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Sympathy and Insight in Aristotle's "Poetics"

Author(s): Paul A. TaylorSource: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 66, No. 3 (Summer, 2008), pp. 265-280Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American Society for AestheticsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40206344 .

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Sympathy

and

Insight

n

Aristotle's

Poetics

PAUL

A.

TAYLOR

I. A PROBLEMOF VERIFICATION

Usually

when we feel we have

learned

something

from a novel or

play,

it is the

story

itself that

strikes

us as

illuminating,

and in a

direct

way

that needs

no

help

from an outside

authority.

Anna

Karen-

ina

does not offer a mere

conjecture

about how

dangerous

it can

be to fall

in

love,

so that we now

need to

verify

that

suggestion by

asking

an

expert.

Nor do we feel we are

relying

on Leo

Tolstoy

as

our

authority

on

love,

in the

way you might

rely

on a doctor's

authority

on

a

question

of health. It

is the

story

itself that seems to teach

us

something.

It draws us in, and by the time we get to the end

of

it,

it is as

though

what we have been

through

is not

just

a

reading

experience

but a

series

of

events encountered at

first

hand,

from which we

have

emerged

wiser than we

were before.

This is

philosophically puzzling,

because

it

sug-

gests

that

we learn from

fiction

in

something

like

the

way

we learn

directly

from life. In

the latter

case the

learning experience

is

perceptual:

things

happen

to us and we take them

in,

thereby

discov-

ering

what the world is like. But in the

fictional

case the sequence of events we encounter as we

read has been invented

by

the

writer,

so even

if

we

feel as

though

we are

experiencing

these events at

first

hand,

we are

not

really perceiving

them

and

therefore not

acquiring

perceptual knowledge.

A

natural

response

to this is to

say

that we

learn from

fiction

only

insofar as it serves as a

vehicle

by

which writers

pass

on

what

they

have

learned

through experience

or some

other means.

But then we are confronted

by

a dilemma.

For

either we

already

know,

as we

read,

that what is

being conveyed

in

the

writing

is

true,

in

which case

it teaches us

nothing,

or we do not know it is true,

in

which case we have no

way

of

identifying

it as

the

truth,

so we

still learn

nothing.1

It

appears

that

the only way past this problem- call it the prob-

lem of

verification-

is either

to

say

that

we

accept

what the

writing conveys

on

trust or else

treat

it

as

conjectural,

hence

something

that

remains in

need of

confirmation.

But on

neither of

these

op-

tions

does the

writing

stand

by

itself as

a

source

of

knowledge,

so

accepting

either

option

means

abandoning

our

original

intuition

that

fiction can

be a

self-sufficient

source of

knowledge.

There are those

who will

simply

accept

this

con-

sequence.

According

to

them,

when

we learn

from

fiction

it must be

either

because we

have

picked

up knowledge

which the writer has,

intentionally

or

otherwise,

transferred into

his

writing

or be-

cause we

have formed

a

conjecture

from

the writ-

ing

and

gone

on

to confirm

it via a

further

source.2

In

the latter

case,

however,

we

have not

really

learned from

the

writing

itself but

from

that fur-

ther

source.

So

if

we follow

this line of

thinking,

then

whenever we

genuinely

learn from

fiction,

it

must

happen according

to the

first route:

we ac-

quire

knowledge

from

fiction when

it

serves as a

conduit

for what the

writer

already

knows. I will

call this the conduit view. A defender of the con-

duit

view does not

have to

say

that when

we learn

from

a

piece

of fiction

by

accepting

a

proposi-

tional truth

implicit

in

the work or

by

taking

to

heart an accurate

description

of some

aspect

of

the real

world that

the writer

implicitly

asserted

the

proposition

in

question

or

presented

the de-

scription

as

accurately

illustrating

an

aspect

of the

real

world. The

conduit view

only

requires

that

in

learning

from the

work we

treat the

relevant

proposition

or

description

as

if

the

writer

were

asserting something

true or

illustrating

an

actual

feature of the world. We learn from the

writing,

on

this

view,

when the

proposition

or

description

The

Journal

of

Aesthetics and Art

Criticism 66:3

Summer 2008

©

2008

The American

Society

for

Aesthetics







266

The Journal

of Aesthetics

and Art Criticism

does

happen

to

be

true,

and we

accept

its truth on

trust.

A

famous

example

of the conduit view

is the

didactic account of poetry Plato offers in Book

Three of The

Republic

(377a-398b).

