The little book, or collection of lecture notes, that has come down to us as Aristotle’s Poetics was probably written about 347–42 B.C., but revised at some later date either by Aristotle or by an apt pupil. Despite all the lacunae in the argument and all the corruptions of the text, its influence and authority in succeeding centuries has been out of all proportion to its length. Neither in this work nor in other passages in Aristotle’s extant works where aesthetic and literary problems are discussed (he also wrote a dialogue On Poets, which has disappeared) is there anything that can be called a system of aesthetics. But from this one splendid model of what it is to give a theory of a literary genre, and particularly from Aristotle’s implicit replies to the views of Plato and others, we can legitimately draw out some valuable suggestions toward fundamental aesthetic theories. No work in the entire history of aesthetics, it is safe to say, has presented so many problems of exegesis, or been so pondered over and disputed (the bibliography is enormous, and still growing), but even if we cannot always be certain what Aristotle himself meant, we know what he has been construed to mean, and which of his supposed ideas have been powerfully influential in the later history of aesthetics and literary criticism.
It is highly characteristic of Aristotle that, in opening up a new field of inquiry, he begins by mapping it as exactly as he can in terms of a system of classification. This is his general way of getting at the thing itself, its essential features, and when he turns to the art of poetry (poietike), he is determined to mark out boundaries and study the nature of that art quite independently of its moral and political connections. This is a separation that Plato could not make, or did not believe should be made, but that Aristotle evidently considers quite indispensable for a satisfactory understanding. What, he asks, is the genus to which the poetic art belongs—and what, in turn, are its species?
On several occasions, Aristotle makes use of a very fundamental distinction between three kinds of “thought”—knowing (theoria), doing (praxis), and making (poiesis) (see Metaphysics VI [E], i; Topics VI, vi). In this context, poietike would be the productive art in general, but in the Poetics it is taken in a narrower sense. Some, but not all, making is imitation, or representation, of objects and events (Aristotle seems to take this term quite straightforwardly). And the imitative art itself falls into two divisions: (1) the art of imitating visual appearances by means of color and drawing, and (2) the art of imitating human actions through verse, song and dance (Poetics, chs. 1, 25). The second is the art of poetry. Thus the art of poetry is distinguished from painting in terms of its medium (words, melody, rhythm) and from versified history or philosophy (the poem of Empedocles) by virtue of the object it imitates. Two of the species of the poetic art are of primary concern to Aristotle: drama (either tragic or comic) and epic poetry. Tragedy and epic are distinguished from comedy by the seriousness or gravity of their actions (chs. 2, 6), and from each other by their mode, or method, of treatment (dramatic vs. narrative).
When Aristotle inquires into the “nature” of something, his inquiry is likely to have two distinct aspects—or aspects which we find quite distinct (and have come, in the light of later philosophical developments, to want to keep separate), but which Aristotle sees as inherently connected. He asks: what is the nature of the poetic art? And the answer is both normative and descriptive. For it involves a set of categories that play a fundamental role in all his thinking: the “four causes,” or four types of explanation (see Physics II, vii). These are not mentioned in the Poetics itself, but it is interesting that in the Metaphysics (V [Δ], ii) when he distinguishes the four causes, his example of the “material” cause is “the bronze of the statue”; the “formal” cause is the “pattern,” or “formula of the essence”; the “efficient” cause is the productive agent (e.g. the sculptor and his activity); the “final” cause is “the end, i.e., that for the sake of which a thing is” (trans. Ross). To understand the poetic art; then, will require not only an objective investigation of the actual features of existing tragedies, but also a conclusion about what makes a good tragedy—“the causes of artistic excellence and the opposite” (ch. 26, 1462 b 17; trans. Else; cf. ch. 1). Aristotle, in short, is interested in the basis of critical judgment, the reasons that can be given in support of a comparative evaluation (why, for instance, he is justified in regarding Homer’s epics and Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex as the greatest of masterpieces)—and the excuses that might be given in reply to unfavorable criticism (see chs. 25, 26).
Since our concern here is with general aesthetics, rather than the details of critical theory, we need not review the six parts, or constituents of the tragic art, which Aristotle distinguishes (ch. 6) and goes on to analyze with some care. It is the logic of his method and the significance of his main ideas that we must be content to understand.
