THE PLATO ARISTOTLE DEBATE & DIFFERENT VIEWS ON LITERATURE

PLATO

Plato was an idealist and a moralist.

He was converged with the ultimate truth.

According to him the study of literature should be diverted and controlled by the search for the ultimate truth.

He ignored the concept of beauty and pleasure of literature.

For Plato considered literature a vehicle for philosophical inquiry.

According to Plato there are three mutually dependent principles of literature

1.    Thought is prior to forms

2.    Greatness in art depends on the morality of artist

3.    Art and morals are connected – a work of art has an influence on the moral of people – character of the artist is reflected in his works of art.

According to Plato literature was immoral, untrue and false. In his ideal Republic there was no room for poets and poetry.

He attacked literature declaring it as unreal. Plato takes a common example of a bed and distinguished 3 forms in it. The first is the idea or the archetype. The second is the actual piece of furniture, and the third is the artist’s reproduction. Artist’s work is an imitation of an imitation and is twice removed from reality.

Another charge was that in literature emotional element becomes a detrimental factor in the rational aspect.

Plato believes that the poetic imitation ‘waters and cherishes the passion when they ought to whither and makes them govern when they ought to be kept in subjection in order that we may become better and happier instead of worse and more miserable.

Poetics of Aristotle in which we have perhaps the most fruitful of all critical discussion devoted to inquiry into the nature and value of imaginative literature.

There is, oddly enough no single ward in English that corresponds to the Greek Poesis of the German Ditching, terms which refer to products of the literary imagination and do not include, as the term literature does anything at all that is written.

The poet was possessed creature, not using language in the way that moral human beings do, but speaking in a divinely inspired frenzy Plato suggests this view in the Phaedrus the same man is nowhere at all when he enter into rivalry with the madman’.

He develops this view at greater length in Ion where poet is an inspired rhapsodist through whom God Speaks, a man lacking art and Valition of his own, a passive vehicle merely

The Ion is the most elaborate presentation of the nation of poetry as pure inspiration in the ancient world. The nation has been modified and survives even today.

Dryden wrote: ‘Great wits are sure to madness near alli’d’ (Absalom and Achitophal)

Shakespeare noted: ‘The lunatic the lover and the poet are of imagination all compact’.

Plato mediated much on the war between poet and philosopher, emphasized the difference between these two wholly to the advantage of philosopher.

Plato’s objection to poetry is of an epistemological concern

If true reality consists of the ideas of things of which individual objects are but reflection or imitations, then anyone who imitates those individual objects is imitation an imitation, and so producing something which is still further removed from ultimate reality.

There are three arts which are concerned with all things: one which uses, anther which makes, a third which imitates them.

Artist is ignorant of the use and nature of what he imitates

The imitative poet who aims at being popular is not by nature made, nor is his art intended to please or to effect rational principle in the soul; but he will prefer the passionate and fitful temper which is easily imitated.

Poetry feeds and waters the passions instead of drying them up

Plato opposes the reason to the passions

According to him poetry is the product of an inferior part of the soul

 

ARISTOTLE

Aristotle defended literature against Plato’s charges

According to him literature has neither ethical motive nor moral view points.

Aristotle says that art is a union of your productive and creative faculty as well as reason

His concern is one of discovering what infant literature is rather than the normative one of describing what it should be

Mimesis – imitation or representation

For Aristotle the poet works ‘according to the law of probability or necessity’ not according to some chance observation or random invention.

Imitation is natural for man because we do it from childhood

We learn by imitation that is it is a way of obtaining knowledge being introduced to and learning about the world around us

We delight in imitating and works of imitation and it is natural for us to do so. This imitation combines the twin aspects of learning as well and delight and pleasure.

……..

The function of the poet is representing ‘to describe’ but not necessarily what has happened but what has happened but what is ‘probable’ or ‘necessary’. And in this lies the distinction between the historian and the poet that the former imitates what has been while the latter imitates what might be. It is for this reason that the truth of poetry is ‘more philosophic and of graver import’ than history. Because literature represents the universal while history represents the participation, moreover, even if the poet writes something that seem impossible it is all right as long as it is credible. In fact this is preferable to something that is possible but not very convincing.

The poet can represent things in anyone of these three aspects:

1.    As they were or are

2.    As they are said or quote to be or to have been

3.    As they ought to be

Catharsis

Aristotle assures plato’s notion that art corrupts by nourishing the passion (emotion)

Aristotle replies that far from nourishing the passions, it gives them harmless or even useful purgation

Because of the pressure of emotion it purges one of the excess emotions.

