A critical history of Greek philosophy

by W. T. Stace

Unlike Plato, Aristotle depicts no ideal State. No single State, he thinks, is in itself the best. Everything must depend upon the circumstances. What is the best State in one age and county will not be the best in another. Moreover, it is useless to discuss Utopian constitutions. What alone interests the sane and balanced mind of Aristotle is the kind of constitution which we may hope actually to realize. Of the three good forms of government he considers that monarchy is theoretically the best. The rule of a single perfectly wise and just man would be better than any other. But it has to be given up as impracticable, because such perfect individuals do not exist. And it is only among primitive peoples that we find the hero, the man whose moral stature so completely exalts him above his fellows that he rules as a matter of course. The next best State is aristocracy. And last, in Aristotle's opinion, comes constitutional republic, which is, however, perhaps the State best suited to the special needs and level of development of the Greek city-states.

6. Aesthetics, or the Theory of Art.

Plato had no systematic philosophy of Art, and his views had to be collected from scattered references. Aristotle likewise has scarcely a system, though his opinions are more connected, and though he devoted a special tretise, the "Poetics", to the subject. And this [{326}] book, which has come down to us in a fragmentary condition, deals exclusively with poetry, and even in poetry only the drama is considered in detail. What we have from Aristotle on the subject of aesthetics may be divided roughly into two classes, firstly, reflections on the nature and significance of art in general, and, secondly, a more detailed application of these principles to the art of poetry. We shall deal with these two classes of opinions in that order.

In order to know what art is, we must first know what it is not. It must be distinguished from kindred activities. And firstly, it is distinguished from morality in that morality is concerned with action, art with production. Morality consists in the activity itself, art in that which the activity produces. Hence the state of mind of the actor, his motives, feelings, etc., are important in morality, for they are part of the act itself. But they are not important in art, the only essential being that the work of art should turn out well, however it has been produced. Secondly, art is distinguished from the activity of nature, which it in many respects resembles. Organic beings reproduce their own kind, and, in the fact that it is concerned with production, generation resembles art. But in generation, the living being produces only itself. The plant produces a plant, man begets man. But the artist produces something quite other than himself, a poem, a picture, a statue.

Art is of two kinds, according as it aims at completing the work of nature, or at creating something new, an imaginary world of its own which is a copy of the real world. In the former case, we get such arts as that of [{327}] medicine. Where nature has failed to produce a healthy body, the physician helps nature out, and completes the work that she has begun. In the latter case, we get what are, in modern times, called the fine arts. These Aristotle calls the imitative arts. We saw that Plato regarded all art as imitative, and that such a view is essentially unsatisfactory. Now Aristotle uses the same word, which he perhaps borrowed from Plato, but his meaning is not the same as Plato's, nor does he fall into the same mistakes. That in calling art imitative he has not in mind the thought that it has for its aim merely the faithful copying of natural objects is proved by the fact that he mentions music as the most imitative of the arts, whereas music is, in fact, in this sense, the least imitative of all. The painter may conceivably be regarded as imitating trees, rivers, or men, but the musician for the most part produces what is unlike anything in nature. What Aristotle means is that the artist copies, not the sensuous object, but what Plato would call the Idea. Art is thus not, in Plato's contemptuous phrase, a copy of a copy. It is a copy of the original. Its object is not this or that particular thing, but the universal which manifests itself in the particular. Art idealizes nature, that is, sees the Idea in it. It regards the individual thing, not as an individual, but in its universal aspects, as the fleeting embodiment of an eternal thought. Hence it is that the sculptor depicts not the individual man, but rather the type-man, the perfection of his kind. Hence too, in modern times, the portrait painter is not concerned to paint a faithful image of his model, but takes the model merely as a suggestion, and seizes upon that essential and eternal [{328}] essence, that ideal thought, or universal, which he sees shining through the sensuous materials in which it is imprisoned. His task is to free it from this imprisonment. The common man sees only the particular object. The artist sees the universal in the particular. Every individual thing is a compound of matter and form, of particular and universal. The function of art is to exhibit the universal in it.

