The Poetics of Aristotle and the Problem of Literary Leeway 69
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Aristotle on Mim4sis
Aristotle on Mim4sis Paul Woodruff Modern readers are often dismayed to find that Aristotle classified poetry, music, and dance under a heading that is usually translated "imitation." We take some comfort in blaming this usage on Plato, who put poetry under this heading in order to condemn it, and we expect Aristotle to defend poetry by providing us with a new, more positive, and even (dare we hope?) more modern understand- ing of "imitation." The comfort begins to turn cold, however, when we find that mimEsis - the Greek word commonly translated "imitation" - has an indepen- dent life in Aristotle. It is neither a throwback to Plato nor a precursor of modern theories of fiction. It has little to do with the problem of truth in poetry, and a great deal to do with explaining the effects poetry has on its audience. Altogether, Aristotle's theory of poetry translates poorly into the idioms of modern criticism, and there is no help for this. Mimesis and its Greek cognates defy translation. Besides "imitation," we find in English such renderings as "image-making," "imitation," "representation," "reproduction," "expression," "flction," "emulation," "make-believe," and so forth, As any of these would beg important questions of interpretation, we shall have to be content with translit- eration for discussions such as this. Mimesis is the production t96s), 37, of mimematai and though "images" is almost right for mimemata, we shall leave that word in Greek as well. I shall also use the adjective mimetic for any procedure of mimesis. So stricken have we been by Plato's war on the tragedians that we keep wanting to read the Poetics as a definitive counter-offensive, and we keep trying to frame Aristotle's theory in Platonic terms, as a response to plato. -
Vocabulary of PHILOSOPHY Vocabulary of PHILOSOPHY Version 1.1 (Last Updated : Apr
- Institute for scientific and technical information - Vocabulary of PHILOSOPHY Vocabulary of PHILOSOPHY Version 1.1 (Last updated : Apr. 05, 2018) This resource contains 4435 entries grouped into 89 collections. Controlled vocabulary used for indexing bibliographical records for the "Philosophy" FRANCIS database (1972-2015, http://pascal-francis.inist.fr/ ). This vocabulary is browsable online at: https://www.loterre.fr Legend • Syn: Synonym. • →: Corresponding Preferred Term. • FR: French Preferred Term. • DE: German Preferred Term. • SC: Semantic Category. • DO: Domain. • URI: Concept's URI (link to the online view). This resource is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license: LIST OF ENTRIES List of entries English French Page • 10th century Xe siècle 176 • 11th - 13th centuries XIe - XIIIe siècles 176 • 11th century XIe siècle 176 • 12th -13th centuries XIIe - XIIIe siècles 176 • 12th century XIIe siècle 176 • 13th - 14th centuries XIIIe - XIVe siècles 176 • 13th - 15th centuries XIIIe - XVe siècles 176 • 13th century XIIIe siècle 176 • 14th - 15th centuries XIVe - XVe siècles 176 • 14th - 16th centuries XIVe - XVIe siècles 176 • 14th - 17th centuries XIVe - XVIIe siècles 176 • 14th century XIVe siècle 176 • 15th - 17th centuries XVe - XVIIe siècles 176 • 15th century XVe siècle 176 • 1656-1658 1656-1658 176 • 16th - 17th centuries XVIe - XVIIe siècles 176 • 16th - 18th centuries XVIe - XVIIIe siècles 176 • 16th - 20th centuries XVIe - XXe siècles 176 • 16th century XVIe siècle 176 • 1735-1985 1735-1985 -
7 Aristotle on Greatness of Soul
7 Aristotle on Greatness of Soul Roger Crisp n the recent revival of interest in Aristotelian ethics, relatively little attention has been paid to the virtue of greatness of soul (megalopsuchia). This is partly Ibecause of the focus on the more structurally central concepts of Aristotle’s theory, in particular happiness (eudaimonia) and virtue (aret¯e). But in fact a study of greatness of soul can reveal important insights into the overall shape of Aristotelian ethics, including the place of external goods and luck in the virtuous life, and the significance of “the noble” (to kalon). Further, Aristotle describes the great-souled person in more detail than any other, and calls greatness of soul a “sort of crown of the virtues” (NE IV.3.1124a1–2). Many have found aspects of the portrait of the great-souled person in the Nicomachean Ethics repellent or absurd, but that is no good reason for the student of Aristotle to shy away from it. In this chapter, I shall elucidate Aristotle’s account of greatness of soul, addressing some puzzles internal to that account and bringing out its place in, and implications for, the ethics of Aristotle and of those modern writers influenced by him. Greatness of Soul as a Virtue To understand greatness of soul as an Aristotelian virtue requires first understand- ing Aristotle’s conception of virtue itself. Aristotle distinguishes virtues into two classes – intellectual virtues and virtues of character – corresponding to distinct aspects of the human soul (NE I.13). Greatness of soul is a virtue of character, though, like all such virtues, it requires its possessor to have the intellectual virtue of practical wisdom (phron¯esis; NE VI.13). -