Here Plato

accepts

that

poetry

can fulfill a useful

educational

role,

but

says

that

those

instructing

the

young

should introduce them to

poets

who

portray

the

style

of the

good

man,

thus

placing

before

them

exemplary figures

to be emulated.3

How-

ever,

what

is

clear

is that the lessons

poetry

might

teach

in

this

way depend

on the

authority

of the

poet, supported by

that of the

teacher,

who under-

writes

the

poet's portrayal

as a

portrayal

of virtue.

The

poetry

is

being

treated as

if

it were

asserting

that the

person

described in the

poetry

is

morally

exemplary.

Some recent contributors to

the

debate

about

whether we can learn from literature show

why

this is not a

generally

satisfactory

account

of how

we learn from literature.

Although

we

might

learn

something

in

this kind of

way,

we are

not,

in

the

process,

engaging

with literature as literature.

These writers make the

point

that

literary

works

merely

present

ideas and do

not assert or

argue

for the truth of those ideas.4

Therefore,

as

Terence

Diffey writes, [T]o learn from a work of art, that

is,

to move from what

is shown in the world of

the

work to an assertion of what obtains

in

the

world,

requires

a refusal of the aesthetic

stance. 5

1

take

Diffey

to be

saying

that

we refuse the aesthetic

stance

if

we treat

the work as

if

it were

asserting

what

it

merely presents,

and

I

think

this is cor-

rect as far as it

goes.

A

novel

or

play

might

show

us a

person

with distinctive

virtues or show

us

how this

person

thrives

by living

virtuously,

but

to view the

work as

asserting

or

defending

the

moral values on show

here is to miss

the invita-

tion the work offers

as a

literary

work.

While a

literary

work

may

contain

descriptions

that corre-

spond

to what the world is

actually

like or

con-

tain illustrations that could

be construed

as ve-

hicles of truth- such as

moral or

psychological

truths- its

primary

content consists

in the

story

it

tells,

and this narrative

content is

imaginary.

If

we have

engaged

with the work as a

piece

of lit-

erature, therefore,

we

will

be

occupied

directly

with

its

imaginary

content,

rather than

treating

the

narrative

merely

as a

potential

source

of

im-

plicit truths about the real world. Take a profes-

sor of social

history

who instructs

her students to

read Anna

Karenina as a

way

of

acquainting

them-

selves

with

nineteenth-century

social

conventions

in Russia. If the novel

does

in fact

accurately rep-

resent

the

social

conventions

in

question,

then

it is

true that someone could learn something from it

about

social

history.

But it

seems clear

that insofar

as

the

professor

and her

students confine

them-

selves to

using

the novel

in this

way,

they

have

failed to

engage

with it

aesthetically.

The

same

applies,

I

suggest,

when the

truths that

take

prece-

dence over an

imaginative

engagement

with the

work are

moral

ones,

as

Plato

suggests

they

should

be,

or

psychological,

social,

or

political

ones,

and

soon.

I am therefore

sympathetic

to

Diffey's

view

that insofar as

we look

beyond

the

states of

af-

fairs

presented by

a

literary

work in order to con-

sider whether

these states

of affairs

are

true,

we

are

to that extent

refusing

the aesthetic

stance.

But

I

think

Diffey

is

wrong

to conclude

from this

that literature

cannot,

as

literature,

teach

us

any-

thing

about

the world.

Its

informative

power

is

not

dependent

on its

functioning

in an assertoric

or

quasi-assertoric

way.

On

the

contrary,

I will

argue

that the

most

interesting

way

in which

literature

can be

informative

is

precisely

through

its

ability

to

engage

our

imagination.

On

my

view

we derive

insight from a work through entering, in imagina-

tion,

into

its

fictional

world;

hence

we

learn from

it

while

engaging

with

it as literature.

What

we

learn,

furthermore,

both

contributes

to our

understand-

ing

of the

work and

adds to

the

literary

value it

has for us.

I will follow

Berys

Gaut

in

using

the word

'cog-

nitivism'

for the

view

(1)

that

art can teach

us

something

nontrivial

and

(2)

that this

capacity

adds

to its value

as art.6

The conduit

view fails

to

vindicate the

cognitivist

claim

because

it does

not show

how

(2)

is satisfied.

In what

follows,

I

ar-

gue

that

in the Poetics

Aristotle

shows

us a

way

of

defending

the

intuition

that

we can learn

directly

from a

piece

of fiction

without

requiring

any

faith

in the author

as a

truth teller

or

special

authority,

and

that

in

doing

so

Aristotle

lays

the

basis

for a

version

of

cognitivism,

where

the

learning process

is an

engagement

with

literature

as literature

and

extends

our

appreciation

of

its

literary

value.

