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Aristotle's Criticism of Plato's Definition of poetry.

Aristotle was a pupil of plato. Plato had set up an accedmy where he taught philosophy. People eagerly went to this accedmy to learn wisdom. Philosophy for the Greeks didn't mean what it means today. It meant a rational study of everything. Whoever subject was expounded logically, it became philosophy. Among many people who went there, was a young man called Aristotle. He had great reverence for plato, but he was not like others. He was critical. He did not accept everything but found faults and came to conclusions different from plato. So when he grew up, he started his own school in which he expounded his views. His philosophy was very different, in fact opposite to Plato's. Plato was an idealist wheresas he is realist. He disagreed with plato. In his books, he has given a criticism of Plato's views and then expounded his own views. He has taken Plato's changes one by one and refuted them. But his replies are scattered in different contexts. For example, his answer to metaphysical change is found in the theory of Memesis. The second reply he gives when he is discussing his view of tragedy. Plato defined poetry as an imitation. The Greek word for this is Memesis. By imitation we imply an inferior imitation. But he gives it a new meaning. He refutes the view of plato and gives an answer to his charges but nowhere does he name plato, After all, he had been student of plato. According to the Greek view of relationship between a teacher and student, it would have been disrespectful for him to critisze his teacher. So he doesn't criticise his teacher plato but his views.

1) plato had said that art is an imperfect copy of an imperfect copy, hence twice removed from the reality and so it is false. Aristotle differs from this view. He says that poetry is an imitation of not what is or has been but what might be or ought to be. He totally rejects Plato's theory of ideas. He doesn't agree with plato that idea has an objective existence and tha world of ideas is absolute. He believes that idea is a mental abstraction born of observation. It has no existence outside the mind of man. According to him what exists is real. Plato used the words idea and thing and Aristotle uses the word( form=) for idea. Matter is the material and form is the force working within. Aristotle believes that there can be no matter without form and vice versa. Both are inseperable. Everything of this world,weather man, tree or mountain is a combination of matter and form. (Thing) is not a slavish copy of the metaphysical idea, but it is the combination of form and matter. "Matter" is the material of which we are made and "form" is the force working within the matter. This force is dynamic. It leads to activity. It is following a purpose. It operates within matter and leads towards an ideal. It is trying to mould the matter in the form of ideal thing_ideal man, state, law, etc, but do we find an ideal thing in this world? We don't find ideal things in this world. Aristotle gives the reason. He says that matter is obstructive. It can not be easily moulded. It would not allow itself to be moulded into an ideal things. The result is that what is produced falls very short of the ideal. There is no ideal man, woman, law etc, because matter obstructs the activity of this force. But the degree differs. It falls more in some cases, than others. There are degrees and grades of people, some are almost ideal and some fall short in some degrees. So we have pretty and ugly faces. In other words in some cases the force succeeds more than others, but complete success it never has. So there is no ideal in this world. Now the poets try to find out what was that ideal which the form was trying to achieve, Aristotle consider thinking to be the greatest force in man. The thinking process is the greatest process, so by to find out the ideal in each case and that is what the poet imitates. The imitates not the things but the ideal which can not be achieved. What the poet is imitating does not exists.

They imitate unrealized ideas, unrealize because the force was trying to achieve but failed. They are not imitating a particular thing as plato though but unrealized ideal, that which has not happened. So the poets can not be called copyist. Poet is a creator. What he gives is not just a things but the imaginative reconstruction of them. So what he is conveying is not falsehood. Poetry has its own truth. It is different from from scientific truth. It is also different from historical truth. The scientists imitate what is facts as they are. The historians imitate and what has been but poets imitate what might be or ought to be. Poetical truth is not factual truth but ideal truth. Art is not servile. It is not twice removed from reality. The artist is not an imitator but a creator. He gives a vision of unrealized things.