THE PROPER PLEASURE OF TRAGEDY
Suppose we have made a full empirical study of existing tragedies, and catalogued their various characteristics—those common to all, such as imitating an action (praxis), and those that vary from one to another. Still, our understanding will not be complete, nor will we be in a position to give an adequate definition of the species we are after, until we can state its function, or end (telos)—that is, its final cause. Aristotle is not at all explicit about his method, but it must be basically similar to that employed in the Nicomachaean Ethics to determine the end, or good, of man.
People go to see tragedies because they want to, not because they have to, and evidently derive enjoyment from this experience. And the perpetuation of the institution of tragic performance shows, too, that no substitute for it has been found—that it affords a unique sort of enjoyment. A study of tragedies in general should show what this enjoyment is like—what is the “proper pleasure” (oikeia hedonē) of tragedy (chs. 14, 23, 26), though it may be produced in different degrees by different works. Then we can say that it is the function of the tragic art to produce this particular sort of pleasure, we can ask how it does this, and we can discover what enables one tragedy to perform that function better than another.
The idea of approaching the problem of critical evaluation by looking for a particular kind of enjoyment that it is the function of a particular art, or genre of art, to give, is a very important one. And this seems capable of empirical investigation. What is it about serious drama, generally speaking, that draws us to it, that creates the demand? And what is the impulse that produces the supply? Aristotle asks the second question (ch. 4), but evidently thinks of his answer as also bearing on the first one. He makes two suggestions: (1) Imitation is natural to man, and the recognition of imitation is pleasurable; (2) “melody and rhythm” also come naturally to man—and so are presumably enjoyable. Each of these suggestions, though somewhat tersely and (especially the second one) casually made, leads to significant lines of thought. Let us take them up separately.
As rational animals, we take pleasure in imitation, because seeing an imitation and recognizing it as such (say, as a picture of a dog) is a special case of learning.
And since learning and admiring are pleasant, all things connected with them must also be pleasant; for instance, a work of imitation, such as painting, sculpture, poetry, and all that is well imitated, even if the object of imitation is not pleasant; for it is not this that causes pleasure or the reverse, but the inference that the imitation and the object imitated are identical, so that the result is that we learn something [Rhetoric I, xi, 1371b; trans. Freese].
The prevailing tenor of this remark is very different from Plato’s denigration of the cognitive status of art. Though Aristotle does not seem to be saying something very different from what Plato said when he placed the arts on the lowest level of his divided line, in the context of Aristotle’s general epistemology the difference is significant. He and Plato both agree that genuine knowledge is not of particulars, but of universals: recognizing the photograph as a picture of Lassie does not, for Aristotle, give knowledge in the important sense, like recognizing it as a picture of a dog (Metaphysics XI [K], i; VII [Z], xi). When the universals are thought of as transcendental Forms, they are remote from the works of the etcher or draftsman; but when they are thought of, in Aristotle’s way, as existing only in substances, then the draftsman, who abstracts and reproduces in another medium certain dog-universals, is not doing something poles apart from, say, the taxonomist, who is abstracting and connecting other dog-universals. Art is knowledge, in not too bad a sense, or at least the pleasure it gives is, as far as one of its ingredients is concerned, of the same order as the pleasure of coming to know.
Even if tragedy pleases us as an imitation, it shares this value with other imitations, and so we have not yet found a proper, or peculiar, pleasure. But the differentia is to be sought in the object of imitation, for that is what is peculiar to tragedy (setting aside epic, at the moment). Thus Aristotle says the proper pleasure of tragedy “is the pleasure that comes from pity and fear by means of imitation” (ch. 14, 1453 b 14; trans. Else). The meaning of this statement is not perfectly clear. Perhaps Aristotle wants it to be taken in this way: this pleasure is the pleasure we derive from recognizing an imitation, when the imitation happens to be of fearful and pitiable events. Thus, as pleasure in imitation it belongs to a certain genus of pleasures, but there are species of imitation-pleasures, defined by the sort of object imitated, the subject matter. In so far as matters of human behavior are of greater moment to us than other actions, and the significant (“serious”) actions of tragedy are most important of all, the pleasure of seeing an imitation of them—and in this sense learning about them—might be the most intense of all imitation-pleasures.
