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The Love Affair between Philosophy and Poetry: Aristotle's Poetics and Narrative Identity
Author(s) -
Carli Silvia
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
the southern journal of philosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.281
H-Index - 21
eISSN - 2041-6962
pISSN - 0038-4283
DOI - 10.1111/sjp.12102
Subject(s) - poetics , narrative , logos bible software , narrative identity , action (physics) , identity (music) , poetry , philosophy , praxis , literature , character (mathematics) , embodied cognition , epistemology , aesthetics , art , physics , theology , geometry , quantum mechanics , mathematics
In order to grasp the distinctive character of the object imitated in tragedies, Aristotle's Poetics introduces a new notion of action ( praxis ), which does not refer to individual ethical deeds as in the Ethics . Rather, it signifies a whole with a beginning, a middle, and an end, whose constitutive components are events ( pragmata ). This paper argues that the notion of agents undergoes a parallel transformation in the treatise on poetry. It no longer refers exclusively to the authors of ethical deeds, but to the characters who enact the entire dramatic action ( prattontes ). Their nature can be understood in terms of a potential story whose logos (account, articulation) is a muthos (story, narrative). On this ground, the suggestion is made that the Poetics provides the elements of a narrative conception of human identity.