2) plato had said that poetry nourishes the emotions and feelings and weakness the reason. Aristotle agrees that poetry arouses feeling but he does not consider it to be harmful for the moral development of man. On the other hand, he believes that if feelings and emotions are kept locked up, then they become harmful for healthy moral development of man. He says that reason should be there but it should not be wipe out the emotions. If feelings are surpressed, this creates lots of problems, psychological and others. It leads to moral hypocrisy and all sorts of mental disorders. It completely destroys the moral personality of man. So the proper thing to do is to give these emotions a proper and socially accepted outlet. Both extremes are wrong. Poetry by exciting these ... gives a harmful outlet, expression to these emotions and In this way the effect of poetry is not bad but is healthy and good for the moral development of personality.

Aristotle says exactly what Freud said 2 100 years later. What creates problems in the life of man is not expressing desires but crushing them, said. Freud. If we suppress a wish, we do not get rid of it but we only, push it back (into subconscious). It is there and becomes more destructive. It distorts human personality. So the cause is not expression but suppression of desires. Aristotle did not know about the subconscious but he says the same thing which was said by Freud later on. Freud used the word 'sublimation' and Aristotle uses the word 'catharsis'. Catharsis means first of all a pleasurable outlet to the pent up emotions. If they suppressed, a tension is created.So a way has to be found to give them an expression. Drama says Aristotle, gives a pleasurable outlet to pent up emotions. But Catharsis means something more. It also means artistic transmutation of the emotions. The lower form of emotions transformed to a high form. A nobler process takes place, so it is what he meant by catharsis. Aristotle's reply in a nutshell is that it is not the expression but suppression of feelings and emotions which is harmful for the moral development of personality.

3) Plato's third objection was that art leads to the weakening of personality. He said that when you watch a play or read an epic, you identify yourself with hero or that character. You think yourself to be that character and pretending to be someone else which you are not, leads to the weakening of personality which is harmful both morally and psychologically. Aristotle's answer is that for healthy development of man, it is necessary to forget ourselves and identify ourselves with others. We are too self centured and selfish and oblivious of the needs of others. Art and literature makes us realize the needs of others. In general dramas like Antigone, the doubtful fate of mankind. Similarly an epic we read of the fate of man like A chillies. When the audience identify themselves with these characters, they cease to think of their own petty desires, worries etc, they start sympathising with

mankind and its problems. This should lead to the lessening of greed and selfishness, so poetry has morally purifying influence and not the opposite of it. Buddha had asked what is the root cause of all moral and psychological ailments? He replied himself and said that the root causes of all these ailments is yoursellf. It is T. T want this, my desires, my ambitions, I, I and I is the cause of all ailments. Yourself is your greatest enemy. The remedy Buddha suggested was the doctrine of 'no self '. He went to the extent of declaring that the self is and illusion and has no reality. There is a beautiful story in the life of Buddha. There was a woman. She lost her only son. It was believed that holy men perform miracles. She asked Buddha to bring her son back to life somehow or the other. Buddha felt her sorrow as his own, her grief was his own. He compassionately assured her to bring her son to life if she would bring a few seeds from a house where no one ever died. But wherever she went, she was told that someone dear sister or husband had died. There was no house in which no one had died. She hoped to find at least one such house but wherever she went, she was told that death is the return of love. So she started thinking of the sorrows of others. She forget her own grief. She came to Buddha not to bring her son to life back, but show her the path of peace. The logic behind this story is that when you are obsessed with your own grief, it leads to self pity and morbidity. But when you draw your own sorrow, it leads you to the love of mankind. In other words, hatred is conquered not by hatred but love. Aristotle had a very different philosophy from that of Buddha, but on this point they are agree. Aristotle also thought that many of our problems are that we are thinking of ourselves. We must learn, somehow, at least to think of others and to forget ourselves, to identify ourselves with others and to feel what they feel and to maked their problems our own. So identifying one's self with others is not the cause of ailments as thought by plato.