That is a possible view. But it leads immediately to a problem. For Aristotle clearly does not want to say only that the events of the tragedy are fearful and pitiable; he says they arouse emotions of fear and pity in the audience—and not only the theater audience, but those who just read the story or hear it told (see ch. 14). This specific combination, or pair, of emotions is unique to serious poetry—including both tragedy and epic, which Aristotle regards as having the same emotional effect, though he thinks that tragedy is capable of achieving it more fully than epic (ch. 26). But fear and pity are unpleasant emotions to feel, one would think. Indeed, in the Rhetoric (II, v, viii), they are defined as species of pain: pity, for example, is “a kind of pain excited by the sight of evil, deadly or painful, which befalls one who does not deserve it” (II, viii, 2). But then the question arises, How can there be a pleasure that “comes from pity and fear,” even “by means of imitation”?
From our later vantage-point in the history of aesthetics, we might expect Aristotle to go on to show how emotions that are ordinarily painful can become pleasurable through the sort of imitation we have in tragedy. He might have said that the emotions, since they are directed at imaginary people or people who lived long ago, cannot trouble us (cf. Rhetoric II, viii: “the nearness of the terrible makes men pity”), or that something in the nature of the drama transmutes them, or removes their sting. But he does not say anything of the sort. And, indeed, his chief emphasis is on the importance of intensifying the fear and pity of the audience: the hero must be a man “like ourselves” (ch. 13), for example, so that we can pity him all the more readily and deeply. The closest Aristotle comes to resolving this paradox of the tragic pleasure is in his casual remark in Chapter 4 that “There are things we find painful to look at themselves, but of which we view the most accurate reproductions with pleasure: for example, replicas of the most unprepossessing animals, or of cadavers” (1448 b 11; trans. Else)—a claim made also in Rhetoric I, xi, and De Partibus Animalium I, v. Perhaps the point is simply that, however pitiable and fearful the events in the play, the painfulness of the emotions they arouse does not destroy the pleasure that comes simply because it is an imitation, and of important and interesting things.
Whether it is possible to make out in Aristotle’s works a more specific solution to the tragic paradox is perhaps doubtful. One possibility, for which there is just the suggestion of a warrant, may be worth considering briefly. It is not the same events of the play that are both fearful and pitiable, but different ones, and indeed there is a natural order in which they would occur—at least in the ideal cases, as Aristotle conceives them. In Oedipus Rex, the events leading up to the climactic recognition scene are increasingly fearful, but when the climax comes our fears are over, for we have been through the worst, and it is at this point that we feel only pity for Oedipus. The tragic movement, it might be said, transforms fear into pity. But when pity is felt as a relief from fear, or other tense and painful feelings, such as horror or anger, it may become something like a pleasure—or the transition may be felt as a pleasure. When (like the Ancient Mariner) we experience a sudden opening of the channels of feeling, which have been dammed up by coldness of heart, by envy, or by self-centeredness, a strong sense of gladness may be mixed with the pity. Or suppose we are terrified that something bad will happen to someone, and it does, so that we can now pity instead of fear—or suppose we bitterly hate someone who suddenly becomes more understandable to us, so that we can pity him instead of hating—again there is a sense that we have been set free to some extent. According to one of Aristotle’s accounts of pleasure (Rhetoric I, xi), it is “a certain movement of the soul, a sudden and perceptible settling down into its natural state” (trans. Freese), a restoration to “normal” condition. The end of the tragedy, when the hero is to be pitied, does not restore things to normal, but it brings things back much closer to an equilibrium, and this movement may be itself enjoyed.
Let us turn now to the second suggestion Aristotle makes (in ch. 4) about the pleasure of tragedy: that we enjoy melody and rhythm. It is a little startling that he should be so brief here (but the Poetics bristles with striking remarks that are left to us to follow up). Perhaps he did not think it would be questioned—at least by anyone familiar with Plato’s Philebus—or did not at the time know where to go next. But it is tempting to ask, What about melody and rhythm makes them intrinsically pleasurable?—and to answer, It must be their beauty. For this move enables us to connect up this passage with other passages later in the Poetics in which Aristotle uses the term “beauty” (to kalon) or its cognates. To what extent we are warranted in taking this step is not clear, for Aristotle may simply be postulating a special pleasure in melody and rhythm, but it is worth considering.
As a possible connection between the two parts of the Poetics, we may consider Aristotle’s most famous account of pleasure (Nicomachean Ethics X). Pleasures, he says, differ in kind according to the activity which they “complete”; each activity has its “proper pleasure.” “Pleasures increase activities, and what increases a thing is proper to it” (X, v; trans. Ostwald). Sensing (for example, seeing a sculpture) and thought or contemplation (for example, reading or hearing Homer recited) are activities also, and have their proper pleasures.
