Aristotle and Question 3

Unlike Plato, I don’t think Aristotle believes that mimetic works corrupt the audience. In his discussion of the elements of good mimetic art, he talks extensively about factors required to incite an emotional response from the audience. However, unless I missed this section (which is likely), he never explicitly states how this emotional response negatively affects the audience. He mentions in Book 13 that one part of a good tragedy is that we can empathize with the actions occurring while at the same time being comforted by the fact that these actions could not happen to us. In this respect, a distance is established between the audience and the artwork. This occurs because, while mimetic artworks imitate reality, they are not direct copies. Aristotle aptly reflects this in is his discussion of a tragic character from history. He discusses a good tragic character as one whom “reproduces the distinctive features of [the real] man, without losing the likeness, makes him [better] than he is…” In other words, the character is a stylized version of the actual man. The audience recognizes this difference, and subconsciously knows that the play is a more stylized version of reality. Because of this separation, people can think about a mimetic work and not be harmfully affected by it.