Discuss Aristotle's observations on Poetry.

  Aristotle's observations on Poetry

 

Ans. In his Poetics Aristotle developed the theories of Plato on lines of his her own. He improved upon Plato's theory of imitation which to him stood for falsehood and immortality. To Aristotle imitation was closely related to human life. Aristotle's Poetics is his counterblast to Plato's celebrated condemnationOf poetry as “a pursuit unworthy of man's intellectual dignity, and radically vicious in its effect “. Out of the remarkable temperamental differences of the master and the pupil (Plato and Aristotle) came the most formidable assault on poetry, and the most effective defense of it, that has ever been known.

Commenting on the temperamental differences of the two illustrious Greek philosophers Abercrombie writes: “Aristotle’s philosophy was colored by his interest in biology, Plato's by his interest in mathematics. This means that Aristotle's mind liked to proceed from things to ideas, Plato's from ideas to things. Aristotle had the scientific, Plato t he Metaphysical mind.

 “Aristotle’s the Poetics is “planned to invalidate Plato's argument at every point ... But it was Plato the philosopher who condemned poetry; and the more fact he did so is typical of the way his philosophy regarded things. Things being only important as the representatives of ideas, he was quite prepared to say that a thing which was unnecessary or unworthy as a representative of ideas ought not to exist. Poetry was a thing of this nature; Plato therefore proposed that it should be abolished. But it was with a biologist's respect for the existence of things that Aristotle looked on poetry: for him ideas were only important as the interpretation of things. It never occurs to Aristotle to ask whether poetry ought or ought not to exist. It does exist: the questions for his philosophy are, in what manner and to what result does it exist? "