All sense perception is actively exercised in relation to its object, and is completely exercised when it is in good condition and its object is the best of those that can be perceived by the senses. . . . From all this it follows that in any sense perception that activity is best whose organ is in the best condition and whose object is the best of all the objects that fall within its range, and this activity will be the most complete and the most pleasant [X, iv].
When the object experienced is “best” or “worthiest” (some translate “most beautiful”), the pleasure is greatest because the experience is most active. And this would describe the tragic experience above all. “A beautiful thing,” says Aristotle suddenly in Chapter 7 of the Poetics (1450 b 35; trans. Else), “either a living creature or any structure made of parts, must have not only an orderly arrangement of these parts but a size which is not accidental—for beauty lies in size and arrangement . . .” (in the Metaphysics XIII [M], iii, “the chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness”). And he goes on to apply this to tragedy. Now, there is a certain mystery in Aristotle’s remarks about beauty—in some places in the Poetics, the term kalliste seems to be another name for “best” or “finest” or “artistically most excellent” (see, for example, ch. 13, 1452 b 31 and 1453 a 19, 23; cf. kalos, ch. 1, 1447 a 10). He is not necessarily thinking of beauty as a special quality distinct from, but capable of contributing to, artistic excellence—it may be that “beautiful tragedy” and “artistically good tragedy” are synonymous for him.
But kalliste is clearly an aesthetic value predicate, and applies to the tragedies that Aristotle deems worthy of praise. And he wants to point out that a good tragedy does have “orderly arrangement,” with all that this can imply in the way of completeness, due proportion, and (if this is not too Platonic) measure. The epic, for example, must center about a complete action, “so that like a single whole creature (zoön) it may produce its proper pleasure” (ch. 23, 1459 a 20; trans. Else; the same analogy appears in Plato’s Phaedrus 264c). This organic unity and order is something that the art of imitation can claim to offer—something that the art of serious poetry shares with the art of painting (and Aristotle here brings these arts closer together in his theory than Plato was able or willing to do), but perhaps achieves in its own way and degree, because the tragedy takes place in time and is itself an action that is complete, with a beginning, middle, and end (ch. 7).
ARISTOTLE’S ANSWER TO PLATO
From these conclusions about the end, or function, of tragedy, Aristotle derives his critical criteria, concerning those features of tragedy that are likely to enable it to fulfill that function most effectively. We will not be able here to give all the attention they deserve to the many penetrating suggestions that Aristotle has to offer, but some examples may be cited to illustrate his method. Since the wholeness of the tragedy is the curve of its movement to consummation, the plot (mythos), or “course of events,” is basic and most important to get right; it is the (proximate) “end” or “as it were the soul of the tragic art” (ch. 6, 1450 a 39). Aristotle analyzes those features of the complex plot, peripety and recognition, that contribute most tellingly to the effect of fear and pity (chs. 9–11, 13). The play must be unified to have a single condensed impact (chs. 7, 8), and it must proceed with the greatest possible sense of inevitability. This means that the developments of the plot “must arise out of the very structure of the plot, in such a way that as a result of what has happened beforehand it follows either necessarily or probably that these particular things happen” (ch. 10, 1452 a 19; trans. Else).
It is in this context that we must understand some of Aristotle’s most often quoted (and puzzling) remarks about probability and necessity. For example, he says “it is clear too that the poet’s job is not to tell what has happened but the kind of things that can happen” (1451 a 36) and
that is why the writing of poetry is a more philosophical activity, and one to be taken more seriously, than the writing of history; for poetry tells us rather the universals, history the particulars. “Universal” means what kinds of thing a certain kind of person will say or do in accordance with probability or necessity, which is what poetic composition aims at . . . ; while “particular” is what Alcibiades did or had done to him [ch 9, 1451 b 6; trans. Else].
