The Lost Second Book of Aristotle's "Poetics"

Walter Watson

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780226875101
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Of all the writings on theory and aesthetics—ancient, medieval, or modern—the most important is indisputably Aristotle's Poetics, the first philosophical treatise to propound a theory of literature. In the Poetics, Aristotle writes that he will speak of comedy—but there is no further mention of comedy. Aristotle writes also that he will address catharsis and an analysis of what is funny. But he does not actually address any of those ideas. The surviving Poetics is incomplete.

Until today. Here, Walter Watson offers a new interpretation of the lost second book of Aristotle's Poetics. Based on Richard Janko's philological reconstruction of the epitome, a summary first recovered in 1839 and hotly contested thereafter, Watson mounts a compelling philosophical argument that places the statements of this summary of the Aristotelian text in their true context. Watson renders lucid and complete explanations of Aristotle's ideas about catharsis, comedy, and a summary account of the different types of poetry, ideas that influenced not only Cicero's theory of the ridiculous, but also Freud's theory of jokes, humor, and the comic.

Finally, more than two millennia after it was first written, and after five hundred years of scrutiny, Aristotle's Poetics is more complete than ever before. Here, at last, Aristotle's lost second book is found again.

PART I. Groundwork

Chapter 1

ARISTOTLE’S ARTS AND SCIENCES

The great idea which we owe to the Greeks, and to Aristotle in particular, and which has transformed the world, is Aristotle’s idea of scientific rationality. Other cultures and traditions have had ideas of rationality, but Aristotle’s idea of scientific rationality has originated in no other culture or tradition. This chapter is concerned to examine this idea and its development in Aristotle’s series of arts and sciences.

1. THE ORGANON

Scientific rationality is one form of rationality, and to understand what scientific rationality is, we can begin by considering what rationality is. Rationality requires reasoning, and reasoning is discourse in which, certain things being posited, something other than what is posited follows of necessity from these being so (Prior An. i.1.24b18–20). Reasoning in this sense is investigated in Aristotle’s Prior Analytics. But reasoning is composed of propositions that can be either true or false, and thus presupposes that we know what true and false propositions are. Propositions as true or false are investigated in the treatise that immediately precedes the Prior Analytics, the Peri hermēneias, whose English title in the Oxford translation is On Interpretation but would be better translated as On Expression, for it is entirely concerned with expression and has nothing to say about interpretation.¹ True or false propositions are in turn composed of terms that designate things, and thus presuppose that we know what the terms that designate things are. Aristotle cannot explain all these terms individually, for their number is unlimited, but he can treat them by categories. The categories of terms that designate things are investigated in the treatise that immediately precedes On Interpretation, the Categories, which is the first treatise of the Aristotelian corpus. This corpus, as it has been traditionally handed down, includes a number of spurious works, but I shall understand the term to include only the genuine works. The starting point of the whole series of arts and sciences in the relation of words to things recalls Confucius’s answer to the question, “What is the first thing to be done?” He replied, “What is necessary is to rectify names” (Analects 13.3). The first three treatises of the corpus constitute a formal logic by which a symbolic sequence can represent a necessary connection of things. Aristotle in the Prior Analytics uses letters to stand for terms when the particular term does not matter, and his logic is in this respect symbolic.

Following this account of reasoning or rationality in general, Aristotle in the Posterior Analytics treats scientific reasoning. We think we have unqualified scientific knowledge of a thing when we know the cause because of which the fact is, that it is the cause of that fact, and that it is not possible for the fact to be otherwise (Post. An. i.2.71b9–12). Book I of the Poetics provides examples of scientific reasoning. If the fact to be explained is that a plot should have a beginning, middle, and end, this is because the plot should be a whole, and a plot that is a whole has a beginning, middle, and end. If the fact cannot be otherwise, and the premises state the cause of the fact, the premises also cannot be otherwise. If the fact can be otherwise, we still have a hypothetically necessary series of terms; that is, if there is a tragic plot, it necessarily has a beginning, middle, and end. Thus a necessary sequence of terms in formal logic (subject—middle term—predicate), becomes in the science of poetics a necessary causal sequence (plot—whole—having a beginning, middle, and end). This hypothetical necessity makes poetics a science in a qualified sense, a poetic science, even though it is not a science in the strict sense because its objects, such as poetry and plots, can be other than they are.

