Elemental Forms, Creativity and the Transformative Power of Literature in A-T. Tymieniecka’s Tractatus Brevis

Abstract

In 1977, the novelist John Gardner in his popular book, On Moral Fiction, described the once common premise behind the writing and criticism of literature:

It was once a quite common assumption that good books incline the reader to — in this wide and optimistic sense — morality. It seems no longer a common or even defensible assumption, at least in literate circles, no doubt partly because the moral effect of art can so easily be gotten wrong, as Plato got it wrong in the Republic. To Plato it seemed that if a poet showed a good man performing a bad act, the poet’s effect was a corruption of the audience’s morals. Aristotle agreed with Plato’s notion that some things are moral and others not; agreed, too, that art should be moral; and went on to correct Plato’s error. It’s the total effect of an action that’s moral or immoral, Aristotle pointed out. In other words, it’s the energeia — the actualization of the potential which exists in character and situation — that gives us the poet’s fix on good and evil; that is, dramatically demonstrates the moral laws, and the possibility of tragic waste, in the universe. It’s a resoundingly clear answer, but it seems to have lost its currency.¹