Aristotle and the Value of Tragedy Malcolm Heath
Aristotle and the Value of Tragedy Malcolm Heath This article explores Aristotle’s understanding of the value of tragedy. The primarily technical analyses of the Poetics are not sufficient for this purpose: they must be read in the context of Aristotle’s philosophical anthropology. An outline of Aristotle’s understanding of the structure of human motivation provides a framework within which to interpret his discussion of the uses of music, and in particular of music’s status as an intrinsically valuable component of cultivated Downloaded from leisure. Applying that model to tragedy requires an explanation of what motivates engagement with drama that evokes distressing affects. Aristotle’s account of musical katharsis, if read with sufficient attention to its structure and interpreted in the light of his analysis of pleasure, provides a solution. If the importance which Aristotle attaches to intrinsically valuable leisure activities is overlooked, it http://bjaesthetics.oxfordjournals.org/ is not possible to understand his conception of a good human life, or his aesthetics. What motivates human beings to invest time and effort in producing and consuming trag- edies? And how does that investment contribute to a characteristically human way of life? That is, what value attaches to the production and consumption of tragedies? Though Aristotle touches briefly on poetry’s roots in human nature at the beginning of Poetics 4, for the most part the existence of poetry and its diverse kinds is treated in the Poetics, not as an explanandum, but as the starting point for technical analyses of how poems, in their various kinds, are best composed. -
Catalogue of Titles of Works Attributed to Aristotle
Catalogue of Titles of works attributed by Aristotle 1 To enhance readability of the translations and usability of the catalogues, I have inserted the following bold headings into the lists. These have no authority in any manuscript, but are based on a theory about the composition of the lists described in chapter 3. The text and numbering follows that of O. Gigon, Librorum deperditorum fragmenta. PART ONE: Titles in Diogenes Laertius (D) I. Universal works (ta kathalou) A. The treatises (ta syntagmatika) 1. The dialogues or exoterica (ta dialogika ex terika) 2. The works in propria persona or lectures (ta autopros pa akroamatika) a. Instrumental works (ta organika) b. Practical works (ta praktika) c. Productive Works (ta poi tika) d. Theoretical works (ta the r tika) . Natural philosophy (ta physiologia) . Mathematics (ta math matika) B. Notebooks (ta hypomn matika) II. Intermediate works (ta metaxu) III. Particular works (ta merika) PART TWO: Titles in the Vita Hesychii (H) This list is organized in the same way as D, with two exceptions. First, IA2c “productive works” has dropped out. Second, there is an appendix, organized as follows: IV. Appendix A. Intermediate or Particular works B. Treatises C. Notebooks D. Falsely ascribed works PART THREE: Titles in Ptolemy al-Garib (A) This list is organized in the same way as D, except it contains none of the Intermediate or Particular works. It was written in Arabic, and later translated into Latin, and then reconstructed into Greek, which I here translate. PART FOUR: Titles in the order of Bekker (B) The modern edition contains works only in IA2 (“the works in propria persona”), and replaces the theoretical works before the practical and productive, as follows. -
Aeschynē in Aristotle's Conception of Human Nature Melissa Marie Coakley University of South Florida, [email protected]
University of South Florida Scholar Commons Graduate Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 3-20-2014 Aeschynē in Aristotle's Conception of Human Nature Melissa Marie Coakley University of South Florida, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd Part of the Philosophy Commons Scholar Commons Citation Coakley, Melissa Marie, "Aeschynē in Aristotle's Conception of Human Nature" (2014). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/4999 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Aeschynē in Aristotle’s Conception of Human Nature by Melissa M. Coakley A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Philosophy College of Arts and Science University of South Florida Major Professor: Joanne Waugh, Ph.D. Bruce Silver, Ph.D. Roger Ariew, Ph.D. Thomas Williams, Ph.D. Date of Approval: March 20, 2014 Keywords: Shame, Anaeschyntia, Aidōs, Aischynē, Ancient Greek Passions Copyright © 2014, Melissa M. Coakley DEDICATION This manuscript is dedicated to my husband Bill Murray and to my parents: Joan and Richard Coakley. Thank you for your endless support, encouragement, and friendship. To Dr. John P. Anton, I have learned from you the importance of having a “ton of virtue and a shield of nine layers for protection from the abysmal depths of vice.” Thank you for believing in me, my dear friend. -
Luck and Good Fortune in the Eudemian Ethics