The necessity of the causal connection requires that it result from what the connected terms essentially are and not from their accidental attributes (ibid., i.6). Nature does not present us with the distinction between essence and accident, for these are mixed together in our experience,² but the distinction is necessary if we are to discover the necessary connections of science. That a necessary connection of things depends on what they essentially are requires that the things connected belong to some underlying genus (ibid., i.7), which in the example just given is the tragic plot, which falls within the more general subject of tragedy. Because cause and effect must belong to the same genus, both are internal to the genus, which is in this way self-determining. Here we encounter for the first time another of Aristotle’s archai, his reflexive principles, which require that scientific functioning be self-determined. This connection of scientific necessity with the self-determination of a subject genus is a distinctive feature of Aristotle’s scientific rationality and is not generally accepted, but it is essential to the whole succeeding argument. An initial understanding of its meaning can be gained if one thinks about where in the world the necessary connections can be found that make it scientifically intelligible. Aristotle is saying that it is only within determinate genera, such as inanimate nature, or living things, or human actions, or poems. In this sense scientific knowledge always implies a self-determining genus.

Although knowledge of a single cause is already scientific, the complete science of a subject includes all of its causes. The number and nature of the causes is discussed in the following chapter. Independent sciences, each concerned to state all the ways in which the genus that defines its subject matter is self-determining, are a general feature of Aristotle’s scientific rationality. Causes are discovered by inquiry, which is the subject of the second book of the Posterior Analytics. Aristotle’s arts and sciences thus present the results of inquiries into the causal connections by which a genus is self-determining.

The conception of sciences as self-determined genera leads at once to the problem of what genera or domains can be subjects of a science. Not everything that happens can be the subject of a science, for not everything that happens is self-determined. The distinction of the different possible domains of a science illustrates the remaining component of Aristotle’s archic profile, his disciplinary perspectives. The domains in which Aristotle established sciences are best considered in the order in which Aristotle placed them, which is the order determined by the works themselves, and for this reason can be called their proper order. This is for the most part the same as the traditional order of the corpus largely followed by Bekker in the Berlin edition of 1831–70. Bekker’s order is followed by Ross and Smith in the Oxford translation of 1908–52. The principal corrections that need to be made to the Bekker order are placing Book Little Alpha (II) of the Metaphysics between the Organon and the Physics as a one-book preface to the theoretical sciences, placing Book Lambda (XII) of the Metaphysics after rather than before Books Mu (XIII) and Nu (XIV), placing Books VII and VIII of the Politics before Book IV, and transposing the Rhetoric and the Poetics. The reasons for these corrections are not directly related to the problem of interpreting the epitome, and I have therefore relegated them to an appendix, but the order that they establish will be presupposed in all that follows.

With the treatises in their proper order, we can see that in their procession the Posterior Analytics, as the science of science, occupies the place of a monarch. The three logical treatises that precede it, which have just been described, provide the preconditions for its rule. The two that immediately follow it support and protect it, and the rest, except for the last, are the sciences that, by conforming to its rule, achieve scientific knowledge of their respective domains. The last treatise, which is no longer a science but an art, has the role of making scientific knowledge effective in our lives. All the arts and sciences can in this way be understood as developing from Aristotle’s conception of scientific rationality, and we now pursue the specifics of this development by running through the remaining arts and sciences of the corpus.

