Aristotle: Aesthetics and philosophy of mindDavid GallopAESTHETICSAesthetics, as that field is now understood, does not form the subjectmatterof any single Aristotelian work. No treatise is devoted to suchtopics as the essential nature of a work of art, the function of art ingeneral, the differences between art and craft, or the concepts of meaningand truth in the arts. Nor does Aristotle anywhere examine, in a generalway, the status of what would now be called ‘aesthetic judgments’, or seeka rational foundation on which they might be based. He hardly evenpossessed a vocabulary in which such questions could be raised.His writings nevertheless contain some of the most suggestive andinfluential remarks concerning the arts that have ever been penned. Theseare to be found mainly in the
Poetics,<sup>1</sup> a short treatise on poeticcomposition, from which only the first of two books has survived. Thatwork has provided principles of criticism which have lasting interest andrelevance, not only for drama and epic, but for literary genres unknown toAristotle himself, and also, though to a lesser extent, for the non-literaryarts.The most convenient starting point for consideration of Aristotelianaesthetics is provided by Plato’s treatment of the arts (cf.
RoutledgeHistory of Philosophy, vol.I, ch. 12), and especially by his notoriousbanishment of poetry from the ‘ideal state’ depicted in his
Republic. Plato’sown poetic impulse had evidently been a source of severe internal conflict.Especially in
Republic X, his attack had been so vehement, and framed insuch personal terms (for example 595b–c, 607e–608b), as to suggest that inbanishing poetry he was renouncing an ardent passion of his own. Poetryhad been branded as the arch-enemy of philosophy, and Socrates made tospeak of a ‘long-standing quarrel’ between them (607b). Yet Plato wouldspare poetry if he could.For, in closing, he had made Socrates challengelovers of poetry ‘to speak on its behalf in prose’, and to show ‘that it is notonly pleasant but beneficial’ (607d–e).The
Poetics is, in effect, a response to that challenge. It is true that Platois nowhere named in the treatise, and that Aristotle does not expresslyclaim to be answering him. Nevertheless, in the dry phrases of the
Poeticsand in its major contentions we can hear the elements of just such a prosedefence of poetry as Plato had invited.
The Poetics
and ‘poetry’The treatise begins with a survey of poetry in relation to other art forms, aclassification of its principal genres (chapters 1–3), and a short history oftheir development (chapters 4–5). The bulk of the extant work is devotedto a discussion of tragedy (chapters 6–22), followed by a shorter treatmentof epic (chapters 23–4), solutions to some problems in literary criticism(chapter 25), and a comparative evaluation of tragedy and epic (chapter26). The lost portion of the work probably included a discussion ofcomedy (promised at 49b21–2).The project of the
Poetics is announced in its opening sentence. Aristotlethere proposes to consider ‘the poetic craft itself and its species, the power
(dunamis) that each species possesses, and how plots should be puttogether if the composition is going to prove successful’ (47a1–3).It is significant that plot-construction is introduced at the outset. For thisat once reveals how Aristotle conceived of the subject. That subject wasnot ‘poetry’ as we now use the term. The
noun poiêsis was formed on theverb
poiein, which meant, quite generally, ‘to make’. Although the nouncan bear the wider sense of ‘making’, it was often used specifically forcomposition in verse, a curious narrowing of usage noticed in Plato’s
Symposium (205c–d). In the same context Plato had assimilated poeticcomposition to various other forms of creative activity, regarded as somany different expressions of love. But he had not challenged the limitationof literary
poiêsis to metrical verse.Aristotle does challenge this. On the first page of the
Poetics he mentionsthe pre-Socratic cosmologist Empedocles. Although that thinker hadcomposed his account of the world in Homeric hexameters, he deserves tobe called a natural scientist rather than a poet (47b18–20). Later (51b2–4)Aristotle observes that if the works of the historian Herodotus were putinto verse, they would still be ‘history of a sort’. On the other hand, themimes of Sophron and Xenarchus and Socratic dialogues, dramaticsketches and conversations in prose, are mentioned (47b10–11) as if theyshared something in common with ‘poetic’ art.Metre, therefore, is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for thecraft examined in the
Poetics. If it is taken for a defining property of‘poetic’ utterance, it will follow that ‘poetry’ and its cognates aremistranslations of key terms in the treatise. Even the broader English use of‘poetic’ to mark certain features of diction or style misses what Aristotletreats as central. The
Poetics deals mainly with only two genres, epic andtragedy, both of which happen to use metre and poetic language. But thosefeatures are, for Aristotle, incidental to their status as
poiêsis. What madeHomer or Sophocles masters of that craft was their skill in putting togethera story.This brings us to the nub of Aristotle’s response to Plato. Plato’s attackwas misguided, in Aristotle’s view, because it had misrepresented thenature and the impact of fiction. Aristotle’s project was not, then, to givean account of all that we should call ‘poetry’, but to examine thefoundation of the two fictional genres most highly developed in his time. Indoing so, he not only ‘answered’ Plato, but became an effective mediator inthe ‘long-standing quarrel between poetry and philosophy’. For through hisexamination of poetic fiction, he showed how an art form, far from beingan enemy of philosophy or the sciences, might be seen as their ally. To haveshown that was no small contribution towards a philosophy of art.
Aristotelian mimêsisIn
Republic II–III and X Plato had used the concept of
mimêsis to denigrateartists and especially poets. The concept is no less central to Aristotle’saesthetics than it had been to Plato’s. But Aristotle uses it to restore thepoets to a place of honour. How does he achieve this?The
Poetics begins by classifying the major poetic genres along withmusic, dance and the visual arts, as so many different forms of
mimêsis(47a13–18). These are differentiated according to the media they use(chapter 1), the objects they represent (chapter 2), and their mode ofrepresentation (chapter 3). The last of these differentiae turns upon thedistinction between poetic narrative and dramatic enactment.Unfortunately, however, the
Poetics contains no explicit definition of
mimêsis itself. In the broadest terms, we can understand it as ‘making ordoing something which resembles something else’ (Lucas [3.6], 259). Butthat formula is too vague to be useful, and it harbours a tiresome obscuritywhich bedevils Greek discussions of the whole subject.
Mimêsis can mean—as its English derivatives ‘mime’ and ‘mimicry’ suggest—enactment orimpersonation. It was upon that sense of
mimêsis that Plato had partlyrelied when he chastised the poets in
Republic III (especially 394d–398b)for their use of dramatic enactment: poetry is ‘mimetic’ by virtue ofmimicking the words or actions of characters whose roles are enacted.But
mimêsis can also mean producing a likeness or representation of someoriginal subject, as painters depict pieces of furniture such as beds andtables, or human figures such as carpenters and cobblers. In thebroader polemic of
Republic X Plato had condemned poetry as ‘mimetic’,not for its mimicry, but on the wider ground that it represented particularobjects, people, scenes or events in the sensible world. This charge hadincluded epic poetry no less than drama. Indeed, by calling Homer ‘theoriginal teacher and leader of all those fine tragedians’ (595c), Plato haddeliberately blurred the distinction which he had himself drawn earlierbetween narrative and enacted modes of poetic fiction (393a–b, cf. 394b–c).Which of the two kinds of
mimêsis has Aristotle in mind in the
Poetics?With respect to poetry, at least, the answer is not always clear. In his sketchof the early history of poetry (chapter 4) Aristotle traces it to two ‘causes’,both natural (48b5). The first of these is the natural human tendency to‘imitate’
(mimeisthai), evidenced by the earliest learning of children. Does
mimeisthai here mean mimicry or representation? The human species isdifferentiated from others by virtue of being ‘thoroughly mimetic’(
mimêtikôtaton, 48b7). But does this mean that human beings alone tendto mimic and thereby learn from the behaviour of others, for example inlearning to talk? Or does it mean that they alone are given to makinglikenesses of things, such as pictures or sculptures? The latter characteristicdoes in fact differentiate them more markedly than the former, sincemimicry also occurs in non-human species (cf.
Historia Animalium 536b9–21, 597b22–9). Elsewhere (
Politics 1338a40–b2, cf. a17–19) Aristotleurges that children be taught to draw, not for its practical utility butbecause it makes them observers of physical beauty. When he speaks in the
Poetics of ‘the earliest lessons’ of children (48b7–8), he is probablythinking of their drawing, painting or modelling before they learn to reador write.It is clearer that he has representational
mimêsis in mind when he turnsto the second ‘cause’ for the development of poetry. For this is the humantendency to take pleasure in representational objects
(mimêmata), whichare exemplified by visual likenesses (48b9–12). Aristotle observes that wedelight in viewing precisely detailed likenesses of things, even if theiroriginals are inherently painful. The pleasure is attributed to ‘learning’ and‘inferring’: ‘it comes about that in viewing they learn and infer what eachthing is, for example that this [person] is that one’ (48b16–17). Here thecomposition of poetic fiction is treated as analogous to drawing orsculpting. We enlarge our understanding of the world both by makingrepresentations ourselves and by viewing those made by others. ThusAristotle accounts for both the impulse to compose fiction and thewidespread enjoyment of it. Both are traced to our natural desire to learn.It is often objected that he here places undue emphasis upon mererecognition as a factor in the appreciation of a work of art. Neither artisticmerit nor aesthetic pleasure depends upon a work’s recognizable fidelity toa real original. The original may be quite unknown to us, or dead or nonexistent,yet the work may still give pleasure, indeed greater pleasure thanmany a good likeness of a familiar subject.In reply it is sometimes suggested that what is at issue is the recognitionof the likeness as typifying a
class of subjects, and as highlighting what ischaracteristic of that class. Such an interpretation, if it could be squaredwith the text, would fit neatly with Aristotle’s later contention (51b6–11)that fiction deals with ‘universals’ rather than particulars. Therepresentational work, though it depicts an individual, is of interest asexhibiting features of a type: this is the way that such-and-such people willgenerally appear or behave. Aristotle’s pronouns are, however,demonstrative, not sortal. So unless we emend them, he is plainly speakingof inferring the identity of an individual: ‘this person (in the portrait) isthat person (whom we already know)’. But then what does mereidentification of a familiar individual have to do with pleasurable learningfrom a work of art?Some light is thrown upon Aristotle’s meaning by a closely parallel textfrom the
Rhetoric.Again, since learning and wondering are pleasant, it follows that suchthings as acts of representation must be pleasant—for instancepainting, sculpture, poetic composition—and every product of skilfulrepresentation: this latter, even if the object represented is not itselfpleasant: for one does not delight in that, but there is an inference thatthis is that, with the result that one learns something.(1371b4–10, trans. after revised Oxford translation)This passage anticipates the
Poetics in stressing ‘inference’ and ‘learning’from a representation, even of objects that are inherently painful. Its pointis not, however, limited to the subjects of human likenesses, since thepronouns in the inference schema (‘this is that’) are neuter. Moreover, thepleasure taken in learning is derived from ‘wonder’. The work prompts itsviewers to ask questions of it, and presumably contains features fromwhich answers may be inferred. Thus it both arouses and gratifies humancuriosity. The pleasure lies in identifying something that is not expresslynamed or asserted, but is merely shown. Something is suggested by therepresentational object, which its viewers can learn only by figuring it outfor themselves. In short, a representational work of art demands
interpretation.This point is crucial for grasping what is distinctive in the Aristotelianconception of
mimêsis. When Aristotle insists upon the mimetic status ofpoetic fictions, he is, in effect, distinguishing their contents from thedeclarative assertions of history, philosophy or natural science (cf.Halliwell [3.17], 72–3, 172). By means of that distinction, he effectivelyundermines Plato’s objection that poetic fiction is inimical to truth. A
mimêsis lays no claim to assert truth, because it makes no explicit assertionat all. Whatever truth it contains is merely implicit, and its viewers are leftto seek out and identify that truth for themselves.This notion of
mimêsis, though visible throughout the
Poetics, isespecially prominent in Aristotle’s remarks about organic structure intragic plot (chapters 7–8); in his distinction between poetic fiction andhistory (chapter 9); and in his concept of
mimêsis in epic poetry (chapters23–4). We shall consider these topics in turn.
