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Plato and the Politics of Aristotle's Poetics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Elliot Bartky
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Extract

This article challenges the view that Aristotle's Poetics provides a defense against Plato's assault on poetry. I argue that Aristotle's discussion of poetry is at least as critical of the poetic depiction of the city and the gods as is the Platonic account. In the Poetics Aristotle does break with Plato in order to establish poetry's independence from philosophy. Aristotle's account of poetry as an independent activity should not, however, be read as a defense of poetry against Plato's subordination of poetry to philosophy. Instead, it is argued that Aristotle establishes poetry's independence from philosophy as a corrective to Plato's resort to poetry, thereby establishing that philosophy is completely autonomous from poetry.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 54 , Issue 4: SPECIAL SESQUICENTENNIAL ISSUE , Fall 1992 , pp. 589 - 620
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1992

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References

I would like to thank Wilson C. McWilliams, Henry Weinfield, Walter Nicgorski, Kent Emery, Jr., and the anonymous referees for their comments.

1. The Poetics is one of the most problematic of Aristotle's texts not least of all because the complete text is not available. The textual problems of the Poetics are discussed in the texts on the Poetics cited in the references. I have chosen to assume the authenticity of text without engaging in a discussion of the textual problems. I have done so believing that the text which is available assumes a politicaltheological position consistent with Aristotelian political philosophy.

2. Butcher, S. H., Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and the Fine Arts (New York: Dove Publications, 1951), p. 115.Google Scholar

3. Else, Gerald F., Aristotle's Poetics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967), p. 3.Google Scholar

4. Aristotle, , On Poetry and Style, trans. Grube, G. M. A. (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1958), pp. xx-xi.Google Scholar

5. See Halliwell, Stephen, Aristotle's Poetics (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), p. 1 and chap. 4Google Scholar; and Halliwell, , The Poetics of Aristotle, trans, and commentary by Halliwell, Stephen (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), pp. 89–90.Google Scholar Two very fine discussions of the various interpretations of the politics of catharsis may be found in Berns, Laurence, -Aristotle's Poetics,- in Ancients and Moderns, ed. Cropsey, Joseph (New York: Basic Books, 1964)Google Scholar; and Salkever, Stephen G., “Tragedy and the Education of the Demos,” in Creek Tragedy and Political Theory, ed. Euben, J. Peter (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).Google Scholar The best account of the politics of catharsis may be found in Lord, Carnes, Education and Culture in the Political Thought of Aristotle (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982).Google Scholar

6. Halliwell, , Aristotles Poetics, p. 9.Google Scholar

7. Aristotle, Cf., Poetics, trans. Janko, Richard (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., 1987), p. xixGoogle Scholar; and Aristotle, , Poetics, ed. Lucas, D. W. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), p. xxii.Google Scholar

8. To use the terms critique or defense in a discussion of Platonic dialogues is to run the risk of missing Plato's dramatic intent. Plato does not provide statements which are meant to gain our easy assent. It is more appropriate to say that the dramatic form of the dialogues is meant to restore Socratic dialectic by encouraging our participation in the action of the drama. On this point see the introduction to Klein's, JacobA Commentary on Plato's Meno (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989)Google Scholar; and Strauss's, Leo “On Plato's Republic” in The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977).Google Scholar

9. Translations are from Bloom, Allan, trans., The Republic of Plato (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1968).Google Scholar

10. Salkever, , “Tragedy and the Education of the Demos,” pp. 277–85.Google Scholar

11. For a more complete discussion of Cephalus see Bloom's, interpretive essay in his translation of the Republic, pp. 312–17.Google Scholar

12. Translations are from Pangle, Thomas L., trans., The Laws of Plato (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1980).Google Scholar

13. On the relationship of eros to philosophy in the Symposium see Rosen, Stanley, Plato's Symposium (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), esp. pp.202–277.Google Scholar

14. Salkever, , “Tragedy and the Education of the Demos,” p. 282.Google Scholar

15. Translations are from Symposium, trans. Nehamas, Alexander and Woodruff, Paul (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., 1989).Google Scholar

16. Translations are from Ion, trans. Bloom, Allan, in The Roots of Political Philosophy, ed. Pangle, Thomas L. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987).Google Scholar

17. Translations are from Plato: five Dialogues-Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo, trans. Grube, G. M. A. (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., 1988).Google Scholar

18. Translation of Phaedrus is taken from Apology, Phaedo and Phaedrus, Loeb Classical Library, trans. Fowler, Harold N. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982).Google Scholar

19. Thucydides, , History of the Peloponnesian War, Library, Loeb Classical, trans. Smith, Charles Foster (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 2: 43–4.Google Scholar

20. Plato's Republic is on this point, too, not only a response to tragedy but to comedy. It is useful to compare the elimination of family and property for the guardian class with the similar proposals made by the women in Aristophanes' The Ecdesiazusae (“Assembly of Women”).