In

Sections

II

through

VIII,

I

outline

some

relevant

parts

of

Aristotle's

theory

of

tragic

and

epic

po-

etry,

and

in

Sections

IX

and

X,

I set out

to show

how they take us beyond the limitations of the

conduit

view

and how

the

claims

of

cognitivism

can

be satisfied.







Taylor

Sympathy

and

Insight

in

Aristotle's

Poetics

267

II. MIMESIS

In

chapter

4

of the Poetics

Aristotle

says

that

mimesis- or imitation- is natural to man from

childhood,

that he learns at first

by

imitation,

and that it is also natural for all to

delight

in

works of imitation

(1448b5-9).7

These

are

com-

monsensical ideas.

Infants

mouth the

way

adults

speak, presumably

as

part

of the

process

of learn-

ing

to

speak

themselves. Children like to imitate

adults,

sometimes out of

admiration,

but often

in

playful mockery,

which

they

do for

pleasure-

and

we

all

enjoy

these imitations when

they

are

good.

Aristotle sees arts like

painting

and

poetry

as ex-

tensions of our natural

tendency

to imitate

things

and of the

pleasure

we

get

from this. Nor

does he

take the fact that imitation is

a

means of

learning

and

also

a source

of

pleasure

to be

independent

facts.

We

enjoy

imitations because we learn

from

them:

to be

learning something

is the

greatest

of

pleasures

(1448bl3-14).

In

this

way

Aristotle

makes

a

connection,

via human

nature,

between

art

and

learning.

In

chapter

1

Aristotle

says

that

poetry

is a

kind

of mimesis- a.

way

of

imitating

human action us-

ing language

(1447a29, 1448al).

In

chapter

3 he

adopts Plato'sdistinction,from Book Three of The

Republic

(393a-394b),

between narrative

poetry,

where

the

poet speaks

(as

Plato

says)

in his own

person,

and dramatic

poetry,

where the

story

is

told

by

a character

in

the fiction. But Aristotle's

view of the value of the two kinds of

poetry

is

almost the

opposite

of Plato's. As we have

seen,

Plato allows narrative

poetry

a limited kind of ed-

ucational

value,

namely,

where it illustrates the

behavior

of virtuous men. But he rules out

any

ed-

ucational function for dramatic

poetry.

He warns

that this more enactive

style

of

narrative,

where

the

story

unfolds

in direct

speech, may encourage

those

reciting

it to

adopt

the

personality

of the

speaking

voice.

Aristotle,

by

contrast,

prefers

dra-

matic

poetry.

When,

in

chapter

24,

he returns to

the

distinction between the two kinds of

poetry,

he

complains

that most

poets say

but little . . .

as

imitators

(1460a8-9),

but commends

Homer

for his

use

of

genuine

mimesis- for

keeping

his

own voice

to the minimum

and,

aside

from

a brief

preface

here and

there,

handing

the narrative over

to characters

in

the

story.

As

Stephen

Halliwell

has remarked, the enactive (or dramatic) mode

of

poetic

mimesis

is

Aristotle's

predominant

or

guiding

notion of

poetry.8

The

paradigm

of

this is

the

way

the

story

in

a

play

is

taken for-

ward

through

the

dialogue.

What is

important

in

Aristotle's account of

poetic

representation

is that

the story unfolds through the imaginaryevocation

of

people

saying

and

doing

things.

This

tells us

something

about

Aristotle's

understanding

of

the

power

of

poetry

to inform or

educate. He is

never

tempted by

a

quasi-assertoric

view

of

literature of

the

kind we

have seen

under attack

from

writers

such as

Diffey.

As

Halliwell

says,

Aristotle's

poet

is not

expected

to assert or

argue

. .

.;

his

task is

to

display

organized

structures of

action

through

direct verbal

representation. 9

What is

emerging

here is

that if

we are

looking

in

Aristotle for an

account of how

poetry-

or

more

broadly,

fiction- can

inform us

about the

world,

we

should

put

aside

the

tempting

idea,

fundamental

to

the conduit view and

embraced

by

Plato,

that it

can

serve

(whether

by

implicit

assertion or

some

other

means)

as

a vehicle

of the

poet's

own

be-

liefs.

Instead,

Aristotle asks

us

to

attend to

what is

surely

a more

central feature

of

poetry, namely,

its

capacity

to evoke

imaginary people

doing

imagi-

nary things.

The

question

is

how what

is

imaginary

can illuminate what is

real.

III.

POETRY,HISTORY,

AND PLOT

In

a famous

passage

in the

Poetics

Aristotle con-

trasts

poetry

with

history,

asserting

that

poetry

is

something

more

philosophic

and of

graver

im-

port

than

history,

since its

statements

are of the

nature

rather of

universals,

whereas

those of

his-

tory

are

singulars (1451b5-7).