Organic structureOrganic concepts and illustrations occur frequently in the
Poetics.<sup>2</sup> Theystem, in part, from Aristotle’s conception of a poetic fiction as a
mimêsis ofits subject. He thinks of the subject as a living creature, whose likeness thepoet aims to capture, as painters aim to capture the likeness of human oranimal models. Greek used the same noun
(zôion) for ‘picture’ as for‘animal’, and the Greek word for ‘drawing’ or ‘painting’
(zôgraphia)embodied a connection between those arts and the living subjects theydepicted. Accordingly, a representational work must, so far as its mediumallows, be so structured as to exhibit the features of the creature which itrepresents.Plato in the
Phaedrus (264b–d cf. 268c–d, 2690) had already observedthat in any composition, an organic principle should govern the ordering ofthe materials. Aristotle uses organic models extensively, especially in
Poetics chapters 6–8, to enunciate several broad aesthetic principles, whoseinfluence upon artistic composition and criticism has extended far beyondtragedy.After giving a formal definition of tragedy (49b22–8), he deduces fromits essential nature what he calls its six ‘qualitative parts’: plot, character,thought, diction, choral ode and spectacle. As noticed above, the ‘part’ towhich he attaches prime importance is plot
(muthos), He calls the plot of atragedy its ‘first principle and, so to speak, its soul’ (50a38–9). Themetaphor is derived from his psychology (see pp. 90–104 below). The‘soul’
(psuchê) of an animal is the ‘form’ of its living body, i.e. the set ofpowers possessed by the adult member of its species, which determine itsphysical make-up and direct every stage in its growth. Likewise the plot ofa tragedy determines everything that happens in it, shaping the entireaction from beginning to end.The primacy of plot is indicated also by a visual analogy. It is comparedwith an outline sketch of some definite object, in contrast with colours laidon at random (50b1–4). Here the ‘action’ represented by the play isconceived as an organism, whose structure the plot must reveal, just as ablack-and-white figure reveals that of an animal.The same idea underlies Aristotle’s directions for plot-structure(chapters 7–8). The action must be ‘complete’ or ‘whole’. ‘Whole’ isexplicated in terms of the plot’s containing ‘a beginning, a middle and anend’ (50b26–7). Aristotle thinks of its successive phases as analogous to ananimal’s head, trunk and tail. Just as the parts of the animal’s body areconnected, so the plot should represent a
nexus of events, so arranged thateach renders necessary, or at least probable, the one that follows it. Only inthis way can a fictional
mimêsis exhibit the sorts of causal connection thathold in the real world. Aristotle distinguishes causal order from meretemporal succession (52a18– 21), and sharply criticizes dramatists whoseplots are ‘episodic’ (51b33–5). For a disjointed plot, lacking causalconnection between its incidents, cannot suggest those general truths abouthuman character and conduct which it is the business of fiction to display.Equally far-reaching are Aristotle’s remarks regarding the proper lengthfor a tragic plot and the criteria for beauty (50b34–51a6). Here theappreciation of a play is expressly compared with the study of an animal. Adue proportion or balance between the parts and the whole is of primeimportance in the appreciation of beauty, whether in natural objects or inartistic representations of them. The work must therefore be large enoughfor its parts to be separately discernible, yet not so large that the observerloses all sense of its unity or wholeness. A conspectus of the parts inrelation to each other and to the whole is needed for the appreciation of arepresentational work, just as it is for the observation of an animal. In bothcases we need to be able to grasp the contribution made by each element toa well co-ordinated, functioning whole.Aristotle also emphasizes unity in plot. Here too his remarks have awider aesthetic relevance, although the requirement of unity in drama hassometimes been extended in ways which lack any basis in his text.Nowhere does the
Poetics insist upon ‘unity of place’ or ‘unity of time’. Allthat it demands is ‘unity of action’. Aristotle observes that this is notsecured merely by stringing together unrelated episodes in the life of asingle individual (51a16–22). Just as, in the composition of an animal,nature makes nothing without a purpose, so each element in a wellstructuredplot should be placed where it is for a reason. Everything thathappens should have a discernible bearing upon what happens elsewhere inthe play. A grasp of those relationships must be possible through aconspectus of the entire work. For only through a survey of the entireaction can the viewer draw inferences regarding the import of the play.Because a structured and unified plot displays necessary or probableconnections in the real world, the foregoing remarks lead Aristotle directlyinto his celebrated contrast between ‘poetry’ and history.
Poetic fiction and historyWhereas the historian’s task is to record events which
have occurred, thepoet’s is to speak of ‘the kinds of events which
could occur and are possibleby the standards of probability or necessity’ (51a36–8, trans. Halliwell).Here Aristotle implicitly rejects Plato’s characterization of the poet as amere ‘imitator’ of sensible particulars. For poetic fiction has ageneralizing purpose. It aims to show the
sort of thing that happens, byusing plot-structures in which the behaviour of certain
sorts of agent isdisplayed (51b6–11). Aristotle has here pinpointed the essential differencebetween history and fiction. The first duty of historians is not to exhibitgeneral truths, but to record particular events, as they have grounds forbelieving them to have occurred. Authors of fiction, by contrast, can tailorthe events of their stories to exhibit whatever general truths they wish tosuggest. This distinction between poetic and historical aims is clearer incomedy than in tragedy, Aristotle remarks (51b11–15), because comedymade more frequent use of invented plots.Thus, ‘poetry is more philosophical and more serious than history, sincepoetry speaks more of universals, history of particulars’ (51b5–7). Poeticfiction aims to show truths that have a larger significance than particularhistorical facts, because they emulate the generalizations of scientifictheory. Yet we must firmly grasp that a poetic
mimêsis does not directlyassert, but merely suggests, those truths about character and conductwhose workings it displays. Its audience must infer truths to which itsaction points, but which it does not expressly affirm.The contrast between fiction and history, Aristotle further argues(51b29–32), need not prevent poets from basing their works upon fact,since real events may be as well suited as fictional ones to show the sort ofthing that is likely to happen. ‘Historical fiction’ is not, indeed, acontradiction in terms. If Aristotle took the figures and events oftraditional legend to have been real, then most of the tragic repertoireperformed in his time would have been, for him, what Shakespeare’s socalled‘histories’ are for us. A sufficiently powerful fiction may sometimesacquire the status of fact. Shakespeare’s Henry V and Richard III became,respectively, the warrior-hero and the arch-villain of English school historybooks. Nevertheless, to regard the content of such plays as beingstraightforwardly ‘affirmed’ by the dramatist is, from Aristotle’sperspective, to misapprehend their purpose altogether.
Mimêsis in epic poetrySo far we have interpreted Aristotle on the assumption that poetic
mimêsisgenerally means ‘representation’ rather than mimicry. But a vexing passagein his discussion of epic places this once more in doubt.Among Homer’s many other laudable attributes is his grasp—uniqueamong epic poets—of his status as a poet. For the poet should speakas little as possible in his own person, since it is not by virtue of thatthat he is a
mimêtês.(60a5–8, trans. after Halliwell)It is usually supposed that Aristotle here refers to the distinction that Platohad drawn in
Republic III between narrative and
oratio recta. For Platohad there used the expression ‘speaking in his own person’ (393a6, cf.394c2–3) to contrast Homer’s narrative sections with the frequent passagesin which his characters speak directly. If that is what Aristotle means, thenhe has switched, without warning, to the sense of
mimêsis in which itmeans ‘mimicry’, and he is suggesting that only in passages of
oratio rectais the epic poet a genuine
mimêtês. Yet that interpretation creates theutmost difficulty. It restricts
mimêsis more narrowly than Aristotle’s usagein the treatise would generally suggest. It is flatly inconsistent with his ownearlier distinction between narrative and enactive modes of
mimêsis(48a19–29). And it is equally inconsistent with his repeated labelling ofepic poetry as ‘narrative
mimêsis’ (59a17, 59b33, 59b36–7).Aristotle does not explain the phrase ‘speaking in his own person’, andwe need not take him to mean exactly what Plato had meant. He goes onto castigate other epic poets as ‘constantly competing in their own persons’and as ‘representing few things on few occasions’ (60a8–9). Here, aselsewhere (51a6–11, 51b35–52a1, 53b7–11, 62a5–11), he has his eye onthe way in which artistic aims can be perverted by the pressures ofperformance. He means that inferior poets used a thin plot as a platformfrom which to harangue the audience in their own voice, instead ofallowing a richly elaborated story to makes its own impact, as Homer did.Such an interpretation fits with what we have earlier said of
mimêsis. Forpoets practise it not by virtue of what they directly assert, but by virtue ofwhat they leave their audiences to infer.The present text need not, therefore, be taken to restrict
mimêsis tosections of direct enactment or
oratio recta. Nevertheless, we can observe aspecial connection between those sections and what is distinctive aboutAristotle’s conception of
mimêsis. Enacted drama and
oratio recta in epicafford the clearest cases of mimetic utterance, because it is there that theauthors’ detachment from the content of their works is most obvious. Theyneed not be identified with their characters’ words, nor taken to endorseanything they say. Thus enacted drama and
oratio recta exemplify authorialdetachment in its purest form. They provide a standard of disengagedutterance to which all works of art should aspire. We have here, inembryo, a conception of representation in which literary artists arecompletely detached from all utterances in their works. The work speaksentirely for itself, with no direct statement or comment from its author (cf.Halliwell [3.17], 173–4). On such a view, to condemn artists, as Plato did,for failing to attain truth, is to misrepresent the very nature of theirenterprise.