21. Strauss, , The Rebirth of Classical Rationalism: An Introduction to the Thought of Leo Strauss (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 171.Google Scholar

22. Strauss characterizes the Platonic understanding of the whole as “noetic heterogeneity” in which the whole “consists of classes or kinds, the character of which does not become fully clear through sense perception” (Rebirth of Classical Rationalism, p. 132; The City and Man, pp. 61–62). I refer the reader to Strauss's argument for a more adequate account of Plato's understanding of the whole.

23. Strauss, , The City and Man, p. 136.Google Scholar

24. Aristotle, Politics, trans. Lord, Carries (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).Google Scholar Sec Davis, Michael “Politics and Poetry: Aristotle's Politics, Books VII and VIII,” Interpretation 19 (1991-1992).Google Scholar

25. Salkever, , “Tragedy and the Education of the Demos,” p. 278.Google Scholar

26. Ibid., p. 301.

27. Ibid., p. 296.

28. The happiness and virtue of the city in relation to the happiness and virtue of man is perhaps the central issue, and most difficult problem, of the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics. In the Nicomachean Ethics (1177all-1179a32) Aristotle seems to hold that divines thoeria brings the greatest happiness, and that this happiness, by virtue of its divine quality, is best in itself, but not necessarily as such for man. Elsewhere in the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics Aristotle collapses the distinction between what is best and what is best for man. One possible explanation for this contrad iction may be that it is due to Aristotle's recognition of the tension between the philosopher who contemplates for the sake of theoria, and the citizen who serves the city for the sake of the city.

29. Aristotle, , Nichomachean Ethics, trans. Ross, W. D., in The Complete Works Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985).Google Scholar

30. Cf. Salkever, , “Tragedy and the Education of the Demos,” p. 299.Google Scholar

31. Although Lord recognizes that Aristotle's criticism of the Sophoclean account of Oedipus hamartia goes to the heart of the matter of Aristotle's “view of the political significance of tragedy” he seems to have ignored the significance of Aristotle's explicit denial that the Oedipus represents the best form of tragedy (Education and Culture, p. 173).

32. Aristotle's comments on historians certainly do not seem to apply to either Herodotus or Thucydides. See Strauss's “Thucydidcs Peloponnesian War” in The City and Man.

33. On this point see Berns “Aristotle’s Poetics.”

34. Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner, trans. Kaufman, Walter (New York: Vantage Books, 1967), p. 86.Google Scholar

35. In arguing that Aristotle agrees with Plato on the matter of politics and poetry! am, so far at least, in accord with much of Lords account. Lord and I both recognize that Aristotle, as much as Plato, sees that the city requires a reformed poetry. I break with Lord since he would not appear to accept my argument that Aristotle ultimately rejects Platonic philosophy's reliance on poetry.

36. Strauss, , The City and Man, p. 21.Google Scholar

37. For an excellent discussion of Aristotle's turn from Plato see Jacob Klein's “Aristotle, An Introduction” in Ancients and Moderns.

38. Hegel, G. W. F., Lectures on the History of Philosophy, 3 vols., trans. Haldane, E. S. and Simson, Frances H. (Atlantic Heights, NY: Humanities Press, 1983), 2:117, 137, 229.Google Scholar

39. See Metaphysics especially book 1, chapters 5–9. In criticizing Plato's account of the Forms Aristotle argues that Plato has resorted to poetical metaphors metaphoras legein poietikas (991a22; 1079b26).

40. Klein, , “Aristotle, An Introduction,” p. 56.Google Scholar

41. The fact that Aristotle resorts to myth on rare occasion is the exception which proves the rule. For example, his suggestion toward the end of the Nicomachean Ethics that the gods care for human affairs (1170a24–33) flatly contradicts the argument of book twelve of the Metaphysics. Aristotle's rare appeal to myth in the Ethics supports our view that he understands the power and, by implication, the danger of appeals to myth.