Hence poetry is truer, more philosophical, than history. For history deals only with the particular as the particular. It tells us only of the fact, of what has happened. Its truth is mere correctness, accuracy. It has not in it, as art has, the living and eternal truth. It does not deal with the Idea. It yields us only the knowledge of something that, having happened, having gone by, is finished. Its object is transient and perishable. It concerns only the endless iteration of meaningless events. But the object of art is that inner essence of objects and events, which perishes not, and of which the objects and events are the mere external drapery. If therefore we would arrange philosophy, art, and history, in order of their essential nobility and truth, we should place philosophy first, because its object is the universal as it is in itself, the pure universal. We should place art second, because its object is the universal in the particular, and history last, because it deals only with the particular as such. Yet because each thing in the world has its own proper function, and errs if it seeks to perform the functions of something else, hence, in Aristotle's opinion, art must not attempt to emulate philosophy. It must not deal with the abstract universal. The poet must not use his verses as a vehicle of abstract thought. His proper [{329}] sphere is the universal as it manifests itself in the particular, not the universal as it is in itself. Aristotle, for this reason, censures didactic poetry. Such a poem as that of Empedocles, who unfolded his philosophical system in metre, is not, in fact, poetry at all. It is versified philosophy. Art is thus lower than philosophy. The absolute reality, the inner essence of the world, is thought, reason, the universal. To contemplate this reality is the object alike of philosophy and of art. But art sees the Absolute not in its final truth, but wrapped up in a sensuous drapery. Philosophy sees the Absolute as it is in itself, in its own nature, in its full truth; it sees it as what it essentially is, thought. Philosophy, therefore, is the perfect truth. But this does not mean that art is to be superseded and done away with. Because philosophy is higher than art, it does not follow that a man should suppress the artist in himself in order to rise to philosophy. For an essential thought of the Aristotelian philosophy is that, in the scale of beings, even the lower form is an end in itself, and has absolute rights. The higher activities presuppose the lower, and rest upon them. The higher includes the lower, and the lower, as an organic part of its being, cannot be eradicated without injury to the whole. To suppress art in favour of philosophy would be a mistake precisely parallel to the moral error of asceticism. In treating of Aristotle's ethics we saw that, although the activity of reason is held in highest esteem, the attempt to uproot the passions was censured as erroneous. So here, though philosophy is the crown of man's spiritual activity, art has its rights, and is an absolute end in itself, a point which Plato failed to see. In the human organism, the head is the [{330}] chief of the members. But one does not cut off the hand because it is not the head.

Coming now to Aristotle's special treatment of the art of poetry, we may note that he concentrates his attention almost exclusively upon the drama. It does not matter whether the plot of a drama is historical or fictitious. For the object of art, the exhibition of the universal, is just as well attained in an imaginary as in a real series of events. Its aim is not correctness, but truth, not facts, but the Idea. Drama is of two kinds, tragedy and comedy. Tragedy exhibits the nobler specimens of humanity, comedy the worse. This remark should be carefully understood. It does not mean that the hero of a tragedy is necessarily a good man in the ordinary sense. He may even be a wicked man. But the point is that, in some sense, he must be a great personality. He cannot be an insignificant person. He cannot be a nonentity. Be he good or bad, he must be conceived in the grand manner. Milton's Satan is not good, but he is great, and would be a fit subject for a tragedy. The soundness of Aristotle's thought here is very noteworthy. What is mean and sordid can never form the basis of tragedy. Modern newspapers have done their best to debauch this word tragedy. Some wretched noteless human being is crushed to death by a train, and the newspapers head their paragraph "Fearful Tragedy at Peckham Rye." Now such an incident may be sad, it may be dreadful, it may be horrible, but it is not tragic. Tragedy no doubt deals with suffering. But there is nothing great and ennobling about this suffering, and tragedy is concerned with the sufferings of greatness. In the same way, Aristotle does not mean that the comic [{331}] hero is necessarily a wicked man, but that he is, on the whole, a poor creature, an insignificant being. He may be very worthy, but there is something low and ignoble about him which makes us laugh.

Tragedy brings about a purification of the soul through pity and terror. Mean, sordid, or dreadful things do not ennoble us. But the representation of truly great and tragic sufferings arouses in the beholder pity and terror which purge his spirit, and render it serene and pure. This is the thought of a great and penetrating critic. The theory of certain scholars, based upon etymological grounds, that it means that the soul is purged, not through, but of pity and terror, that by means of a diarrhoea of these unpleasant emotions we get rid of them and are left happy, is the thought of men whose scholarship may be great, but whose understanding of art is limited. Such a theory would reduce Aristotle's great and illuminating criticism to the meaningless babble of a philistine.

7. Critical Estimate of Aristotle's Philosophy.

It is not necessary to spend so much time upon criticising Aristotle as we spent upon doing the same for Plato, and that for two reasons. In the first place, Plato with his obvious greatness abounded in defects which had to be pointed out, whereas we have but little adverse criticism for Aristotle. Secondly, Aristotle's main defect is a dualism almost identical with that of Plato, and what has been said of the one need only be shortly applied to the other.