Mimetic pleasureWe can now return to our earlier difficulty regarding the pleasure taken inrepresentational objects. Aristotle had said (48b17–19) that if we shouldnot have seen the original of such an object before, it will not give pleasure
as a representation, but only through such features as its workmanship orcolour. We need to ask what analogue exists in tragedy or epic to satisfythis requirement. For, clearly, it is Aristotle’s view that we do enjoy thosegenres as representations, and not merely for their workmanship or colour.Yet in what sense must we have ‘previously seen’ what they represent? Inorder to enjoy, say,
Oedipus Rex as a representation, what must theaudience have ‘seen before’?Not, of course, the legendary Oedipus himself, whom no audience inhistoric times could be supposed to have seen. Nor could Aristotle havemade it a requirement of enjoying Sophocles’ play that one must have priorknowledge of the Oedipus story. For although most tragedies in his dayused traditional stories for their plots, he expressly notes that they couldgive pleasure to everyone, even though the stories were ‘familiar only tofew’ (51b25–6). He also notes that newly invented plots, whose storieswere known to no one, could still give pleasure (51b21–3). Obviously,neither the characters nor the story of a wholly invented plot could beregarded as needing to be ‘seen before’ as a condition for enjoyment of thework.Yet one phrase of Aristotle’s suggests a sense in which the pleasure givenby tragedy or epic requires prior acquaintance with its subject-matter, evenwhen its characters are unknown or wholly invented. He calls tragedy arepresentation ‘not of human beings but of actions and of life’ (50a16–18,cf. 50b24–5, 52a1–2). The individual human beings may be quite unknownto us, and so may their particular stories. But what
is already known to usis ‘life’, connected here as in the
Nicomachean Ethics (1098a18–20,1100a4–9) with human actions or fortunes over a period of time or anentire career. Sophocles’ tragedy represents ‘the changes and chances ofthis mortal life’, no less familiar to ancient audiences than to modern ones.Life’s dynamics, its changes from prosperity to adversity, its complexinterplay of character with circumstance, its ambiguities and uncertainties,its moral dilemmas and mental conflicts, its ironies and contradictions, itssurprises and coincidences, are already familiar to us, and their highlightingin fictional representation is a source of pleasure. We enjoy the tragedy ofOedipus because we can recognize in his story misconceptions,misfortunes, failings and follies, and a grim inevitability, that are typical ofhuman life. Our pity and fear are evoked through our recognition ofhuman frailty embodied in the story. Human vulnerability, and thereforeour own, are powerfully brought home to us. The enjoyment with which werespond to all this is what Aristotle calls the pleasure that is ‘proper’ totragedy (53b10–11, cf. 53a35–6, 59a21, 62b13–14).This pleasure is neither limited to nor dependent upon theatricalenactment. It can be gained no less from reading or hearing a fictionalnarrative than from seeing a play performed (50b18–20, 53b3–7, 62a12,a17–18). Literary and theatrical values need not coincide, and they may,for Aristotle, even conflict (51a6–11). The pleasure ‘proper’ to tragedydoes not require live performance because it depends crucially uponinferences from the content and structure of the plot. Even when a tragedyis performed, the pleasure proper to it cannot be fully experienced whilethe performance is still in progress, but can be gained only through aretrospect upon the completed action (cf. 53a30–9). That is why Aristotlecan treat metrical language, choral odes, and visual elements as mereadornments of tragedy, as ‘seasonings’ (49b25–9, 50b16) rather the maindish. The pleasure that they give is not integral to tragedy’s distinctivefunction as a
mimêsis of action.What he says of ‘spectacle’ is especially revealing. He rates it as theelement ‘least integral to the poetic art’ (50b17), as ‘belonging more to thesphere of the property man than of the poet’ (50b20). He dismisses as‘quite outside the sphere of tragedy’ (53b10) those poets who relied onlavish staging to achieve sensational effects. For the pleasure proper totragedy is not morbid. It depends not upon the horror that can be producedby terrifying stage-effects, nor upon the thrill caused by pain or cruelty, butupon the compassion we feel for fictional characters who are caught up inthe events of a pitiful tale. We respond to an emotional content inherent inthe play (53b13–14) rather than to the gimmickry of production.
Tragic katharsisThe emotional content of tragedy brings us, finally, to the much vexedquestion of tragic
katharsis. Aristotle’s formal definition of tragedy runs asfollows:Tragedy is a representation of an action which is serious, complete,and of a certain magnitude—in language which is garnished in variousforms in its different parts—in the mode of dramatic enactment, notnarrative—and by means of pity and fear effecting the
katharsis ofsuch emotions.(49b24–8, trans. after Halliwell)The concluding clause has generally been held to contain an ‘answer’ toPlato’s condemnation of poetry for its harmful effect upon control of theemotions. But what was that answer? What did Aristotle mean by thetantalizing term
katharsis?We must first notice, and put aside, the modern use of ‘catharsis’ tomean the release of pent-up emotion. That is psychiatric jargon, whichderives from an influential way of reading the present text, as a glance atthe
Concise Oxford Dictionary (s.v. ‘catharsis’) will confirm. If we insistupon reading that use back into Aristotle, we risk prejudging his meaning,even when we retain his own word.Basically,
katharsis meant ‘cleansing’, frequently, though not solely,through medical purging or religious purification. Neither of thosemetaphors, however, enables a satisfactory account to be given of
katharsisin the context of tragedy.First ‘purgation’. A purging of pity and fear has sometimes been taken tomean their complete elimination from our emotional system. Against that,it has been rightly objected that, according to Aristotle’s own ethicalteaching, the proper feeling of those and other emotions plays anindispensable part in human well-being. It has seemed inconceivable thathe should defend tragedy on the ground that it eliminates the emotionsaltogether.On the other hand, if ‘purging’ the emotions simply means venting themin the theatre, for example by having a good cry, the
katharsis clause seemsa cumbersome way of expressing that idea. For it seems, absurdly, torepresent pity and fear as a means to their own discharge. Collingwood ([3.36], 51) glosses
katharsis as an ‘emotional defecation’, which ‘leaves theaudience’s mind, after the tragedy is over, not loaded with pity and fearbut lightened of them’. Against this, one must protest that to interpret
katharsis as ‘emotional defecation’ saddles Aristotle with a view of theemotions which he simply did not hold. Moreover, merely to reiterate thefact, well known to Plato himself and heavily underscored by him, thataudiences gain a pleasurable sense of relief by discharging feelings of pityand fear, would do nothing to counter his argument that such dischargesare psychologically harmful.‘Purification’ of the emotions is equally problematic. In the
NicomacheanEthics (1105b19–25) Aristotle distinguishes between occurrent states ofemotional arousal
(pathê) and our natural capacities
(dunameis) for feelingsuch states. Clearly, the former could not be purified, for to speak of‘purifying’ a twinge of pity or a fit of terror is nonsense. ‘Purifying’ mightpossibly be a metaphor for improving our capacity to feel pity or fear, iftragedy could somehow cause us to feel them more appropriately thancertain people do. Yet, although Aristotle has sometimes been credited witha therapeutic theory of that sort (cf. House [3.38], 108–11), it has neverbeen made clear just how tragedy produces such an effect, or indeed whythat should be necessary for an audience of ordinary sensibility and soundmind. One might even wonder whether tragedy could affect an audience atall unless its emotional apparatus were already more or less in order.Anyone who does not feel special revulsion, for example, at child-murder,matricide or incest, will hardly be moved, let alone improved, by watching
Medea, Electra or
Oedipus Rex.Some scholars have therefore tried another tack.
