Aristotle's Views of Tragedy

Whether in his treatments of the physical cosmos or in such works as the Nichomachean Ethics, Politics, or Rhetoric, Aristotle clearly makes certain assumptions about his readership and the society in which he articulates his ideas. He assumes that man is a social being and that society is a serious enterprise, suffused with politics and a sense of purpose, as well as with a strong (though sometimes vague and sometimes suppressed) moral sense. The reason that seems important to point out is that Golden Age Greece was also beset by wars of conquest and massacre; Aristotle is famous not least as a tutor of Alexander the Great. The point is that only a rational, sometimes thoughtful society can recognize the difference between good and reason and their opposites, whether evil or chaos. While social structures not necessarily based on a community of reason might be able to produce a sense of the beautiful (music, visual arts, dance, ritual), only among generally rational people who share a stake in the maintenance of a civil society is tragedy possible. This whole line of thought informs a simple but critical element of Aristotle's view of tragedy, that it shows "men in action, and men who are necessarily either of good or of bad character." Aristotle continues:

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that distinguishes tragedy. In that regard, Aristotle presents the six principal elements of tragedy in decreasing order of importance, each enumerated element decreasing in the degree of its interpenetration with moral content: plot (the pattern of ideas), character (the embodiment of action based on ideas), thought (the ideas themselves that inform plot and action), diction (the means by which ideas and events are articulated), song (decorousness of presentation), and spectacle, which Aristotle says "is an attraction, of course, but it has the least to do with the playwright's craft or with the art of poetry." For the power of tragedy is independent both of performance and of actors, and besides, the production of spectacular effects is more the province of the property-man than of the playwright (Aristotle 41). Profound philosophical and ethical complexity is embedded into the definition of tragedy, for to the degree the serious poetic creation is a set piece, it is presumed to have an important philosophical purpose, the conception and resolution of which are contained in its pattern of ideas. Within that pattern in the best plays are contained such elements that make both artistic and rational sense. Reversal of fortune fo
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Approximate Word count = 1671
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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