Abstract
The field of Philosophy and Education seems to be experiencing a renewed interest in the work of Aristotle. As recently reviewed by Curren (Oxf Rev Educ 36(5):543–559, 2010), most of this attention aligns with the virtue ethics movement where themes like moral development in education, and the inquiry on human flourishing as the aim of education are prevalent. For sources, this scholarship relies heavily and extensively on the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics’ Book VIII where Aristotle develops his single, clearly defined account of education. Among the short list of scholars who include Poetics in their research, their work seems to return to issues of morality and education (Carr in J Aesthet Educ 44(3):1–15, 2010; Gupta in J Aesthet Educ 44(4):60–80, 2010). This paper is an attempt to rediscover Aristotle’s insights on the peculiar type of learning that the arts seem to favor. In order to carry on this investigation, I will first guide my argument towards Aristotle’s remarks on poiesis. Then, I will focus on what constitutes the heart of poiesis, that is, mimesis. I will pay special attention to Aristotle’s consideration of both poiesis and mimesis as ultimately dealing with what he calls “possibility.” I will argue that learning in the arts entails the coming together of these three qualities. This would be a way of learning characterized by seeing human likenesses emerge as such in our interactions with artworks.
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Notes
All references in this format correspond to Poetics (1951).
Even beyond Aristotle, the history of aesthetics is abundant with examples of how art can be understood as praxis, tekne, making, made craft, etc.
It is worth highlighting that in What Is Called Thinking?, published in the same year as The Question Concerning Technology from where I take the quotation above, Heidegger has a passage in the first Chapter where he seems to introduce this same distinction between “means to an end” and “human activity” through the example of a cabinetmaker that learns his craft through his relationship with wood.
One could argue that the essay “The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction” (1985) denounces what happens once mimesis is reduced to a reproductive power. In particular, Benjamin argues that technical reproduction eventually subsumes and becomes the real art, fragmenting the former elements of the work and removing it from its original locale while also pushing it to the comfort of people’s.
My emphases.
Whether this same line of thought was present in the complete version of Poetics is a matter of philosophical fiction. Still, I think it makes sense to presume that the distinction between mimesis and its signs was part of Aristotle’s project there.
I am aware that Arcilla (2009) has recently argued that modernist abstract art serves to estrange us from ourselves. If I am reading him correctly that would not be a final stop process but an opening into the opportunity to re-familiarize us again with ourselves. In any case, this is the type of dynamic that I think mimesis allows us to perceive in The Gates.
My emphases.
Someone might argue that I am talking here about learning through catharsis rather than through mimesis. However, I would like to bring attention to the following considerations: In the first place, in Poetics, catharsis is exclusively restricted to tragedy: “Tragedy is mimesis of praxis […] accomplishing through fear and pity the catharsis of these same emotions” (1449b 24–28). There would be no catharsis about The Gates, for example. What is more, of all the sixty-six times that Aristotle uses any compound of this word in his Corpus, he only utilizes catharsis twice in Poetics. In his biology treatises, where he uses the term fifty-eight times, catharsis is a synonym for the release of organic material: typically, milk, blood, the placenta, semen, ovules, etc.
In the second place, catharsis is only about the cleansing of pity and fear. This is problematic when considering tragedies that depend on other feelings. For example, the likenesses that were revealed in re-experiencing Capulet’s character would be outside catharsis’ realm because they seem to be closer to love or melancholy.
Finally, it is not clear what happens with these passions once they are released, for it appears the spectator has no opportunity to revisit them. Put differently, whatever I may learn from tragedy I would be deprived of reevaluating pity and fear as constitutive to that same learning.
For example, in describing the demands of tragic writing, Aristotle indicates, “The perfection of style is to be clear without being meager” (1458a 18).
“Some tie the knot well but unravel it ill” (1456a 9–10).
References
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Acknowledgments
I would like to acknowledge the generous and thoughtful observations provided by Professor Megan Laverty to help me distill the main argument of this paper. I would also like to thank the insightful comments provided by two anonymous reviewers.