Not all reasoning is scientific reasoning. The forms of reasoning other than scientific reasoning are useful to the sciences in important ways, and before proceeding to the sciences themselves Aristotle instructs us in these other forms of reasoning. The Topics considers dialectical reasoning, which reasons from endoxa, or accepted opinions, rather than from premises that are true and primary. Though not itself a science, it is useful to the sciences because, as an art of examination, it holds the way to the principles of all methods³ (Topics i.2.101b3–4), an important point to which we shall have occasion to return. The principles of the sciences can be discovered and supported by dialectical arguments, but they become known as scientific principles only when known in relation to their consequences in a subject matter. On Sophistical Refutations considers rationality in appearance only, and is useful in dealing with the relations of words to things in general and in avoiding fallacies in one’s own reasoning (Soph. Ref. 16.175a5–12).

These first six treatises were grouped together in antiquity under the title Organon, or instrument, of the sciences. Their subject would today be called logic and the scientific method, but there were in Aristotle’s time no Greek words corresponding to these concepts, for both logic and the scientific method were his discoveries (Soph. Ref. 34.184b1–3). The Analytics are themselves sciences in a sense, but sciences only of argument itself, not of the other things that we know by means of argument, and in this way the Organon is a science that is the instrument of itself and all the other sciences, each of which investigates some genus of being.

2. PREFACE TO THE THEORETICAL SCIENCES

The transition from the Organon to the sciences that are known by means of it is marked by the preface to the theoretical sciences that was mentioned in the previous section as a single book traditionally misplaced as Book Little Alpha (II) of the Metaphysics. It was also referred to in the Introduction for its statement of difficulties. It is relevant here in other respects. Its opening words state the concern of the subsequent corpus, the investigation of truth (hē peri tēs alētheias theōria). Truth is the concern of philosophy: “It is right also that philosophy should be called science of truth. For the end of theoretical science is truth, of practical science a work (ergon), and even if practical men view how things are, they do not investigate the cause in itself, but as relative and in the present” (Metaph. ii.3.993b19–23, after Ross). Philosophy is not the science of truth, for there is no single science of truth, but it is rather science, or scientific knowledge, of the truth. A science requires a definite subject matter with respect to which it investigates the truth. Philosophy and science are the same thing, but, like politics and practical wisdom, their essence is not the same (Eth. vi.8.1141b23). When conceived as science of truth, it is philosophy, but when conceived as the science of a subject matter, it is a science. That the same thing can have different essences is a consequence of Aristotle’s disciplinary perspectives, which are not in the things themselves but originate from the knower. The same thing can be defined in different ways depending on the perspective of the knower, and thus have different essences.

The concern of philosophy with truth leads to the division of philosophy into theoretical philosophy, in which truth is sought for its own sake, and practical philosophy, in which truth is sought for some further end. The concern of the sciences with subject matters, in contrast, leads to the threefold division of the sciences into theoretical, practical, and productive, each with its own subject matter. This distinction by subject matters is stated in the Metaphysics (xi.1.1064a10); it is also recognized in accepted opinion (Topics vi.145a15, vii.i.157a10). Practical philosophy includes both the practical and productive sciences, for both seek the truth for the sake of a further end. Philosophy and the sequence of sciences begin with the theoretical sciences because they are concerned with the truth as such, not the truth as relative to some other end. In the proper order of the sciences, the first two of the theoretical sciences are mathematics and physics. Physics is here understood in the broad sense of natural science; in its narrow sense it is distinguished from biology. The preface indicates that mathematics and physics begin the series of sciences, for it ends with an educational prerequisite for physics, which is that the student understand the difference between the modes of mathematics and physics. “The minute accuracy of mathematics is not to be demanded in all cases, but only in the case of things that have no matter. Hence its mode is not physical (phusikos), for presumably all nature (phusis) has matter” (ibid., 995a12–17, after Ross).

3. MATHEMATICS

The first science in the series of sciences that investigate genera of being, then, is the familiar science of mathematics. Mathematics is the first science to emerge historically (Metaph. i.1.981b23–5), and the first in which the young can become expert (Eth. vi.8.1142a12). There are no mathematical works in the Aristotelian corpus, although mathematics figures prominently in the other works. It is one of the three theoretical sciences, and the objects of mathematics are discussed in the first three chapters of Book Mu (XIII) of the Metaphysics. Many of the examples Aristotle uses in the Posterior Analytics to explain what science is are taken from mathematics. If, therefore, there had been mathematical works in the corpus, there is little doubt that their proper place would have been following the Organon and preceding all the other sciences.