The remark about Alcibiades is the one to begin with, for to understand Aristotle’s view of poetry by means of this comparison we must first understand his view of history. And it is clear that he thinks of history as a mere chronicle of distinct events that does not make any attempt to explain one event in terms of another, or show how one leads to another. This is certainly a very narrow concept of history, but it shows that we must not overstress the contrasting concept of poetry, for Aristotle’s point is simply that to make a coherent and powerful plot, the poet must show how actions grow out of motives and motives out of circumstances. But this can be done only in terms of universals, or psychological laws (that a man under such-and-such circumstances would necessarily or probably act in such-and-such a way). Thus Aristotle is not saying that poetry is very philosophical, but only that it involves psychological knowledge (as, he thinks, history does not). We must not forget, of course, that this passage, quoted often out of context, has inspired many important theories about poetry and art as “imitations of universals or essences,” and these theories must be considered in their place, whether or not Aristotle, when read with caution, can be said actually to have been their legitimate parent.
Nevertheless, it is clear that Aristotle is making an important point about the intellectual content of poetry here, and in this respect implicitly answering one of Plato’s main objections to it. For though the poet can plausibly pretend to knowledge of shipbuilding or military strategy which he does not have, he cannot fake psychological knowledge—he must understand human nature. He must have true general knowledge of certain psychological mechanisms; for without these he cannot even make a good play. And, other things being equal, the better the play the more profound and extensive must the poet’s knowledge be, for both the beautiful pattern of plot and the successful imitation of action depend upon it.
Hence there is an important cognitive element in Aristotle’s critical theory, though he argues it, interestingly, as a consequence of his other critical principles. The assumed psychological laws must be true ones, because if they are not, the dramatic developments will not be inevitable, and the play will fall apart. Thus basically Aristotle is a structural critic: the business of the critic is to analyze aspects of structure to show what helps, and what hinders, the production of the tragic pleasure. Aristotle is also a textural critic, and shows the way—if not in Chapters 20–22 of the Poetics (which may not be by him at all), then in the Rhetoric—to the close and careful analysis of the verbal level in poetry. In both respects, in his intense interest in both structure and verbal texture, Aristotle’s influence on the rhetoricians and critics of the Renaissance and early modern period was to be enormous.
There remains one line of thought to be considered—and the most difficult of all. This has to do with the famous concept of “catharsis.” This term, in its verbal form (katharsin), appears but once in Aristotle’s account of tragedy (Poetics, ch. 6, 1449 b 28), but over the centuries the translators and commentators have worked out an interesting theory which they find Aristotle sketching here, however briefly. And this interpretation is still the canonic one, though in recent years it has been challenged in a most fundamental way by Professor Gerald F. Else (see bibliography below). The issues are numerous and complex, but the difference between the two interpretations, and something of their support, must be reviewed briefly here.
The traditional interpretation is well expressed in Butcher’s translation of the passage in Chapter 6 (1449 b 27): “through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions” (di eleou kai phobou perainousa tēn tōn toioutōn pathēmaton katharsin). The general theory attributed to Aristotle, then, would be that tragedy, by arousing these emotions, has some sort of therapeutic effect upon the audience’s mental health, giving a pleasurable sense of relief—“in calm of mind, all passion spent” (as Milton echoes this view in Samson Agonistes). The sparseness and ambiguity of the text and the plentifulness and ingenuity of the interpreters have combined to produce other subissues, without full resolution. For example, there has been much disagreement about whether katharsin is a medical metaphor, and implies the getting rid of noxious emotions in a way analogous to a physic, or whether it is a metaphor taken from religious ritual, and means a kind of “purification” of the emotions, but not their elimination. On behalf of the medical interpretation, which is dominant, it is argued that katharsin clearly has the purgative sense in Greek medical writings; and that the genitive form of pathematon often denotes the object removed (cf. Plato, Phaedo 69b). On behalf of the religious interpretation, it can be said that the genitive can also denote the object cleansed (cf. Plato, Sophist 227c). And it is noteworthy that in its only other occurrence in the Poetics itself (in the form katharseos; ch. 17, 1455 b 15), the word has to mean ritual purification (in this case of Orestes). And again, the puzzling grammatical construction (especially the phrase ton toiouton pathematon) has stimulated disagreement about whether Aristotle means that only these two tragic emotions, or emotions in general, are the ones that are purged or purified.