Aristotle, by Katharsis, claims some kind of therapeutic value for tragedy

They provide a safe outlet for disturbing passions which is effectively siphons off

Just as medical treatment cures the physical system of its ‘humans’, poetry affect the moral system of the reader by relieving his excess emotion when emotion is artificially excited in the performance or tragedy. Thus the effect of poetry on the emotion is beneficial and harmful.

Tragedy imitates the actions of men

Aristotle placed art upon the dual function of sense and reason. He distinguished the method of creative literature – literature with or without metre form – the method of history and other branches of learning which are metre transcripts of reality; and so separated the truth of art from the truth of logic.

He showed that the appeal to the emotions which Plato blamed is an essential in the dominant form of poetry and proved by medical analogy and by philosophical analysis that the effects of this appeal was not hurtful but beneficial to the moral nature of man.

The poet, says Aristotle, can make an error of the fact the ‘is not in the essential in the dominant form of poetic art’ and does not affect the poetic truth of his work. He distinguishes clearly between practical knowledge and literal truth on the other, and imaginative understanding and poetic truth on the other.

The purpose of literature is to be moving, exiciting elevating, transporting and the critics duty is to see how this is achieved by showing which element best conduce to this result.

Different views on literature

After Plato and Aristotle perhaps the most famous early comment upon the ails of poetry with respect to its audience is his work called Arts Poetic (Horace 165-68 B.C.). He writes ‘the aim of the poet is to inform her delight of to combine together in what he says both pleasure and applicability to life. He who combines the useful and the pleasing win out both instructing and delighting the readers. Subsequent critics have taken Horace’s cue and attributed to literature the power to teach the reader, delight him; move him and act therapeutically upon him. The other side of the poem is that ever since Plato, there have been attacks upon literature voicing the fear that it teaches things unsuitable to the young or even the middle ages.

One of the earliest assertions about literature is that it teaches the reader or that it sets some sort of example to be followed. For Plato literature set a bad example because of its irrationality and therefore submissive in nature; critics have also altered there assumptions and have praised literature because it is irrational or because it is submissive of the opinions of the establishment and they have attacked some kind of literature because they have too openly tone.

Beyond the moral trend, literature has been considered a conveyer of information – social, psychological, historical, scientific while some critics have insisted on the aesthetic irrelevance of its informational function.

The traditional complaints against poet is made on moral grounds. Plato’s is a classic complaint. He is concerned lest the poet reduce everything to the test of hedonic pleasure and pain: ‘pleasure and pain will be the rulers in our state’. Many writers took Plato’s complaints that poetry aims at pleasure and turned it into praise. From Horace through Longinus to Sydney, critics generally claimed that poetry aims to delight.

On the Sublime (Longinus –AD 80)

‘…The marvelous, with its power to amaze, is always unnecessarily stronger than that which seeks to pursue and to please’. Generally it was not until the 18 century when Longinus became particularly fashionable that ecstasy transcending both delight and teaching was considered a purpose of art.

Sydney ‘An Apology…’

His famous essay speaks to the delight and teach principle Sydney claims that because the poet does delight, he is a more effective teacher that the historian or the philosopher. He claims that even though poetry teachers, it is primarily concerned with moving the passions. The philosopher, he says, cannot move the reader deeply as he did. ‘And that moving is of higher degree than teaching it may by this appears, than it is well-nigh, the cause and effect of teaching. Others have tried to establish the therapeutic nature with reference to psychoanalysis.

Freud (1856-1939) Creative writers and Day Dreaming

The unreality of the writer’s imaginative world, has very important consequence for the techniques of his art: for many things which if they were real could give no enjoyment, can do so in the play of fantasy, and many excitements which in themselves are actually disturbing, can become a source of pleasure for the hearers and spectators at the performance of the writer’s work.

Freud and Literature (Lionel Trilling)

…Starba the same criticism and first mate who struggles to mediate between forces embody in movie day and symbolize a balance and suitable rationalism, that is, ego. Perhaps the most controversial fact of psychoanalytic criticism is his tendency to interpret imagery in terms of sexuality.

Dr. Ernest Jones ‘Hamlet and Oedipus’, Dr Jones bases on the thesis that Hamlet’s much debated delay in killing his uncle Cladius is to be explained in terms of internal rather than external circumstances. Jones builds a highly persuasive case mystery of Hamlet as a psychoanalytic suffering from manic-depressive Hysteria combined with (an abulia an inability to exercise will-power and come to decision) all of which may be traced to the heroes severely repressed Oedipus feelings.  Jones also illustrates a strong misogyny that Hamlet is placed throughout the play especially as it is directed against Ophelia and is almost the conscious ideal of fatherhood, the image that is socially acceptable. His view of Claudius on the other hand represents his repressed hostility towards his father as a rival for his mother’s affection.