Katharsis is not the onlyword whose meaning is in doubt. The phrase usually rendered ‘ofsuch emotions’
(toioutôn pathêmatôn) could also be translated ‘of suchafflictions’. The clause would then mean, ‘accomplishing by means of pityand fear the
katharsis of pitiful and fearful afflictions’. That would makegood sense, if
katharsis could be taken to mean, as several scholars haverecently urged (for example Golden [3.50], 145–7; Nussbaum [3.39], 388–91, 502–3, nn.17–18), ‘clarification’. On that construal, Aristotle would besaying that tragedy, through pity and fear represented in the play, achievesa clarification of just such afflictions in real life. Tragedy enlightens itsaudience by deepening their understanding of just such sorrows as aretypified by the play. For it traces those sorrows to various kinds ofpsychological conflict which are ‘clarified’ by its action.Such an interpretation is attractive. Linguistically, it fits perfectly. Itallows us to connect
katharsis with Aristotle’s remarks about ‘learning’from mimetic works, and about the generalizing power of fiction. It alsomakes a claim about tragedy that can be amply supported from theexperience of actual plays.It founders, however, upon two reefs. First, it tends to beg the questionagainst Plato’s attack. Tragedy’s power to move us is a familiar andincontestable fact. To defend it as serving a purely intellectual purpose, onthe basis of a formal definition, is simply to ignore that impact which it isknown to have, and for which Plato had condemned it.Secondly, an intellectualist interpretation disregards a passage in the
Politics, which—baffling though it is—cannot lightly be set aside. Aristotlethere speaks (1341b32–42a16) of a
katharsis induced in certain mentallydisordered people by exposure to ‘kathartic melodies’
(ta melê takathartika). He mentions a pleasurable ‘lightening’ effect produced byorgiastic music, alleviating their frenzied state. In a medical context(
Problemata 955a25–6) the term ‘lightening’
(kouphizesthai) is used of therelief felt after coitus by people who suffer from excessive sexual desire. Ifthe
katharsis of the
Politics has any bearing upon that of the
Poetics, towhich it expressly refers (1341b39–40), it seems unlikely that the lattershould be understood as a purely cognitive experience. Tragic
katharsis isunlikely, then, to mean ‘clarification’, but probably included a componentof ‘lightening’ or relief. But if so, what was that component, and how wasPlato ‘answered’ by making reference to it?The
katharsis clause can be interpreted as a pointed and effectiveresponse to Plato if we notice (following Sparshott [3.54], 22–3) that itcontains a Platonic allusion which Aristotle’s audience would readily havepicked up, and which would account for the sudden introduction of theterm
katharsis without explanation. In the
Phaedo Socrates had exalted thetrue philosopher as one whose soul is cleansed by achieving freedom frombodily appetites and passions. He speaks (69b–c) of the philosopher’svirtues as ‘a kind of
katharsis from all such things [sc. pleasures, fears andall else of that sort]’ (6901) and of wisdom herself as ‘a kind of purifyingrite’
(katharmos tis). Plato here describes neither a purging nor a purifying
of the emotions, but a liberation of the soul
from them (reading the Greekgenitive as ‘separative’), in which the philosopher achieves the serenity, andespecially the immunity from fear of death, so conspicuously shown bySocrates himself. It is not the emotions which are purified or purged, but
the soul which is cleansed from servitude to them through release from itsbondage to the body. In Aristotle’s reference to the ‘
katharsis from suchemotions’, which echoes Plato’s wording at 6901 almost exactly, we canstill catch an allusion to that very
katharsis which Plato had extolled.Paradoxically, it is by means of the emotions aroused in tragedy that thatstate of tranquillity is achieved. Pity and fear, enacted by the performersand aroused in the audience, so far from causing surrender to such feelings,are the very means by which we may be delivered from their power. Theemotional harrowing of tragedy enables us to accept our own frailties asthe common lot of mankind, and thereby raises us above a self-absorbedpity, fear or grief.Tragedy has this mysterious, uplifting power. Through compassion andadmiration for its victims, we are somehow elevated above our own selfishturmoil. This response is evoked especially when we behold exemplarymagnanimity or dignity in face of undeserved suffering. George Orwellonce remarked that’ [a] tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does
not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces whichdestroy him’ (
Collected Essays, vol.4, 338). That sentiment is profoundlyAristotelian (cf. 53a4–17), and it could be illustrated by any number oftragedies, ancient or modern. An immortal illustration, however, lay atAristotle’s elbow, as it still lies at ours. In the
Phaedo Socrates had shownmiraculous nobility in face of monstrous injustice and a universal humanterror. Though not a tragedy by all of Aristotle’s formal criteria, its impactexemplifies the very
katharsis which it stresses itself, and it has made justsuch an impact upon its readers across the centuries.Aristotle responds to Plato, then, by claiming for tragedy precisely thateffect which Plato had extolled and achieved in the most moving of his owndialogues. Poetic fiction, rightly understood, can provide just that benefitwhich Plato had claimed for philosophy. Thus, as Aristotle says, ‘poetry isboth more philosophical and more serious than history’ (51b5–6): ‘morephilosophical’, because it implicitly suggests ‘universals’ which are thedomain of philosophy; and ‘more serious’, not because it is more edifyingthan history, or shows virtue as any more triumphant, but because itcelebrates the power of the human spirit to rise above injustice, misfortune,suffering and death.On that interpretation, it is mistaken to ask whether
katharsis isintellectual
or emotional, cognitive
or affective. For the response justoutlined evidently has both intellectual and affective elements. Feeling andthought are interactive. The more thoroughly we understand a tragedy, themore deeply it will engage our emotions. Conversely, the more deeply weare moved by a play, the more we shall be disposed to seek meaning in it.Emotional impact and the quest for understanding are mutually reinforcing.Precisely in that sense
katharsis is achieved ‘through pity and fear’. Thosefeelings are not a means to their own discharge or improvement. Rather,their arousal through a poetic
mimêsis is a means to spiritual peace.On the view defended above,
katharsis is the attainment of a calm ortranquil frame of mind, an outlook that is ‘philosophical’ in a popularsense of the word also traceable, ultimately, to the
Phaedo. It is paradoxical(and Aristotle’s wording in the
katharsis clause reflects this), thatemotional arousal should be a means to emotional serenity. But theparadox needs no sophisticated medical theory of ‘homoeopathic cures’ toground it. It is simply common experience, not only of tragedy but of otherhigh art forms, that they can move us profoundly, yet thereby leave usmore at peace with ourselves and with the world we inhabit. Thatexperience lies at the core of Aristotle’s aesthetic; and his single reference toit deserves attention, not as mere
ad hominem polemic in an ephemeraldebate with Plato, but because it points towards a wider account of artwhich holds perennial truth.
PHILOSOPHY OF MINDAristotle’s chief contributions to the philosophy of mind are to be found in
De Anima (DA), a general preface to his lectures on zoology, and in acollection of essays now known as the
Parva, Naturalia (PN). Also relevantare a short work on animal movement,
De Motu Animalium, and thezoological treatises,
De Partibus Animalium and
De GenerationeAnimalium. The account that follows will be based mainly upon
De Animaand the
Parva Naturalia.<sup>3</sup>
De Anima has come down to us in three books. The first contains asurvey of problems about the ‘soul’ and a critique of previous theorists.The second begins with Aristotle’s own general account of the soul. Itsremainder, together with the whole of the third book, deal with the variouspowers possessed by living things. The order of discussion corresponds,albeit very roughly (cf. Hutchinson [3.62]), with the hierarchy of powers inplants, animals and human beings, ascending from the powers of nutritionand reproduction shared by all organisms to those possessed only by animals(perception and imagination), and then to the power of intellect, which ispossessed (within the natural order) by mankind alone. Animal desire andlocomotion are also discussed.The essays of the
Parva, Naturalia form a series of appendices to
DeAnima covering a variety of special subjects in psycho-biology. Those ofgreatest mterest for present-day philosophy of mind are the first five in theseries, which deal with sense-perception, memory, sleep, dreams, anddivination through sleep.The expression ‘philosophy of mind’ does not, however, map neatly onto either
De Anima or the
Parva Naturalia. On the one hand, they includeempirical psychology and physiology as well as philosophy. On the otherhand, many questions now central to the philosophy of mind find no placein them at all. If we ask of them, for example, how mental events arerelated to physical ones, or how we can know the existence and contents ofminds other than our own, we shall ask in vain. Such questions are, ineffect, by-passed in Aristotle’s approach to the whole subject.The difficulty in aligning
De Anima with ‘philosophy of mind’ isconnected with the problem of translating its title term,
psuchê. ‘Soul’,though it will generally be used below, has religious associations which arealien to Aristotle’s scientific interests. Although he sharply criticizes earlierscientists, he shares their concern to explain the powers of growth and selfmovementwhich distinguish living from non-living things, and theperceptual, emotional and cognitive powers which distinguish animals fromplants. At the outset (
DA 402a7–8) he characterizes
psuchê as ‘theprinciple of animal life’. He expressly warns against limiting the inquiry tohuman beings (
DA 402b3–9), and subsequently attributes
psuchê to allliving things. Since we do not credit plants, or even animals, with souls,there are many places where ‘soul’ as a translation of
psuchê will soundunnatural.Traditionally, the
psuchê had been thought of as a shadowy simulacrumof the living body, which can survive its death, and persist in a disembodiedstate in Hades. It foreshadowed the concept of a ghost, an entity whose
post mortem existence is of its very essence (as remains true of ‘soul’ inEnglish). Aristotle, in effect, undermined this tradition by linking theconcept of
psuchê with that of organic life, and by considering, moreclosely than his predecessors had done, the implications of that linkage.Thus, he transformed what had been a partly religious concept into awholly scientific one. Against that background, the question whether the
psuchê, or any aspects of it, can exist separately from the body naturallyplayed a larger part in his debate with earlier thinkers than it has played inmore recent philosophy of mind.Equally dubious, as a translation of
psuchê, is the English ‘mind’. In itsordinary use, as roughly equivalent to the human intellect, it is too narrowfor the range of powers associated by Aristotle with
psuchê, since it doesnot include nutrition, growth or reproduction, and is not generallyattributed to animals. As for its extended use by philosophers sinceDescartes, to mean the subject of conscious awareness or thought, althoughAristotle may be said to have possessed the idea of such a subject, heexplicitly resists its identification with the
psuchê. In a f amous passage, towhich we shall return, he observes:to say that it is the
psuchê that is angry is as if one were to say that itis the
psuchê that weaves or builds. It is surely better not to say thatthe
psuchê pities or learns or thinks, but rather that the
human beingdoes this
with the
psuchê.(
DA 408b11–15)One further aspect of
psuchê needs to be dissociated from
De Anima andthe
Parva Naturalia. Aristotle is unconcerned in these treatises with the‘true self’, that precious element in human beings whose well-being hadbeen a matter of paramount concern for Socrates and Plato. Even in hisethical writings, talk of
psuchê is different in tone from Plato’s. Althoughhe defines human well-being in terms of ‘activity of
psuchê’ (
NicomacheanEthics 1098a16), he tends not to speak of ‘souls’
(psuchai) as entities eitherpossessed by or identified with individual human subjects. In his maturepsychology the individual soul as a subject of moral attributes, or as amoral agent, receives no attention.This important difference stems largely from Aristotle’s rejection ofPlatonic dualism, the notion that the soul is an independent substance,lodged within the body during life, yet capable of separate existence.Although Aristotle had embraced that idea in his youth, the treatises of hismaturity present a strikingly different picture. That picture is drawn, inbroadest outline, in the first three chapters of
De Anima II, to which wemay now turn.