Professor Else, on the other hand, translates the passage as follows: “carrying to completion, through a course of events involving pity and fear, the purification of those painful or fatal acts which have that quality.” The purgation, in his reading, is a purification, and it is not something that takes place in the spectator at all, but something that takes place in the play. It is carried out by the plot itself, in virtue of the fact that the plot consists of events of a certain sort. (Professor Else takes pathematon as tragic events, because pathos in later chapters means this.) The actions that have the most tragic quality, Aristotle says (ch. 14), are painful deeds “done to one another by persons who are bound by natural ties of affection,” as “when a brother kills or intends to kill a brother, or a son a father” (trans. Else). These are acts evoking moral horror, to which the Greeks attached immemorial taboos—acts that were felt to require a “purification” because they carried (even to sophisticated Greeks of the fifth and fourth centuries, as can be seen in Plato’s Euthyphro) a suggestion of blood-pollution, the curse on the house of Atreus, for example. But what makes it possible for the doer of the horrible deed, say of patricide, to be cleansed (and pitied) is that he did it in ignorance of some important fact, and therefore did not intend to murder his father and marry his mother. This, according to Professor Else, is the meaning of the so-called “tragic flaw” (hamartia), which he interprets as a “serious error.” It would make possible the tremendous emotional impact of the “recognition” (for example, Oedipus’ discovery of what he has done). Oedipus thus becomes pitiable, as it turns out he is free from pollution—the evil deed is purified in the course of the plot, because Oedipus’ essential purity is revealed by his own horror at the discovery of his actions; his recognition shows that he deserves our pity.
According to this interpretation, the concept of catharsis is a structural concept—it belongs to the formal analysis of the drama itself—rather than a psychological one. There are many difficulties in making it fit the actual patterns of the tragedies Aristotle knew—even Oedipus Rex. Moreover, the traditional interpretation is strongly supported by Book VIII of the Politics. Here Aristotle discusses the place of music in education, echoing and developing some of the ideas that appeared in Plato’s Laws (cf. 790c–791b). One of the benefits of music, he says, is “release of emotion” (as Barker translates katharsis, p. 412): we observe that certain people are
affected by religious melodies; and when they come under the influence of melodies which fill the soul with religious excitement they are calmed and restored as if they had undergone a medical treatment and purging (katharsis). The same sort of effect will also be produced [i.e., by appropriate music] on those who are specially subject to feelings of fear and pity, or to feelings of any kind [Politics VIII, vii; trans. Barker].
It is natural to take Aristotle’s side remark, after he introduces the term “release of emotion”—“the sense of that term will be explained more clearly in our lectures on poetics, but may be left to speak for itself at the moment”—as referring to some part of the Poetics that has disappeared. In that case, it becomes reasonable to carry over the catharsis theory that Aristotle undoubtedly held about music in the Politics, and make it into a theory about tragedy in the Poetics. Unfortunately, in the Poetics itself, there is little (besides the key clause in Chapter 6) on which to build such a therapeutic theory of catharsis—though also there is nothing to exclude it.
One of the strongest temptations to the traditional interpretation of the Poetics is that it imputes to Aristotle a direct answer to Plato’s second main objection to poetry: that it could only feed and water the passions, and thus disrupt the harmony of the soul and the rationality of the citizen. According to this interpretation, Aristotle has an impressive rebuttal: no such thing; if we look only at the immediate frenzy, the audience’s terror and weeping, it may seem that way, but if we look at the later and deeper psychological effects of going through the experience, the playgoer is like the religious enthusiast who feels cleansed and lightened and brightened by his emotional release. The playgoing citizen, in the long run, is probably the calmest and the wisest, for he gets rid from time to time of those festering emotional irritations that poison the temperament and the mind.
Even if Aristotle never did, in fact, have any such theory about the indirect beneficial effects of the tragic experience, he nevertheless could be proposing a reply to part of Plato’s objection. For, in the first place, as suggested earlier, he would be saying that the beauty of tragedy has a kind of purity like those beauties Plato speaks of in the Philebus, and is harmless and admissible. But, in the second place, he would be saying that the immorality of tragedy is not to be feared. Though there are various logical possibilities for the tragic reversal of fortune (metabolē), depending on whether the hero is good or not, and suffers good or ill fortune, the best tragedy, Aristotle thinks he can show, is one in which a man who is not wholly good, but enough like ourselves, suffers a misfortune he does not wholly deserve. What Plato feared most as a bad example for Athenian youth was the suggestion that good men are unhappy and that bad men prosper. Aristotle’s reply might be understood in this way: there is no need to have a moral censorship of plays, but only an aesthetic one. For the play about the good man who becomes unhappy or the bad man who becomes happy will simply not be a very good tragedy; other things being equal, morality and justice will coincide with aesthetic excellence.
Bibliography
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