Aristotle on Poetry of science Flashcards
Is the just life better than the unjust life
Part of why plato is less ok with imitative poetry, is because he is really in the theory of forms
The role of appearances in deceiving people and blocking their way to the truth of things is the heart of the forms and the controversial thing about poetry
Mimēsis
imitation
We look to the idea that one craftsman makes the couches and another makes the chairs
There are many chairs, but there is one idea of a chair
All of these things are things that humans make
The greek word for make - poiēsis
The word poetry is gotten from this greek word
You could be a maker of everything if you walked around with a mirror, you could make people, and trees, and stars
It seems silly because you are not actually making something
That is precisely Socrates’s point
It is the same with poetry and art
Glaucon responds
They look like they are, but they surely are not in truth (the things people are making with the mirror)
The mirror reveals how things look not how they are in truth
The poet and artist does not truly make what he makes
There may be three kinds of couches, or houses, this is the basic theory of imitation
We have the form of house, and couch and chair
This is the heaven of forms
And then there is the couch that carpenters produce, physical couches
The third is the one the painter produced
These three reside in the three forms of couches
The imitator can produce anything, because all it is doing is grabbing on to one aspect or one appearance
All you have to do is hold up a mirror and this is what painters or poets are actually doing
The key question is, do you suppose that if a man were able to make both, make boats, but also pretend to make boats as an actor in a TV show
If they could do both, do you think they would spend their life making the phantom or actually making the ships
There are human beings natural propensity from childhood and onwards to engage in mimetic behavior, this distinguishes humans from other animals
Through mimetic actions is how we accomplish our first learnings
Imitation is central to human beings learning anything
Not just dancing and speaking, but also essential to becoming experts in astronomy or biology
Learning of all sorts, for Aristotle, comes to be by imitation
The way to see past is the particulars, is to do poetry well
The task of the teacher is to make the particulars clear to the students, and help students navigate particulars, so that they can see through the particulars to the universal
That’s what the imitative poet does
If Aristotle is right, then any good teacher is a poet
Wondrous
For plato, what makes man wondrous is the ability to ascend to the direct contemplation of the forms
What makes us wondrous for aristotle is that we are able to sort through the world of appearances
Aristotle claims that the things we have to learn to do, we learn by doing them
The activity of imitation is conatural to human beings from childhood, and in this way they differ from other animals, viz. That they are the most imitative and accomplish (poitetai)
Two moments in poetic and artistic imitation/representation
Beholding the representation (theōria)
Making of the representation (Poiēsis)
Poetic production and imitation in all intellectual learning?
There is a difference between theory and production
Theory is abstract/knowledge of things in themselves
Distinctions between theoretical/productive has been exaggerated
All theoretical thinking involves some productive or poetic activity
Some productive activities have a cognitive product
Poetic activity can be directed at knowing things as they are
Division of the sciences
Theoretical,practical, productive
Three genera of knowledge and even of thinking generally
They differ in their end and the objects that are theorizes
Must set aside distinction between practical and productive
Geometrical discovery
Diagrams or diagrammatic proofs are also discovered by an activity for people to discover by dividing. If diagrams had already been divided, they would be clear. But, as it is, they are present within potentiality.
Why does the triangle have internal angles equal to 180, because the angles around a single point are equal to 180.
Cognitive production even in natural sciences
Aristotle thinks that the task of learning is grasping the phenomena/appearances sufficiently
You come to understand which perspectives are deceptive and which perspectives reveal something