Soul and bodyAristotle’s central thesis is that the soul of a living thing is related to itsbody as ‘form’
(morphê) is related to matter
(hulê). The soul is thestructure whereby bodily matter is so ordered as to form a living animal orplant. Soul and body are not two separate entities, somehow temporarilyconjoined. Rather, they are, like form and matter in general,complementary aspects of a single entity, the whole complex livingcreature. This thesis is sometimes called ‘hylemorphism’.The ‘form’ of a living thing is attained when the potential of itsconstituent matter becomes actualized in a full-grown member of itsspecies. In attaining that form, a creature develops certain powers, whoseexercise is necessary for its preservation and well-being, and for theperpetuation of its species. Most of these powers are exercised by means of‘organs’, parts of the body conceived as tools fashioned for specific tasks.Indeed, the very word
organon means a tool or implement. Tools andbodily organs both provide Aristotle with models to illustrate his account ofthe soul.An axe is not just wood and iron, but wood and iron so structured as tobe an implement for chopping. Its chopping purpose dictates both its formand its matter, and is essential for grasping its essential nature, ‘what it isto be an axe’ (
DA 412b10–15). Aristotle distinguishes, moreover, betweenits ‘first actuality’, attained when the wood and iron have been fashionedinto an implement with power to chop, and its ‘second actuality’, attainedwhen it is being used for chopping. The axe’s essential nature is given by the‘first’ actuality rather than the ‘second’. For it does not cease to be an axewhen the woodsman lays it aside, but only when it becomes so blunted orotherwise damaged that its chopping power has been lost.Similarly, an eye is not just a lump of translucent jelly, but gelatinousmaterial so structured and situated within the body that its ownerpossesses the power of sight. Should that power be destroyed, the jelly willremain an ‘eye’ in name only (
DA 412b18–22). The connection betweenthe eye and sight is not, indeed, a merely contingent one. We cannot seewith anything except our eyes, nor can we use our eyes for any purposeexcept seeing. It is sight which defines the eye; and it does so in terms ofthe ‘first’ actuality rather than the ‘second’. For the organ does not cease tobe an eye at times when its owner is not seeing anything, for example whileasleep or in the dark. What is necessary for its being an eye is simply thatunder appropriate conditions its owner be capable of seeing with it.We can now understand the phrases in which Aristotle formally definesthe soul. He calls it ‘the first actuality of a natural body which potentiallyhas life’ (
DA 412a27–8), and immediately explicates this as ‘the firstactuality of a natural body possessing organs’ (
DA 412b5–6). As sightstands to the eye-jelly, so does the complete set of powers possessed by anorganism stand to its body as a whole. To ascribe soul to it, then, amountsto saying that it is a body
in working order. To credit X with soul, it is notnecessary that X should now be absorbing food, reproducing itself,walking, seeing, imagining, remembering, feeling angry, thinking or talking.It is only necessary that it should possess the capacity for whichever ofthose activities are characteristic of its species.From this account it follows at once that soul can no more existseparately from body than an axe’s chopping power or an eye’s power ofsight can exist when the axe or the eye has been destroyed. It is a grossconceptual error to regard an animal’s soul as some sort of receptor ormotor within its body, whether a material one, as certain pre-Socraticthinkers had supposed, or an immaterial one, as Plato’s Socrates hadaffirmed in the
Phaedo. It is, in terms made famous by Gilbert Ryle, a‘category mistake’ to view the soul as a substance in its own right, ratherthan a set of powers which living things possess. For any given animal orplant species, its ‘soul’ cannot be understood without reference to thebodily apparatus needed to exercise the powers in question: ‘it is not abody, but is something relative to a body. That is why it is
in a body, andin a body of some definite kind’ (
DA 414a20–2, trans. after revised Oxfordtranslation).This idea is anticipated in a sharp criticism of theories of transmigration.Such theories, Aristotle drily observes, are akin to saying that the art ofcarpentry could enter into flutes: ‘just as a skill must use its own tools, so asoul has to use its own body’ (
DA 407b25–6). Carpentry uses, amongstother tools, saws. To cut timber, a saw must have teeth. Since a flute lacksteeth, its use for sawing is not even imaginable. It is therefore absurd tosuggest that carpentry could be practised with tools designed to serve theends of a quite different skill. If an animal’s soul is a certain set ofcapacities, then it can only belong to a body equipped to exercise thosecapacities. Just as the idea of a flute’s being used for carpentry is (not justfalse but) absurd, so it is absurd to suppose, with Plato’s Socrates, that thebody of a donkey might house the soul of a human being, or that the soulof a bee might enter a human body (
Phaedo 82a–b). For the body of adonkey does not equip it to weave a cloak or build a house; no more does ahuman body enable its owner to pollinate flowers or to produce honey.As we saw earlier, Aristotle prefers to say that ‘the human being doesthings with the soul’, instead of ascribing those activities to the soul itself(
DA 408b13–15). He compares saying that the soul is angry with sayingthat the soul weaves or builds. Here too he is combating the idea of the soulas a separable inner agent which can have experiences or perform actionsindependently of the body. Since bodily movements play an essential partin weaving or building, the absurdity of attributing those tasks to the soulalone is clear. Similarly, Aristotle argues, to attribute anger, pity or othermental phenomena to the soul alone is to disregard the bodily apparatusthrough which the relevant capacities must be displayed. To say that aperson does things ‘with the soul’ is to say that certain capacities areexercised through the appropriate physical apparatus.In a similar vein, Aristotle distinguishes a physiologist’s account ofanger, ‘a boiling of the blood and hot stuff around the heart’, from aphilosopher’s definition of it, ‘a desire for retaliation’ (
DA 403a29–b1).The latter account gives the ‘form’ of anger, the former provides the‘matter’ in which it has to be realized. Aristotle also suggests that the truestudent of nature will combine both sorts of account. The physiology of theemotions plays an essential part in a full understanding of them. Anger isnot a pure state of feeling, but is inseparable from the bodily responses inwhich it is vented. Yet it cannot be simply equated with those responses.The bodily arousal typical of a given emotion may be present when there islittle or no occasion for that emotion to be felt (cf.
DA 403a19–24). Toidentify an emotional state specifically as one of anger, we do not take aman’s pulse or measure his blood-pressure. Rather, we interpret his bodilyreactions and behaviour as part of a pattern, a wider context within whichanger is typically provoked and displayed, and in the light of which it hasto be understood.Modern philosophy has pressed further the question of how mentalevents or states are related to bodily reactions or behaviour. It is assumedthat there are radically distinct sorts of item: private experiences on the onehand and observable processes on the other. But from Aristotle’sperspective that distinction is entirely problematic. Anger, understood as theurge to retaliate, can occur only in animals that respond to attack or injurywith certain bodily reactions or overt behaviour. If we insist upon askinghow their urge to retaliate is related to their physical response, Aristotlewould reply that ‘one need not inquire whether the soul and the body areone, any more than whether the wax and its shape are one’ (
DA 412b6–7),Just as the wax and the impress made in it by a seal are inseparable aspectsof a single waxen object, so a certain bodily response and the urge to strikeback are inseparable aspects of the single phenomenon that we call anger.A purely chemical or neurological description of anger, however minute itsdetail, if it makes no reference to the kinds of stimulus that typicallyprovoke anger, the goals sought by an angry animal, and the role of angerin an animal’s preservation and well-being, will miss what is of primarysignificance in the whole phenomenon.Basic to Aristotle’s account of the soul, then, are the tasks that a creaturecan perform with its body. To speak of its soul is to refer, compendiously,to the set of powers possessed by creatures of its type. In the higheranimals, and especially in mankind, these powers are both numerous andcomplex, and a full account of them will vary widely from one species toanother. This theory, as Aristotle observes (
DA 414b20–8), is too generalto provide information for any specific form of life. In his zoologicalwritings, however, it is applied fruitfully to a huge variety of animalspecies. It is there shown in marvellous detail why different species developthe organs they have, and how those organs are fitted for the tasks theymust perform if they are to contribute to the survival and well-being of thewhole animal. In
De Anima, by contrast, we find only a broad survey ofthe various powers possessed at each level of life. These must now beconsidered in turn.
Nutrition and reproductionThe powers of growth, nourishment and reproduction are attributed byAristotle to the ‘nutritive’ soul. Because they are shared by all living things,‘living’ is defined with reference to them alone (
DA 415a23–5). So long asthey remain operative, an animal or human being may be said to ‘live’,even should its higher faculties be impaired. Aristotle calls the intake offood and reproduction the ‘most natural of functions for living things’ (
DA415a26–7). For it is through them that living things achieve the only sortof permanence available to them. Although they must perish individually,they are enabled, through the generation of offspring like themselves, toperpetuate their species. Thus ‘they share in the eternal and the divine inthe only way that they can’ (
DA 415a29–b1). This recalls the teaching ofDiotima in Plato’s
Symposium (207a–208b): the reproductive urge in allanimals is an aspiration to immortality, in which mortal creaturesunconsciously emulate the divine.The capacities of the ‘nutritive’ soul will strike most philosophers ofmind as falling outside their province. Since growth, nourishment andreproduction are not ‘mental’ processes, they seem to raise no ‘mind-bodyproblem’. No philosopher now asks, for example, how mind and body arerelated in the digestion of food, since we normally remain unconscious ofthat purely ‘physical’ process. Only with
indigestion can the philosopher ofmind get a foothold, by asking how dyspepsia is related to the sensation ofheartburn. But nothing could illustrate better the shift that has occurred inthe locus of philosophical concern. Ever since Descartes, the central issuesfor the philosophy of mind have arisen only with respect to sentientcreatures. Because growth and nutrition can occur in non-sentientsubstances, those processes fail to qualify, as it were, for ‘mental’ status.Aristotle’s map, however, is differently drawn. The question of how
psuchê is related to the body arises for any sort of living thing, whethersentient or not. For plants as for animals, we may distinguish form frommatter, actuality from potentiality. Plants may be seen as conforming, noless than animals, to Aristotle’s definition of the soul as ‘the first actualityof a natural body possessing organs’. Their parts can be viewed asrudimentary organs with specific jobs to perform: ‘for example the leafserves to shelter the pod, and the pod to shelter the fruit; the roots areanalogous to the mouth, since both take in food’ (
DA 412b1–4). In thecase of plants, we cannot, of course, ask how sensations, feelings or thoughtsare related to their physical make-up. But we may well ask how theircapacities for nourishment and reproduction are related to their materialconstituents. And we may take a set of chemical processes in a plant (forexample the absorption of heat and moisture through its roots) toconstitute the material basis for realization of its form. It is only whenthose processes are explained as the intake of nourishment and a means togrowth, that we have understood their significance in the plant’s life.