4) plato fourth attack on poetry was not theoretical but was inductive. He took examples of particular teachers and found faults with the moral behaviour of their gods and heroes. For example, in Homer we have God's taking sides with Greeks and Trojans. He said that poets import teaching which is not morally wholesome. He says, is this t the kind of teaching which is going to make people morally good citizens and when Homer does this, what must the smaller poets be doing? So he draws the conclusion that poetry is bad and must be excluded. Aristotle sees an immediate fallacy in the statement. He simply says that the charge that plato has leveled is not against poetry is such but against the poets. The fault is not that of poetry. If Homer is giving wrong teaching, the fault is not that of poetry but of homer. He does not agree with plato that poet is a teacher. Similarly, if Sappho in her poetry has talked of sensual delight and indulgence in pleasure, the fault is Sappho's and not poetry. He says that the very criterion of judgment is wrong. Poets function is not to teach or moralize. The function of poetry is to give pleasure. Art is not subject to morality, reason or politics. It is an independent activity. It has its own end if not he ends of ethics, to tells you what is good and bad, to build a good society. To make you a pious and God fearing man is the job of religion not of poetry.

(M.A English Literature Part 1 Paper 2 Drama)

Tragedy, Fate And Hamartia:

One major element of tragic fate is hamartia. One major element of hamartia is often hubris.

Hamartia

The most common definition of tragic hamartia is "tragic flaw", but we need to be careful with this term and understand what the Greeks meant by "flaw" and how it relates to a broadly defined sense of "fate": Through hamartia, the tragic hero visits his own fate upon him or herself. In this way, "fate" is transformed from some metaphysical concept -- "the will of the gods," "the divine order of the cosmos" etc. -- to one in which we see our fates as tied to inherent elements of our selves, of our psyches, our own personal characteristics, that ordain our destinies.

To put it in a simplistic way, hamartia means "no matter where you go, there you are"; you cannot escape your own personality; there are elements of our selves from which we simply cannot escape, and, for the Greeks, these elements are "inherited" and will sometimes determine the course of our lives.

This suggests we might see hamartia as "layered", like an onion: on the surface, fate seems beyond one's control and "the will of the gods", but dig deeper and we find we will our own fates through our own personalities and character traits, but dig deeper still and we find our character traits were in turn formed largely by luck or inherited via the choices others made: you did not choose your parents; you did not choose your DNA; you did not choose what continent you were born on or in what century you found yourself.... You did not choose your skin color or how others perceive that color; you did not choose to be born, say, to a parent who would be killed in war or to be born to one who inherited tens of millions of dollars and sent you to the best private schools.... In short, fate determines your character, and your character then determines your fate. Consider how much of your own life was determined by:

i) Genetics and Personality: Most obviously your gender was determined by your genetics, not some choice you made, and the fact of you genetics will have a profound influence on how your life unfolds and what kinds of choices are available to you. Increasingly psychologists believe that deep elements of our characters/personalities are coded in our DNA, including things such as intelligence, disposition, alcoholism, diabetes, cancer…. ii) Cultural Context: Did you choose, before you were born, to be born in the USA in the 20th century? Did Clytemnestra choose to be born in Mycenaean Greece? Of course not, so how we are treated (based on our gender, or race, or body size) is determined by culture, not choice. A child born in Saudi Arabia is highly unlikely to be raised a Christian, and a child born in Alabama is highly unlikely to be raised a Muslim. A white man born in the USA 18 years ago faces an entirely different set of contexts from a black woman born in the USA the same year, not to mention 50 years ago. So our genetics combines with cultural influence to make us who we are.

iii) Choices: who your father and mother chose to marry, or who your grandparents chose to marry, what church they chose to attend, where they chose to live, whether or not your ancestors chose to immigrate to America…which side of 110th st or Central Park you were born in, whether you were born North or South of the Mexico-United States border…. iv) Behavioral Conditioning: Of course whatever elements are not coded into your DNA must be given to you by your experiences, the way you were raised and what you observed in your parents. As they say, you will marry your parents; you will raise your children the way you were raised; your reactions to stressful situations were taught you by observing your parents etc.... Oedipus

Oedipus has long offered the classic example of hamartia. At first glance the story seems to argue that we are all bound to an inescapable fate, a destiny beyond our control, and that it is folly to try to escape it, but a deeper reading reveals that it is the very same elements of Oedipus' personality that have made him a hero to the people of Thebes that will ultimately lead to his downfall; in other words, he has led himself to his own undoing.

