The Aristotelian psychology of tragic mimesis

This paper argues that the psychology of mimesis presupposed by Poetics 4 is immediately relevant to Aristotle's psychology of tragic mimesis. at 1448b16 involve a cognitive mode characteristic of Aristotelian induction that joins particulars with universals through spontaneous, non-discursive noetic predication. Aristotle's view of the cognition of tragic mimesis can be subsumed under the practice of theōria: the inductive re-cognition of ethical universals is a 'theoric' exercise of philosophical reflection on the particulars of the tragic action, an associative intellection that actualizes the subject's knowledge by joining ethical universals with the particular mimetic praxeis they regard.

Duke Scholars

Author José M. González Classical Studies