PerceptionAnimals are distinguished from plants by their powers of perception. Thesepowers enable them to move about, seek food, adapt to their environmentand defend themselves, and thus to survive and flourish (cf.
DA 434a30–b8;
PN 436b8–437a3). The minimal power, found even in the simplestanimals, is the sense of touch. But most species possess a more complexapparatus, in which several different sensory powers are somehowcombined in a single, unified system. How are these powers related to oneanother and to the bodily organs through which they are exercised? Andhow, in detail, does Aristotle understand what happens in perception?In this connection, he repeatedly uses phrases which need a word ofexplanation. He will speak of certain items as ‘inseparable, yet separatein account’, or as being ‘the same yet different in their being’. By this hemeans that a single thing can answer to two or more different descriptions.A lump of sugar, for example, is both white and sweet. ‘The white thing’ isidentical with, or inseparable from, ‘the sweet thing’. Yet its ‘being white’is different from its ‘being sweet’: we would give distinct accounts of whatit is to be white and what it is to be sweet. The two descriptions have, aswe should say, different senses but the same reference. The relation of themorning star to the evening star is a familiar modern example.This point plays an important part in Aristotle’s view of the relation ofthe senses to one another and to an animal’s other powers. He will oftensay of two or more powers that they are ‘the same, yet differ in their being’(for example
DA 413b29–32, 424a26, 427a2–3, 432a31–b4, 432a31–b3,433b21–5;
PN 449a14–20, 459a15–17). For he wishes to insist both upontheir inseparability, as belonging to a single, unified system, and upon theneed for distinct accounts of their respective operations. He regards thesense-organs as different parts of a single, connected apparatus centred inthe heart. Perception can occur only when the impulses initiated by anexternal object’s impact upon the organs have travelled to the centralsensorium. This centre, and the apparatus which it controls, will bedifferently described for each of the various functions it enables its ownerto perform.<sup>4</sup>In his essay on sleep (
PN 455a20–2), Aristotle writes: ‘For there exists asingle sense-faculty, and the master sense-organ is single, though its beingdiffers for the perception of each kind of thing, for example of sound orcolour.’ Similarly, in his treatise on sense-perception (
PN 449a16–20) heargues that there must be a single sense-faculty, yet each of the modes inwhich it operates (visual, auditory, etc.) is different. A single apparatus iscapable of receiving data from a variety of external stimuli through severaldifferent types of receptor. Hence different accounts of what it is (the‘being’ of this apparatus) will be required for each mode of its operation.Why must there be a single central sensorium upon which all the senseorgansconverge? Because, Aristotle argues, it is one and the same subjectthat sees, hears, imagines, desires, thinks, moves and acts. All of thesepowers alike can be exercised by a single animal when it is awake, and allalike are cut off when it is asleep. Our ascription of perception, desire andmovement to a single creature requires that it be possessed of a singlecentral apparatus, where all input from the sense-organs is registered, andfrom which all its responses originate.We might think of the central sensorium as analogous to a multipurposetool, a single thing, yet also as many different things (for example knife,corkscrew, screwdriver) as the functions which it enables its owner toperform. A full understanding of ‘what it is’, of its ‘being’, calls for adifferentiated account of its role in each of those tasks. But it remains asingle ‘master’ organ, whose functioning is essential for every part of thecreature’s sensory apparatus, and much else within it, to work. Aristotlecalls it the ‘primary sense-organ’. Although he himself identified it with theheart, in modern physiology it finds a close analogue in the brain.Since the sensory apparatus is centred at the heart, it is understandablethat Aristotle should sometimes speak as if the soul were in the heart.Thus, he can speak of conscious awareness (for example being angry orfrightened) as due to movements or changes within the heart (
DA 408b5–11). But such language should not be taken to mean that consciousnessresides in some spatial region of the heart. The power of sight is ‘in’ theeye, but unlike the eye it has no spatial extension (
DA 424a24–8). It is not‘in’ the eye in the sense in which the pupil is in it. Similarly, to assign thesoul to the heart is not to locate consciousness there, but is simply to saythat an animal’s perceptual (and other) powers can function only if certainphysical processes occur in the central organ.Aristotle’s hypothesis of a single centre controlling all sensory (andother) functions of higher animals is intelligible in broad outline. But muchdetail in his account of perception remains obscure. We have spoken ofinput from the sense-organs as ‘registered’ in the central sensorium, and ofthe animal’s ‘responses’. What exactly is the nature of this ‘registering’ or ofthese ‘responses’? Aristotle’s answer is elusive and controversial. He saysthat the power of perception is ‘the capacity to receive the sensible formswithout the matter’ (424a17–19, 425b23–4). But how is that to beunderstood? Perception obviously differs from nutrition in that the matterof perceived objects is not absorbed into the percipient’s body. A piece ofbread must be ingested if it is to nourish, but not if it is merely seen,touched, smelt or tasted. But in what sense can an object’s ‘sensible form’be received without its matter? Is it meant that when we see a red flag, forexample, the eye-jelly takes on its properties, literally reflecting the flag’sredness? Or does ‘receiving the form’ refer to a change in the percipient’sconsciousness, the visual awareness of red? Or does it refer to both ofthese, regarded as two different aspects of a single event?Aristotle compares what happens in perception with the impress receivedby wax from a bronze or golden seal: the shape of the seal is reproduced inthe wax, whereas the bronze or gold is not (424a19–21). When someonesees a red flag, its matter is not absorbed into the percipient’s body, yet itsredness is somehow transmitted to the observer. Aristotle supposes that acontinuous series of impulses is relayed from the flag to the eyes, andthence to the heart. These impulses must preserve (in some fashion which isnot made clear) the structure of the flag’s sensible properties, yet withoutimporting into the percipient any of the matter of the flag itself. Thisaccount has been well compared with the modern idea of signals emittedfrom physical objects, and relaying their sensible properties in coded‘messages’ via the sense-organs and nervous system to the observer’s brain(Ackrill [3.29], 67). Aristotle probably does not mean that the eye-jelly isliterally reddened. For he says only that the seeing organ is coloured ‘aftera fashion’ (
DA 425b22–3). It could, however, receive a structure whichrepresents the flag’s red colour, without itself turning red. Such a structurewould suffice to explain, as Aristotle says, why, for example, after-imagescan persist in the sense-organs when the external stimuli have gone (
DA425b24–5; cf.
PN 459b5–18).Aristotle’s use of the waxen imprint as a model for what occurs inperception recalls his caution, quoted earlier, that ‘we need no moreinquire whether the soul and the body are one than whether the wax andits shape are one’ (
DA 412b6–7). Perceiving should not be described eitherin purely physiological terms or in purely psychological ones; and adescription of the latter type, which gives the ‘form’, is not reducible to onewhich gives the ‘matter’. If that interpretation is correct, it will follow thatfor perception, as for the analogous case of anger, both sorts of story needto be told for a complete account. And, as in the case of anger, it needs tobe shown how perceptual powers are conducive to the subject’spreservation and overall well-being. Beyond this, as we have seen, Aristotlerecognizes no ‘mind-body’ problems of the kind that have dominatedmodern philosophy of mind.
Imagination and related powersAristotle next turns to imagination
(phantasia), a power of greatimportance in human beings and in the higher animals. His main account ofit is given in
De Anima III. 3, but it also plays a major role in the essays onmemory, sleep and dreams in the
Parva Naturalia, and on desire andmovement in
De Motu Animalium.Aristotle relates imagination to the power of perception in the terms hehad used to express the relationship of the different senses to one other andto the primary sense-faculty: they are ‘the same yet differ in their being’(
PN 459a14–16). That is, they share a common physical basis in thesensorium centred at the heart. But since that apparatus works differentlyin its different roles, a separate account is needed for its ‘imagining’operations.The story of those operations forms a sequel to Aristotle’s story aboutordinary perception, later crystallized in Thomas Hobbes’s phrase‘decaying sense’. Movements produced by external objects in an animal’ssense-organs will often persist as traces in the organs when the originalstimuli are no longer present. These movements are carried from the senseorgans,through the veins, to the heart, where (by a process which remainsobscure) they are stored, and may later be reactivated. They are thenexperienced as mental images, memories or dreams. Imagination thusenables waking animals to visualize or recall objects in their absence, andto be attracted or repelled by them, according as they are envisaged aspleasant or painful. It also collaborates with desire and (in human beings)with thought, to produce movement. An animal’s desire for pleasure andits aversion to pain impels it to pursue objects envisaged as pleasant orbeneficial, and to shun those envisaged as painful or harmful.So far the role of imagination is limited to the storage of senseimpressionsand their retrieval as mental images. But Aristotle’s accounthas a further dimension, which reflects the kinship of the word
phantasiawith ‘appearing’. Modern descendants from the same word-group include‘fancy’, ‘fantasy’ and ‘phantom’. The word-group covers many kinds ofphenomena, including not only ‘appearances’ in ordinary perception butalso what ‘appears’ pleasant or good, and is ‘fancied’ as an object of desire.It also covers deceptive appearances (for example optical and other sensoryillusions), after-images, dreams, delusions, apparitions and hallucinations.No single English word is wide enough to cover all these ‘appearances’.‘Imagination’ is an acceptable translation of
phantasia where mentalimagery is involved. But in several cases mentioned by Aristotle asinstances of
phantasia, images find no place: the sun ‘appears’ only one footacross (
DA 428b3–4;
PN 458b28–9, 460b18–20); a single stick heldbetween crossed fingers ‘appears’ as if it were two (
PN 460b20–2); to aperson gripped by strong emotion, a stranger ‘appears’ as a loved one or anenemy (
PN 460b3–11); to feverish patients, cracks in their bedroom walls‘appear’ as animals (
PN 460b11–16); land ‘appears’ to be moving to thosewho are sailing past it (
PN 460b26–7); the likeness of a man or a centaurmay be seen in shifting cloud-formations (
PN 461b19–21). In such cases
phantasia signifies the way an experience registers with, or is interpretedby, the subject. At its broadest, it is the capacity whereby things presentedto an observer, in any mode of experience, appear to that subject in theway that they do. It determines what content the objects have for theobserver, what they are seen
as. We may conveniently label it ‘interpretive
phantasia’.