Consider Romeo and Juliet as "star-cross'd lovers" ultimately undone by their own hamartia; although they are somewhat "doomed" by the bigoted Veronese social order, ultimately their own, impatient adolescent passions rush them toward death.

If Romeo And Juliet were a medieval Christian play, or if it took place in Hebrew scriptures, we'd probably interpret their hamartia as "sin"; they have not honored the will of their parents and they have violated their communities' morals, so clearly they've been punished by God. But Shakespeare's Renaissance view of tragedy is principally Greek, not Judeo-Christian, and we are left seeing their destructive passions, their youthful, idealistic, impatient love, as tragically beautiful. It is a painful beauty, but it is beauty none-the-less.

And this is how we should approach Oedipus; fate, the will of the gods is a metaphor for the workings of both those social and natural forces beyond our personal control and the inescapable elements of our own psyches -- our own selves that both make us heroic and tragic, and thus make us beautiful.

...and "flawed" or, most telling, in Oedipus' and Romeo and Juliet's cases, doomed by ignorance, knowledge and experience.

hamartia

Hamartia And Hubris

At this point you've probably guessed the close link between hamartia and hubris, for what makes us great often leads to our own downfall when it is excessive. Youthful passion is a good thing, until it's excessive, and then it can destroy Romeo and Juliet. So too Oedipus' intelligence and obsession with justice and finding the truth -- these are good qualities and they make him a good king, but too much of a good thing is going to lead to some mighty bad stuff.

Tragic Irony

Tragedy is inherently ironic, in the literal term, which is to say that involve an order, a logic, but it is an inverted logic: the events unfold in the *opposite* manner than intended or expected. Tragedy is always ironic because, if you think about it, hubris is itself inherently ironic: our strengths may cause our downfall; our greatest strengths can be our greatest weaknesses.

In tragedy the characters' hamartia often drives them to make ironic choices: contradicting the very values that have driven them in the first place: Oedipus swears he'll punish the offender, when it is of course himself; Romeo and Juliette chase eternal love, which causes their early deaths; Hamlet and Clytemnestra must commit murder to avenge murder, becoming the very thing they loathe; characters committed to truth wind up being forced to lie; those committed to their families wind up destroying them; people rush headlong into death in their quest for safety.... Our brains are wired for logic and seeing and remembering patterns is of great evolutionary value – we remember that when the sun goes down “over there” it will rise again after night on the opposite side of our periphery; we note that spring follows winter and summer spring and we must plant seeds in early spring if we want to harvest food in the summer or fall etc.

But life seems to unfold at times with an illogical logic: an ironic, inverted logic, wherein the opposite of what we expected and plans happens, often with the most ironically tragic outcome (witness Oedipus).

Thus there is a disjoint between our logical minds and this illogical existence.

Paripeteia: The Ironic Reversal

Tragic irony is also expressed in the nature of the hero's fall, as well, and how his fate is ironically reversed. Often, the hero discovers he is exactly the opposite of what he has tried so hard to be, or moral choices (or conflict between competing moral values or impulses) have led him toward immoral behavior; note how these relate to hubris: how our downfall is related to an excess of a quality that is normally beneficial.

Alex and Eric

Tragedy and Celebrity Hubris

Remember that these plays are likely, loosely based around actual, historical figures, so in many ways they are an artistic representation of reality. In our culture these same "tragedies" play out nearly identically in the media's treatment of, say, Whitney Houston, Amy Winehouse, Heath Ledger, Kurt Cobain, Marilyn Monroe etc etc.

Fate As Metaphor

Death: It's worth remembering that the word "fatal", meaning "deadly" is rooted in the word "fate". Life is fatal: it ends in death, inevitably. There is no escaping this fact. Thus, each and every life carries a tragic fate: we all fall from a great height, despite all of our greatest efforts.

Gilgamesh wrestles with this: he must make his peace with mortality. Achilles wrestles with it...we will all wrestle with it. Adam and Eve's ejection is fated and tragic: it seems bound to happen given human nature, and to be human they cannot eat of the Tree Of Life and thus become immortal.