of the imitations, thus twice removed from the truth. Aristotle quite simply denies this, and I don’t think there’s any question that Plato was wrong about it. Poetry is not an attempt to imitate the appearances, but to reveal something about the appearances by imitating the universals in a certain way. It differs from the philosophical discourse in its form, but not, to my mind, in its purpose.
relevant quote:
The distinction between historian and poet is not in the one writing prose and the other verse — you might put the work of Heroditus into verse, and it would still be a species of history; it consists really in this, that the one describes a thing that has been, and the other a kind of thing that might be. Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of the nature rather than of the universals, whereas those of history are singulars. (1451a39-1451b5) [9]
But that prompts the question, So what? What does it mean for that primary goal of philosophy, in guiding me about how I shall live? I'm fairly certain he intends it to be a part of this larger project and not, as our contemporary instincts might do, to treat the discourse on Poetry as a literary theory practically separated from the other discourses. (This is the reason I chose to post this in the Head Shop, by the way)
Thoughts? Additional questions? |