Phantasia in this broad sense has received much attention in recentphilosophy of mind, and Aristotle shows a powerful insight in callingattention to it. Yet it remains unclear whether he holds any unifying theorylinking it with the capacity for forming mental images, or indeed what sucha theory would look like. For the latter capacity can be exercised, onAristotle’s own showing, only in the absence of the original objects whosesensory traces produce images. By contrast, interpretive
phantasia must beexercised concurrently with the experience itself: a stick is felt as two onlywhile it is being touched with crossed fingers. On the face of it, imageformationand interpretive
phantasia seem quite different. The hypothesisof ‘decaying sense’ has no apparent relevance to the latter, and it is notobvious how both can be explained as operations of a single power.Aristotle rightly distinguishes between imagination and belief orjudgment
(doxa). The exercise of interpretive
phantasia is compatible withwidely differing beliefs as to whether things really are the way they appear.A paranoid man may be firmly convinced that a stranger is his enemy,whereas someone who assimilates a cloud to a centaur does not believe fora moment that it is one. Patients may or may not think that the cracks intheir walls are animals, depending on the severity of their illness. When wesay of an object seen indistinctly, that ‘it appears to be a man’, we registeruncertainty as to whether or not it really is one (
DA 428a13–15).Judgment, then, may either endorse or oppose the deliverances ofimagination, or it may remain non-committal.More dubious are two further distinctions between imagination andjudgment (
DA 427b16–24). First, we can imagine things at will, whereas wecannot judge them to be the case at will. Secondly, ‘when we judgesomething terrible or fearful, we straightway feel accordingly’, whereaswith imagination we are in the same state as people viewing terrible thingsin a picture. The first of these points is plausible only with respect tovoluntary image-formation; with respect to
interpretive phantasia it seemsfar more debatable. The second distinction seems clearly untenable, at leastwith respect to some workings of the imagination: bad dreams ormemories may be as terrifying as things judged terrible in reality. Incomparing the imagining of terrible things with viewing them in a picture,Aristotle does not say, and is unlikely to mean, that we feel no emotion atall (cf. Belfiore [3.35], 243–5). For it would then be hard to explain thepower of mimetic objects to stir our emotions, so clearly recognized in the
Poetics. But the present text does suggest a distinction, perhaps implicitalso at
Poetics 53b12, between the full-scale pity or terror aroused byevents judged to be real, and the ‘distanced’ feeling of those emotions inresponse to a representational work of art.Aesthetic experience, however, receives virtually no attention in either
De Anima or the
Parva Naturalia. Their focus is upon the role ofimagination in animal desire and goal-directed movement. Aristotle’sinterest, as usual, lies in the faculty’s contribution to animal survival andwell-being. This circumscribes his treatment rather narrowly. For theimagination, as we think of it, is not merely the capacity for formingimages or interpreting experience. It includes creative or inventive powers,especially those displayed in mimetic works of art. Poetic fictions are preeminentamong its products. Aristotle may, indeed, have recognized aconnection between
phantasia and artistic ability. He identifies aptitude forpoetic metaphor with an inborn flair for ‘seeing resemblances’ (
Poetics1459a6–8), a gift which has obvious connections with
interpretivephantasia. Yet he nowhere explores the role of that power in artisticcreation as a subject in its own right.
IntellectNo aspect of Aristotle’s thought is more controversial than his treatment ofthe intellect
(nous). Nor is anything in his writings more puzzling or harderto reconcile with his wider philosophical outlook.In general, as we have seen, he treats mental faculties as inseparable fromtheir physical basis. In line with this, we should expect the intellect to berealized in an appropriate kind of matter, and therefore to exist only withina living human body. Aristotle sometimes entertains this view, especiallywhen making thought dependent upon imagination. Thus he writes: ‘But ifthis too [sc. thinking] is a form of imagination or does not exist apart fromimagination, it would not be possible even for this to exist without thebody’ (
DA 403a8–10). Since the soul is later declared never to thinkwithout imagery (
DA 431a14–17), and since both practical and theoreticalthinking are said to require imagery (
DA 431b7–10, 432a8–14), we mightinfer that the intellect can exist only within a living human being. Forthought requires imagination, imagination in turn requires perception, andboth the latter powers are inseparable from a properly functioning body.Yet Aristotle remains unwilling to draw that inference. His remarksabout intellect are tentative in tone and cryptic in content, but theyconsistently postulate a special status for it, exempting it from materialembodiment, hence from perishing: ‘the intellect seems to be engendered inus as some sort of independent substance and not to be destroyed’ (
DA408b18–19); unlike our capacity for memory or love, which ceases withbodily decay, ‘the intellect is probably something more divine, and isunaffected’ (
DA 408b29); ‘it seems to be a distinct kind of soul, and it aloneadmits of being separated, as the immortal is separable from theperishable’ (
DA 413b25–7); and, by contrast with powers requiring bodilyactivity (such as walking, nutrition, perception), ‘it remains that onlyintellect enters from outside and only intellect is divine. For its activity isnot bodily activity’ (
De Generatione Animalium 736b27–9; cf.
DA 413a7,429a22–7). Alone among our mental faculties, then, the intellect is no mereaspect of a formmatter composite, but is pure form without matter. Since itneeds no material embodiment, it can exist separately from the body, andis therefore capable of surviving death. It has an equally privileged status inAristotle’s ethics, where its exercise in philosophical study
(theôria) affordsthe highest happiness and the only immortality possible for mankind(
Nicomachean Ethics 1177a11–18, 1177b26–1178a3).Two factors, in particular, mark the intellect as exceptional. First, itrequires no bodily organ for its exercise. In thinking we can apprehend allmanner of objects, far and near, material and immaterial, sensible andabstract. Objects of thought, unlike those of perception, require no bodilyapparatus to be apprehended. They are grasped directly, yet withoutphysicsl contact. Moreover, thought, unlike perception or emotion, isattended by no bodily changes or processes of which we are consciouswhile we think.Secondly, thinking is not restricted to human subjects, but is also, inAristotle’s larger scheme of things, a function of immaterial beings,including God, whose sole mode of activity it is. Human thinking isconceived, analogously, as the operation of a divine element within us, asubstance in its own right, whereby we can imitate, albeit imperfectly andintermittently, the continuous and eternal thinking of God.In an enigmatic chapter of
De Anima. (III.5) Aristotle distinguishes‘active’ or ‘productive’ intellect from ‘passive’ intellect, and says of theformer that ‘in its separate state it alone is just that which it is, and it is thisalone which is immortal and eternal’ (430a22–3). The point of thisdistinction remains obscure, and it may not embody any doctrine that wasever clearly formulated by Aristotle himself. Possibly, he would havedistinguished two levels of intellectual activity: (1) a mundane level atwhich thought requires images, is dependent upon the body, and musttherefore perish with it; and (2) a loftier level at which neither images northeir bodily correlates are required, because the objects of thought arepurely abstract or formal in nature. If the second level were the domain ofthe ‘active’ intellect, its capacity for separate existence might be defended(not very cogently), on the ground that imageless thought needs nophysical embodiment. Aristotle’s remarks suggest, however, that the activeintellect is somehow operative in
all human thinking, enabling even thepassive intellect to function in its own domain. Without a divine operatorat work in us, we could not think at all. Whether the operator is merelygod-
like or whether, as one tradition of commentary has maintained, it isto be identified with God himself, has been the subject of an age-old andstill inconclusive debate (cf. Rist [3.33], 177–82).That debate belongs more to the history of Aristotle’s metaphysics andtheology than to his philosophy of mind. One may in fact doubt whetherhe would ever have arrived at a doctrine of separable intellect had he beenconcerned with human psychology alone (cf. Wilkes [3.47], 116). Thedoctrine is so strongly redolent of Platonic dualism that many wouldhappily write it off as an outmoded relic from an early stage of Aristotle’sdevelopment. In view of its persistence throughout
De Anima, and itsappearance in the biological and ethical treatises, it cannot be so easilydismissed. Yet it remains in tension with the generally monistic tenor ofAristotle’s psychology. He may well have been aware of the tensionhimself. For on this topic, above all, he gives the impression of wrestlingwith problems rather than presenting cut-and-dried solutions: ‘concerningthe intellect and the power of thinking, nothing is clear as yet’ (DA413b24–5). After more than two millennia, those words remain as true asever.In conclusion, we may recall Aristotle’s characterization of the plot oftragedy as its ‘soul’ (
Poetics 50a38–9). The full significance of that remarkshould now be apparent. We have seen that the soul of a living thing is thestructure which enables a plant or an animal to exercise the powerscharacteristic of its species. Similarly, the plot of a tragedy is the structurednexus of events which enables the power characteristic of that genre to beexercised. Just as without soul there can be no living thing, so withoutplot there can be no tragedy. The declared aim of the
Poetics is to examinethe ‘power’
(dunamis) which each species of poetry possesses (47a8–9). Atragedy or an epic is designed to make a certain impact. Its ‘soul’ is thestructure whereby it can move and enlighten its viewers concerning thevicissitudes of human life. A poetic fiction, like other mimetic objects,complements scientific inquiry into human powers, by displaying them atwork and by engaging them in the service of self-understanding.According to Aristotle’s ethical teaching, human well-being lies inexcellent ‘activity of soul’, i.e. in the best use of those capacities forrational thought and action by which mankind is differentiated. We haveseen how those capacities are exercised with pleasure in the experience ofpoetic fiction, and of other mimetic objects. As representations of humanbehaviour, those objects depict, and give play to, the very powers whichdefine their makers and their viewers. Through their distinctive appeal tothe mind and the senses, they satisfy needs rooted in our nature. Hence thetwo themes of this chapter are, at bottom, interconnected. Aristotle’saesthetics complement, as they are also conditioned by, his philosophy ofmind. His work in both fields reflects the naturalism which is the dominantstrain in his thought, and the scientific outlook which is its hallmark.
