The highest point in practical
investigations for Aristotle was investigating the final end of all
human endeavours that is, happiness of individuals and communities.
The final aim of such investigation was action for the sake of
action, but usually activities aim at producing something. Because
the end of these actions is something else than the action itself, a science
investigating such an action will be lower in status than the science
investigating happiness. Thus, we get a third class of sciences,
which Aristotle calls poetic.
Now, the easiest examples of such
productive activities are perhaps handicrafts: we do not pay for a
tailor to continue his activities indefinitely, but to make clothes
for us. Aristotle, like any good Greek gentleman, in all likelihood
felt that such menial activities are beneath him and thus worthy of
no interest. Still, he did study some productive activities, that is,
those to do with language.
In one sense we have already seen
Aristotle tackle one such productive science, namely, in his
methodological writings: after all, the point of scientific method is
not the method itself, but its result or science. Even more clear
example is provided by rhetoric or the investigation of how to make
eloquent and convincing speeches.
Rhetoric shares some features with
scientific methodology and even more with debating on scientific and
philosophic matters. Yet, the aim of rhetoric is not to find truth,
but to convince others that something is true. Hence, a speaker must
do something more than just spin out intricate proofs. The speaker
must, for instance, make the impression that she is a reliable and
trustworthy character. In order to do so, she must know what sort of
characters e.g. persons of different age or of different social
status have.
In addition to showing a good front to
her audience, the speaker must also use some proofs. Yet, the proofs
of a speaker must be less intricate than full scientific proofs.
Thus, a speaker often leaves some of the assumptions of her proofs
implicit, so that she will not appear a bore repeating self-evident
matters. Furthermore, a speaker must often rely on mere probabilities
and leave the search of certainty for philosophers. Finally, a
speaker cannot usually go through all possible individual cases, if
she wants to justify some general proposition, but she must be
satisfied with few paradigmatic examples.
Mere knowledge of argument forms is not
enough to set up a proof, and speaker must therefore be acquainted
with a variety of topics, depending on what she is speaking of.
Speeches were used in Aristotle's time for convincing citizens of a
community to decide on future actions in certain manner. Thus, a
speaker should know politics: she should understand what a community
and its citizens are striving for, how different communities work and
how to achieve desired ends. She should also have clear understanding
of what is possible and what is not.
Speeches could also be used to praise
or damn persons either living or dead. Because a speaker should
already have the ability to make her own character to look good, she
should have no trouble convincing people that a character of someone
else is good or bad. Furthermore, she should be able to augment or
diminish the worth of things and persons, whatever the case requires.
A third use of speeches beyond planning
for the future and praising of present persons is convincing court
officials that a certain event has or has not happened in the past,
e.g. that someone has committed a crime. Thus, speakers should know a
thing or two about motives of human beings, especially as it comes to
unjust actions, and also be acquainted with the laws in question. In
addition, some basic knowledge of how to establish past events is
required.
In addition to proving things through
their own speech, especially in courts the speakers can have
sometimes recourse to other sort of evidence. One example are
witnesses, but a good speaker must also know when to use witnesses,
how to make them look reliable and how to discredit witnesses of the
opponent.
A speaker should not just know human
character and modes of reasoning, but also human passions: that is,
how certain emotions arise and what are they targeted at. Thus, she
should be able to, for instance, make people pity a person and thus
look at him in favourable light, or on the contrary, envy and
therefore despise him.
The core of a speech should consist of
the justification of the statement to be defended. In addition to
this, usually just the statement itself is necessary, Aristotle
thinks. At least one does not need a long prologue just to awaken the
interest of the listener – usually the listener is most
apprehensive in the beginning, while the attention starts to lag only
after a while. The end of the speech might require a recapitulation
of the main points, if the justification has been long.
Aristotle also considers the style in
which the speech should be made. He is somewhat reluctant to speak of
the topic, because style is something extraneous to the matter to be
discussed. Still, the speaker must know stylistic issues, because
these affect the listeners. Even so, complex and too poetic style
should be avoided, as it just makes listeners confused.
If rhetoric is just hindered by too
ornate language, a second productive science studied by Aristotle or
poetic thrives in metaphors. Poetry is one species of activities
characterized by the desire to capture natural and social life in
presentations – nowadays we would speak of arts. Such arts use many
different media, Aristotle notes: for instance, some use musical
instruments, others painting. The medium specific for poetry is
language, which imitates events of real social life through words.
Now, poetry itself falls into different
categories. On the one hand, we can differentiate types of poetry or
literature through objects they imitate: some of them describe lives
of noble persons, such as legendary heroes, while others describe
lives of commoners and even rabble – Aristotle was apparently used
to seeing such characters only in comedies. On the other hand, we can
differentiate types according to the literary strategies used in
them. In this respect tragedies as dramatic texts are closer to
comedies than to epics, which described heroes as well as Greek
tragedies.
While Plato had disparaged poets and
denied letting them in his ideal society, Aristotle had a more
positive idea of poetry. As pieces of art poetic texts were meant to
imitate, but even imitations may have beneficial results. Indeed,
poetic works produced emotions of sympathy and thus purified human
mind from all repressed feelings.
Aristotle is interested not just to
describe poetic works, but also to find some rules how to make better
literature and especially dramas. His answer is that one should
concentrate on the most important element of dramas or the plot –
all other elements, such as character building are subservient to the
plot, and especially means for the actual theatrical production of a
play are completely superfluous in comparison. Because of the
importance of the plot, the play should be small enough so that the
spectator couldn't forget all the intricacies of the events. Thus,
good dramas should concentrate on one problematic and not use many
plot strands, unlike epics which allowed for a more variety.
The role of dramas and especially
tragedies was to purge emotions by showing events of tragic nature,
which then aroused feelings of pity toward the characters in play.
Aristotle noted that misfortunes of bad persons do not arouse pity,
because the spectator feels that bad person deserves bad luck.
Indeed, seeing bad persons get lucky is also not tragic, but an
outrage. Furthermore, when an incomparably good person faces
misfortune, we are bound to feel horrified instead of pitying him. It
is then only misfortunes of persons like or slightly more better than
us, caused by mistakes that we ourselves could have also made, which
cause most pity and thus form the most suitable topic of tragedies.
Aristotle also considered the problem
whether tragedies were of more value than epics. He admitted that the
theatrical form of tragedies appeared to hinder the true enjoyment of
their literary qualities. Yet, this is more of a question of bad
stagecraft, which concentrates on more spectacular aspects of
theater. Even tragedies merely as read fare better than epics,
Aristotle contested, because they could unravel and analyse one
incident more completely than epic, which had to use many different
plot strands to keep the reader awake. Thus, tragedies as a whole, as
pieces of literature and combined with stagecraft, are much more
dignified than epics.