Luck and Good Fortune in the EudemianEthics Kent Johnson Recentlythere has beensome discussion of Aristotle's treatmentof good for- tune(£\m>x;{a) in the penultimatechapter of the EudemianEthics. I Thereare two claims about this chapterI wish to challenge.One maintainsthat the use of the word tUXll (usuallytranslated as 'luck' or 'chance')in the EE is 'quite different' from Aristotle's theoretical discussion of luck, found in the Physics (Woods 1992,67). The other claim is that good fortune is a subspeciesof luck (Kenny 1992,ch. 5, esp.71 and 75). In challengingthese two views,I hopeto developan accountof Aristotle's true intent in this chapter.In the first part of this article I considerthe notion of luck asit is presentedin the Physicsand then argue that the discussionof luck in the EE accordswith this. In the secondpart I arguethat by the end of his discussionof good fortune in the EE, Aristotle doesnot consider good fortune to be any kind of luck at all. I. TuX1lin the Physicsand the EudemianEthics Woods 1992,166 denies that the useof 'luck' (tuX1l)in the EE agreeswith its usein the Physics,because in the PhysicstUX1l is usedin sucha way that 'to say that somethingoccurred by chancewill not be to give an explanation,but to deny that a general explanation is available'. Thus, there is 'no incompatibility betweensomething's occurring by chanceand its being caused',since chance is not a cause distinct from the four real causes(Woods 1992, 167). Instead, 'chanceoccurrences have the featurethat they fall underno law that holds uni- versallyor for the most part under the descriptionunder which theyare correctly said to occur by chance,though they will havesome explanation under another description'(166). -
The Quest for a Poetics of Goodness in Plato and Aristotle La Investigación De Una Poética Del Bien En Platón Y Aristóteles
The Quest for a Poetics of Goodness in Plato and Aristotle La investigación de una poética del bien en Platón y Aristóteles Dairo Orozco*1 Pontificia Universidad Javeriana - Colombia Abstract The paper, which compares Plato and Aristotle’s different approaches towards -ar tistic activity, is divided into three parts. The first part discusses Plato’s Ion on mimesis and technē, as well as the role that poetry plays in the Republic. The second section offers an account of Aristotle’s idea of happiness as the end of action. The last section of this study deals with an attempt to reconcile Plato and Aristotle’s attitude towards mimetic art in a treatise by a Neoplatonic renaissance thinker, Torquato Tasso. Keywords: aesthetic, goodness, happiness, mimesis, poetry, techne. Resumen El artículo compara las concepciones de actividad artística en Platón y Aristóteles y se divide en tres partes. En la primera, se discuten la mimesis y la technē en el Ion de Platón, así como el papel de la poesía en la República. En la segunda, se hace un recuento de la idea de felicidad de Aristóteles como fin de la acción. En la última se discute el intento de reconciliación de las posiciones de Platón y Aristóteles reali- zado por el pensador neoplatónico renacentista, Torquato Tasso. Palabras clave: estética, bien, felicidad, mimesis, poesía, techne. Artículo recibido: 24 de septiembre del 2011; aprobado: 6 de febrero del 2012 * dairosj@gmail com ideas y valores · vol. lxi · n.o 150 • diciembre de 2012 • issn 0120-0062 (impreso) 2011-3668 (en línea) • bogotá, colombia • pp. 179 - 202 [180] DAIRO OROZCO Introduction: Making Poetry Philosophy This study aims to compare the attitudes towards artistic activity of the two major figures of Western thought: Plato and Aristotle. -
Aristotle's Poetics Is a Much-Disdained Book. So Unpoetic a Soul As Aristotle's Has No Business Speaking About Such a Topic
Aristotle's Poetics is a much-disdained book. So unpoetic a soul as Aristotle's has no business speaking about such a topic, much less telling poets how to go about their business. He reduces the drama to its language, people say, and the language itself to its least poetic element, the story, and then he encourages insensitive readers like himself to subject stories to crudely moralistic readings, that reduce tragedies to the childish proportions of Aesop-fables. Strangely, though, the Poetics itself is rarely read with the kind of sensitivity its critics claim to possess, and the thing criticized is not the book Aristotle wrote but a caricature of it. Aristotle himself respected Homer so much that he personally corrected a copy of the Iliad for his student Alexander, who carried it all over the world. In his Rhetoric (III, xvi, 9), Aristotle criticizes orators who write exclusively from the intellect, rather than from the heart, in the way Sophocles makes Antigone speak. Aristotle is often thought of as a logician, but he regularly uses the adverb logik6s, logically, as a term of reproach contrasted with phusik6s, naturally . or appropriately, to describe arguments made by others, or preliminary and inadequate arguments of his own. Those who take the trouble to look at the Poetics closely will find, I think, a book that treats its topic appropriately and naturally, and contains the reflections of a good reader and characteristically powerful thinker. The first scandal in the Poetics is the initial marking out of dramatic poetry as a form of imitation. -
Diegesis – Mimesis