NOTES1 All references to the
Poetics are to R.Kassel’s text [3.5], with the initial ‘14’omitted from Bekker page-numbers. References to other Aristotelian treatisesare to the relevant Oxford Classical Texts. Translations are my own unlessotherwise noted.2 For a fuller study of them, see Gallop [3.49]. With permission, some materialfrom that study has been used below.3 References to
De Anima and the
Parva Naturalia are to W.D.Ross’s texts [3.12] and [3.14], with titles abbreviated to
DA and
PN. Translations are myown except where noted.4 See Gallop [3.8], pp. 124–6. I draw upon this study occasionally below.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHYORIGINAL LANGUAGE TEXTS AND EDITIONSAesthetics3.1 S.H.Butcher,
Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, 4th edn, New York1911; repr. New York 1951.3.2 I.Bywater,
Aristotle on the Art of Poetry, Oxford, Oxford University Press,1909.3.3 E.M.Cope,
The Rhetoric of Aristotle, 3 vols, rev. J.E.Sandys, Cambridge,1877.3.4 G.F.Else,
Aristotle’s Poetics: The argument, Cambridge, Mass., HarvardUniversity Press, 1957.3.5 R.Kassel, ed.,
Aristotelis De Arte Poetica Liber, Oxford, Clarendon Press,1965.3.6 D.W.Lucas, ed.,
Aristotle: ‘Poetics’, Greek text, with intro., notes andappendices, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1968.3.7 W.D.Ross, ed.,
Aristotelis ‘Ars Rhetorica’, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1959.
Philosophy of mind3.8 D.Gallop, ed.,
Aristotle on Sleep and Dreams, with trans., intro., notes andglossary, Warminster, Aris and Phillips, 1996.3.9 W.S.Hett, trans.,
Aristotle’s ‘De Anima’ and ‘Parva Naturalia’, Loeb ClassicalLibrary, London and Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1936.3.10 R.D.Hicks, ed.,
Aristotle: ‘De Anima’, with trans., intro. and comm.,Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1907.3.11 M.Nussbaum, ed.,
Aristotle, De Motu Animalium, with trans., intro., comm.and exegetic essays, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1978.3.12 W.D.Ross, ed.,
Aristotelis ‘De Anima’, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1959.3.13 ——ed.,
De Anima, with intro. and comm., Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1961.3.14 ——ed.,
Parva Naturalia, with intro. and comm., Oxford, Clarendon Press,1955.3.15 P.Siwek, ed.,
Parva Naturalia, with Latin trans. and comm., Rome, 1963.
ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS AND EDITIONSComplete works3.16 J.Barnes, ed.,
The Complete Works of Aristotle. The Revised OxfordTranslation, 2 vols, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1984.
Separate worksAesthetics3.17 S.Halliwell, ed.,
The Poetics of Aristotle, trans. with intro. and comm.,Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1987.3.18 M.E.Hubbard, trans.,
Poetics, in D.A.Russell and M.Winterbottom (eds),
Ancient Literary Criticism, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1972.3.19 J.Hutton, ed.,
Aristotle’s ‘Poetics’, with trans., intro. and notes, New York,W.W.Norton and Co., 1982.3.20 R.Janko, ed.,
Aristotle: ‘Poetics’, with trans., intro. and notes, Indianapolis ,Hackett, 1987.3.21 G.A.Kennedy,
Aristotle on the Art of Rhetoric: A theory of civic discourse,trans. with intro., notes and appendices, Oxford, Oxford University Press,1991.Philosophy of mind3.22 K.Foster and S.Humphries, trans.,
Aristotle’s ‘De Anima’ in the Version ofWilliam of Moerbeke and the Commentary of St. Thomas Aquinas, NewHaven and London, Yale University Press, 1951.3.23 D.W.Hamlyn, ed.,
Aristotle’s ‘De Anima’, Books II and III (with parts ofBook I), with trans., intro. and notes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1968.3.24 H.Lawson-Tancred, ed.,
Aristotle: ‘De Anima’, with trans., intro. and notes,Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1986.3.25 R.Sorabji, ed.,
Aristotle on Memory, trans. with intro. and notes, London ,Duckworth, 1972.
ANTHOLOGIES AND BIBLIOGRAPHIES3.26 J.Barnes
et al., eds,
Articles on Aristotle, vol. iv, Psychology and Aesthetics,London, Duckworth, 1979. [Bibliography, pp. 187–90.]3.27 A.O.Rorty, ed.,
Essays on Aristotle’s ‘Poetics’, Princeton, PrincetonUniversity Press, 1992. [Bibliography, pp. 425–35.]3.28 M.C.Nussbaum and A.O.Rorty, eds,
Essays on Aristotle’s ‘Philosophy ofMind’, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1992. [Bibliography, pp. 401–19.]See also chs 6 and 9 of [1.39] J.Barnes, ed.,
The Cambridge Companion toAristotle (1995) with bibliographies at pp. 337–45 and 379–84.Comprehensive Bibliographies are given also in works by E.Belfiore andS.Halliwell listed below ([3.35], 365–80 and [3.37], 357–64).
GENERAL STUDIES OF ARISTOTLE’S THOUGHT3.29 J.L.Ackrill,
Aristotle the Philosopher, Oxford, Oxford University Press,1981. [Esp. ch. 5.]3.30 D.J.Allan,
The Philosophy of Aristotle, Oxford, Oxford University Press,1949; 2nd edn 1970. [Esp. ch. 6.]3.31 J.Barnes,
Aristotle, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1982. [Esp. chs 15 and19.]3.32 G.E.R.Lloyd,
Aristotle: The growth and structure of his thought, Cambridge,Cambridge University Press, 1968. [Esp. chs 9 and 12.]3.33 J.M.Rist,
The Mind of Aristotle: A study in philosophical growth, Toronto,University of Toronto Press, 1990. [Esp. ch. 9.]3.34 W.D.Ross,
Aristotle, London, Methuen, 1923. [Esp. chs 5 and 9.]
OTHER BOOKSAesthetics3.35 E.Belfiore,
Tragic Pleasures: Aristotle on plot and emotion, Princeton,Princeton University Press, 1992.3.36 R.G.Collingwood,
The Philosophy of Art, Oxford, Oxford University Press,1938. [Esp. ch. 3.]3.37 S.Halliwell,
Aristotle’s ‘Poetics’, Chapel Hill, University of North CarolinaPress, 1986.3.38 H.House,
Aristotle’s ‘Poetics’: A course of eight lectures, revised with prefaceby C.Hardie, London, Hart-Davis, 1956.3.39 M.Nussbaum,
The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and ethics in Greek tragedyand philosophy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986. [Esp. pp.378–91.]3.40 E.Schaper,
A Prelude to Aesthetics, London, Allen and Unwin, 1968. [Esp.ch. 3.]
Philosophy of mind3.41 J.I.Beare,
Greek Theories of Elementary Cognition, Oxford, OxfordUniversity Press, 1906.3.42 W.W.Fortenbaugh,
Aristotle on Emotion, London, Duckworth, 1975.3.43 W.F.R.Hardie,
Aristotle’s Ethical Theory, Oxford, Oxford University Press,2nd edn 1980, chs 5 and 16.3.44 G.E.R.Lloyd and G.E.L.Owen (eds),
Aristotle on Mind and the Senses,Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1978.3.45 D.Modrak,
Aristotle: The power of perception, Chicago, 1987.3.46 F.Nuyens,
L’Évolution de la. psychologie d’Aristote, Louvain, 1948(originally published in Flemish, 1939).3.47 K.V.Wilkes,
Physicalism, Atlantic Highlands, N.J., Humanities Press, 1978.[Esp. ch. 7.]
ARTICLES AND CHAPTERSAesthetics3.48 J.Bernays, ‘Aristotle on the effect of tragedy’, English trans. J. and J.Barnesfrom
Zwei Abhandlungen über die aristotelische Theorie des Drama (Berlin,1880; first published Breslau, 1857), in [3.26], 154–65.3.49 D.Gallop, ‘Animals in the
Poetics’,
Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 8,ed. J.Annas (1990), 145–71.3.50 L.Golden,
‘Mimêsis and
Katharsis’, Classical Philology, lxiv 3 (1969), 145–53.3.51 S.Halliwell, ‘Pleasure, Understanding and Emotion in Aristotle’s
Poetics’, in[3.27], 241–60.3.52 R.Janko, ‘From Catharsis to the Aristotelian Mean’, in [3.27], 341–58.3.53 J.Lear, ‘Katharsis’,
Phronesis xxxiii 3 (1988), 297–326, repr. in [3.27], 315–40.3.54 F.E.Sparshott, ‘The Riddle of
Katkarsis’, in
Centre and Labyrinth: Essays inhonour of Northrop Frye, ed. E.Cook
et al. (Toronto, University of TorontoPress, 1983), 14–37.3.55 S.White, ‘Aristotle’s favourite tragedies’, in [3.27], 221–40.
Philosophy of mind3.56 J.L.Ackrill, ‘Aristotle’s definitions of
Psuchê’,
Proceedings of the AristotelianSociety 73 (1972–73), 119–33, repr. in [3.26], 65–75.3.57 J.Barnes, ‘Aristotle’s concept of mind’,
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society72 (1971–72), 101–14, repr. in [3.26], 32–41.3.58 I.Block, ‘The order of Aristotle’s psychological writings’,
American Journalof Philology 82 (1961), 50–77.3.59 M.F.Burnyeat, ‘Is an Aristotelian philosophy of mind still credible? (a draft)’,in [3.28], 15–26.3.60 D.Gallop, ‘Aristotle on sleep, dreams, and final causes’,
Proceedings of theBoston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, vol. iv (1988), eds J.J.Clearyand D.C.Shartin (Lanham 1989), 257–90.3.61 W.F.R.Hardie, ‘Aristotle’s treatment of the relation between soul and body’,
Philosophical Quarterly 14 (1964), 53–72.3.62 D.S.Hutchinson, ‘Restoring the order of Aristotle’s
De Anima’,
ClassicalQuarterly 37 (ii) (1987), 373–81.3.63 C.H.Kahn, ‘Sensation and consciousness in Aristotle’s psychology’,
Archivfür Geschichte der Philosophie 48 (1966), 43–81, repr. in [3.26], 1–31.3.64 M.C.Nussbaum and H.Putnam, ‘Changing Aristotle’s mind’, in [3.28], 27–56.3.65 M.Schofield, ‘Aristotle on the imagination’, in [3.44], 99–129, repr. in [3.26], 103–32.3.66 R.K.Sorabji, ‘Body and soul in Aristotle’,
Philosophy 49 (1974), 63–89, repr.in [3.26], 42–64.