Mathematics is the leading example of scientific rationality, for we see the theorems of mathematics demonstrated from mathematical definitions, postulates, and axioms. Both the principles and the consequences belong to the domain of quantity, discrete or continuous, so mathematical demonstrations demonstrate the self-determination of quantity. Many examples of mathematical demonstration were known in Aristotle’s time, but Euclid’s Elements, composed after Aristotle, in the third century BCE, brought together the demonstrations of many geometrical theorems and became a paradigm for scientific reasoning in mathematics, as well as in other sciences, although the order of the demonstrations did not conform to Aristotle’s standards (Apostle 1958).

Mathematics demonstrates necessary relations within the domain of quantity, and therefore can be used to discover and formulate necessary relations in all domains so far as they are quantitative. But pure mathematics, which depends only on the mathematical hypotheses from which the conclusions follow, is distinguished as a discipline from physics in Aristotle’s introduction to the science of physics. He writes,

The next point to consider is how the mathematician differs from the physicist. Obviously physical bodies contain surfaces and volumes, lines and planes, and these are the subject matter of mathematics.

Further, is astronomy different from physics or a department of it? It seems absurd that the physicist should be supposed to know the nature of sun or moon, but not to know any of their essential attributes, particularly as the writers on physics do discuss their shape also and whether the earth and the cosmos are spherical or not.

Now the mathematician, though he too treats of these things, nevertheless does not treat of them as the limits of a physical body; nor does he consider the attributes indicated as the attributes of such bodies. . . .

Similar evidence is supplied by the more physical of the branches of mathematics, such as optics, harmonics, and astronomy. These are in a way the converse of geometry. While geometry investigates physical lines but not qua physical, optics investigates mathematical lines, but qua physical, not qua mathematical. (Phys. ii.2.193b22–194a12, trans. R. P. Hardie and R. K. Gaye)

Thus physical lines become mathematical when they are treated in abstraction from physical objects, and their properties then do not depend on physical measurements but on the definitions, axioms, and postulates from which they are proved. Mathematical lines again become physical when they are treated as the limits of physical bodies, and this application must be justified not only by mathematical proofs but by evidence that the mathematical lines exist in the physical situation. Euclidean geometry, for example, is a mathematical science, and the mathematical space resulting from its fifth postulate is infinite. The physical space of Aristotle’s cosmos, determined by physical considerations, is finite, and the space of his cosmos is therefore non-Euclidean. It was not until the nineteenth century, however, that mathematicians, by denying Euclid’s fifth postulate, developed the geometry of finite spaces.

4. THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES

Following mathematics, the next domain of scientific rationality is that of natural things, which are self-determining because they have within themselves a principle of motion or rest, such as mass or charge, or, in the case of living things, a soul. The domain of natural things is familiar to us as the domain of the natural sciences, or physics in the broad sense, and its subdivision into the domains of the physical and biological sciences is also familiar.

First come the physical sciences. Aristotle explains the orbital motion of celestial bodies and the falling motion of bodies at the surface of the earth as consequences of the internal principles of motion of these bodies taken in conjunction with the physical properties of the place where they are. There is no vacuum in the sense of a void without physical properties, and the inertial motion of a body after an external push is explained as a consequence of the continued action of the air in which it moves. No one today could take these explanations seriously, and to find something in our own experience in which these ideas are found we need to consider the history of explanations of inertial and gravitational motion.

Aristotle’s explanations contrast with the earlier ones of Democritus, for whom space is a void without physical properties and the observable motions are necessary consequences of the inertial motions and impacts of atoms moving in the void. Modern physics began in the seventeenth century in a r...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I. Groundwork
• Part II. The Symbolon Argument
• Part III. The Kinds of Poetry
• Part IV. The end of Tragedy
• Part V. Comedy
• Conclusion
• Appendix: The Order and Provenance of the Aristotelian Corpus
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index