Published on the living handbook of narratology (http://www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de) Diegesis – Mimesis Stephen Halliwell Created: 17. October 2012 Revised: 12. September 2013 1 Definition Diegesis (“narrative,” “narration”) and mimesis (“imitation,” “representation,” “enactment”) are a pair of Greek terms first brought together for proto- narratological purposes in a passage from Plato’s Republic (3.392c–398b). Contrary to what has become standard modern usage (section 3 below), diegesis there denotes narrative in the wider generic sense of discourse that communicates information keyed to a temporal framework (events “past, present, or future,” Republic 392d). It is subdivided at the level of discursive style or presentation (lexis ) into a tripartite typology: 1) haple diegesis, “plain” or “unmixed” diegesis, i.e. narrative in the voice of the poet (or other authorial “storyteller,” muthologos, 392d); 2) diegesis dia mimeseos, narrative “by means of mimesis,” i.e. direct speech (including drama, Republic 394b–c) in the voices of individual characters in a story; and 3) diegesis di’ amphoteron, i.e. compound narrative which combines or mixes both the previous two types, as in Homeric epic, for example. From this Platonic beginning, the terms have had a long and sometimes tangled history of usage, right up to the present day, as a pair of critical categories. 2 Explication The diegesis/mimesis complex is introduced by Socrates at Republic 392c ff. to help categorize different ways of presenting a story, especially in poetry. His aim is to sketch a basic psychology and ethics of narrative. From Republic 2.376c ff. Socrates has been concerned with the contribution of storytelling in general, poetry (the most powerful medium of verbal narrative in Greek culture) in particular, to the education of the “guardians” of the ideal city hypothesized in the dialogue. -
117 Aristotle on Focal Meaning and the Unity of Science MICHAEL T
Aristotle on Focal and the Meaning Unity of Science MICHAEL T. FEREJOHN This study owes its impetus to a group of suggestions put forward by G. E. L. Owen in his 1960 article, "Logic and Metaphysics in Some Earlier Works of Aristotle".' In that work, Owen gives predominantly textual arguments for the chronological scheme represented by the following three theses. (I) In the earliest works of the Corpus (including those treatises which comprise the Organon), Aristotle was convinced that the verb "to be" [E'LvotL]and its cognates were ambiguous expressions, and that this ambiguity foredoomed the Platonic and Academic program of constructing a single, unified, and all-encompassing science of Being. (II) During an intermediate stage of Aristotle's development (represented by the seventh book of the Eudemian Ethics), he regularly noticed and worked with the possibility of systematic, or non-accidental, ambiguity, though he did not view this possibility as having any bearing on his negative claim in (I). (III) In Metaphysics F2, which reports his mature views on this subject, Aristotle finally struck upon the discovery that the verb "to be" itself was a case of systematic ambiguity (of a sort which Owen labels focal meaning ambiguity). Moreover, this discovery influenced him to reverse his previous estimation of the prospects for a universal science, and even to resurrect in the Metaphysicsthe Platonic program that he himself had dismissed as futile in his earlier works. Most of what I have to say concerns (III). What will be at issue, however, is not its truth. That matter is put beyond serious dispute by the relatively plain structure of Metaphysics F2. -
{PDF EPUB} the Eudemian Ethics by Aristotle Aristotle Eudemian Ethics
Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The Eudemian Ethics by Aristotle Aristotle Eudemian Ethics. Thesis: Alexander at various times exhibited the only form of courage Aristotle outlines in the Eudemian Ethics – the virtue of the balance between rash and cowardice. Analysis of the model of virtue ethics and the doctrine of the Mean described in Eudemian Ethics allow to distinguish between difference forms of courage on the scale between rash and cowardice, with courage being the “golden mean” of human virtue. In his epos about Alexander Plutarch mentions many situations and descriptions of events related to Alexander’s life showing him from many perspectives; however, all of them can be classified as true courage according to Aristotle’s scale. Eudemian ethics of Aristotle is not so popular as his Nicomachean ethics partly because it describes an analytical model of virtue – concept of the Mean. However, this is a key concept in Aristotle’s model of virtue ethics. The virtues of being and ethical approaches to virtues have been considered by philosophers since early times. Courage is one of classical examples in ethical models, and Aristotle used courage as one of the best examples to describe his concept of the Mean. The purpose of this paper is to consider the interconnections between Aristotle’s model of mean, concept of courage and the manifestations of courage in Alexander’s life (according to Plutarch). Aristotle was the most influential teacher in Alexander’s life and had incredible impact to his personality forming. It can thus be assumed that Alexander exhibited the courage Aristotle outlines in his “Eudemian Ethics”.