Mythological Criticism

Mythological criticism deals with relationship of art to some very deep word in human nature. The mythological criticism is concerned to seek out those mysterious archetype built on the certain literary forms that elicit with almost uncanny force dramatical and universal human reactions.

An obviously close connection exist between mythological criticism and psychological approach. Both are concerned with motives that underline human behavior. The difference between the two approaches are those of biological science. Psychology tends to be speculative and philosophic; its affinities are with religion, anthropology and cultural history. And just as dreams reflect the unconscious desires and anxieties of the individual so myths are the symbolic projections of people’s hopes, values and fears and aspirations. Unlike the traditional critic who relies heavily on history and biography of the writer the myth critic is intellectual more in pre history and the biographies of the god’s. unlike formalistic critics who concentrated upon the shape and chivalry of the work itself the mythological criticism is for the inner spirit which gives the form, its vitality, its enduring of appeal. And unlike the Freudian critics who is apt to see the ‘her chicken’ phenomenon as symbolic of some form of sexual neurosis the myth critic assumes a broader perspective.

This approach is relatively new and purely understood. In the first place only during the present century only have the progress interpretative tools become available through the development of such disciplines as anthropology, psychological and cultural history. Second many scholars and teachers of literature have remained skeptical of myth criticism because of its tendencies towards the cult and the occults.

The rapid advancement of modern anthropology since end of 19 century has been the most important simple influence on the growth of myth critic. The most important member was Sir James G Frazer (The Golden Bough – 1890)

Many scholars theorized that from certain primitive rites (killing of the king for the sacrifice of the kingdom). The tragedies of Sophocles (author of Oedipus) and Aeschylus for example were written to be played during the festival of Diouysis and ceremonies during which the ancient Greek celebrated the deaths of kings and the rebirths of God’s of spring and renewed life.

The Quest Motive: Oedipus as the hero undertakes the journey during which he discovered the spins, a supernatural monster with a body of lion and the head of the woman; by answering the riddle he delivers the kingdom and marries the queen. The second motive was the king as sacrificial scape goat. The war fare of the state both human and natural (themes are stricken by rout) is bound up with the personal fate of the ruler, only after Oedipus has offered himself up as the scape goat is the land redeemed. Such critics are prof. Gilbert Murray has provided up with dues to many of Hamlet’s archetypal mysteries. Francis Ferguson discloses how ‘in both plays a royal sufferer is associated with pollution is its various sources of an entire social order; both plays open with an invocation for the well being of the endangered body politic. In both, the destiny of the individual of society are closely intervened, and in the suffering of royal criticism seems to be necessary before purgation and renewal can be achieved.

The second major influence on mythological criticism is the work of Dr. Carl Jung the great psychologist, philosopher and one time student of Freud. Jung’s primary contribution to mythological criticism is his theory of racial memory and archetypes. He expanded Freud’s theory of the personal unconscious asserting that belief is a primeval collective unconscious shared in the psychic inheritance a wall member of the human family. He explains that archetypes are inherited ideas of patterns of thought, they represent inherited forms of psychic behavior. He indicated that archetypes revealed himself in the dreams of individuals. So that we might say that dreams are ‘personalized myths’ are ‘depersonalized dreams’.

The great artist as Jung observes in ‘Modern Man in Search of a Soul’ is the man who possessed the ‘Primordial vision’. A special sensitivity to archetypal patterns and a gift for speaking in primordial images which enabled him transmit experiences of the ‘inner world’ to the ‘outer world’ through his art form… the primordial experience is the source of his creativeness; it cannot be furthered and therefore requires mythological imagery to give its form.

Myth critics who use lines in sights also use the materials of anthropology. A classic example is Moud Bodkin’s Archetypal Patterns in Poetry (1934) and now recognized as the pioneer work of archetypal criticism. She traces several major archetypal patterns through the great literature of western civilization.

Conclusion: it should be apparent from the foregoing illustrations that mythological criticism offers some unusual opportunities for the enhancement of our literary appreciation and understanding. Considering the vastness and the complexity of mythology, a field of study whose mysteries the anthropologists and psychologists are still working too penetrate, a brief introduction can give the reader a superficial and a fragmentary view. As with psychological approach the reader must take care that is for enthusiasm for a new found interpretative key does not tempt him to discard other valuable critical instruments just as the Freudian critic so the myth critic tends to forget that a literature is a more that a vehicle for archetypes and ritual patterns… he forgets that literature is above all art that discrete crisis with supply even intrinsic perspectives as the mythological and psychological only so far as they enhance the experience of the art form and only as far as the structure and potential meaning of the work consistently support such approaches.