Aristotle

points

out

that it is not that

poetry

is in

verse that distin-

guishes

it from

history,

since

if

you

put

Herodotus

into verse

you

would still have

history.

Nor does

the distinctness of

poetry

lie in

the fact

that it

describes what is

imaginary,

for it

may

not:

[I]f

[the poet]

should come to take

a

subject

from ac-

tual

history,

he is

none the less a

poet

for

that

(1451b29-30).

Rather,

poetry's

distinguishing

fea-

ture

consists in the fact that

the

poet's

function

is

to

describe,

not the

thing

which has

happened,

but

a kind of

thing

that

might

happen,

i.e.

what is

pos-

sible as

being probable

or

necessary

(1451a37-9).

Aristotle is

not

talking

about

mere

logical

possi-

bility

but

something

stronger,

which

he

usually

expresses as probable or necessary, or, as he

says

in

the

Rhetoric,

what

happens

always

or

for

the most

part (1369a).10

Aristotle is

making

a







268

The Journal

of

Aesthetics and

Art Criticism

connection between

poetry

and

reality,

but at a

certain level

of abstraction.

Although

the

particu-

lar events Homer describes

may

or

may

not

have

happened, what makes them good poetry is that,

unlike documents of

history, they

are

not con-

cerned with events

merely

because

they happened

but because

they

reflect

general

features

of the

world- the kind of

thing

that

might

happen. 11

To

get

a firmer

grip

on

the relation between

poetry

and

reality,

and how

what is

probable

or

necessary

in

poetry engages

the reader

in

a

learning process,

we need to

take account of

the role Aristotle

gives

to the

dramatic

plot.

Plot

is mentioned

in

the

very

first sentence

of the

Poetics,

but

his most

interesting

remarks about

it occur

in

chapters

6 to 9.

He describes the

plot

as the first

essential,

the life

and

soul

of

tragedy

(1450a37-38).

A

plot,

for

Aristotle,

is a unified

ac-

tion

sequence,

this

unity

making up

one action

(1451a32).

A

plot's

unity

derives

partly

from

its

structure- the fact that it has a

beginning,

middle,

and

ending-

but a more

important

aspect

of this

unity

is the

way

the actions

making

it

up

are tied to-

gether by

relations

of

probability

and

necessity.12

Let us

consider

what this means.

iv.

probably

or

necessarily

It

is

the

way

the action of

a

good plot

is tied to-

gether by

relations

of

probability

and

necessity

that

gives

the

plot

its

power

to reveal

general

truths about

human behavior.

Aristotle's account

of

how

this

happens

centers

on the fact

that the

individual actions

of characters follow

with

prob-

ability

or

necessity

from

a combination

of three

factors:

the characters'

humanity,

their

individual

personalities,

and their involvement

in the circum-

stances

depicted

in the

plot.

To

follow the

plot

is

to understand

how its events

are driven forward

with

probability

or

necessity by

these three factors.

Given

the

central

role of

probability

and

necessity

in this

account,

it is

important

to

consider

what

Aristotle means

by probably

or

necessarily

in

the Poetics.

When

Aristotle

says

in

chapter

9 that

poetry,

in

contrast

to

history,

describes

not the

thing

which

has

happened,

but a kind

of

thing

that

might hap-

pen,

we could retort

that

history

also

describes

whatmight happen - indeed it must, because, as

Aristotle himself remarks

(1451bl7-18),

what is

actual is

possible.

But

what Aristotle

means

by

what

might happen

is what would

probably,

or

at least

plausibly, happen given

the circumstances

described

in the

story

and the

dispositions

of its

central characters. This makes the sequence of

events

potentially

illuminating,

in that it reflects

how human

beings

actually

tend

to behave.

But

independently

of

this,

it also

fits well

with our

general

idea of

narrative

fiction. On

this

inter-

pretation,

a

good

plot

becomes

a

single sequence

of actions

unified

by

the

probability

(or plausi-

bility)

with

which those

actions follow

upon

one

another.

This has

intuitive

appeal.

We take it

for

granted

that real

life- or

history -

is

interspersed

with

random occurrences.

By

contrast,

we would

be

puzzled

by

the occurrence

in a

tragedy

or

epic

narrative of

something

that

seemingly

had noth-

ing

much

to do with

the rest

of the

story:

we

would

look for

its

significance

in relation

to the

whole-

for

why,

otherwise,

would

the author

have

included

it? And

if the

protagonists

found

them-

selves

confronted

by

a

frustrating

obstacle

to their

aims,

we

would feel

let down

if

they

solved

their

problem

by

calling

on abilities

inconsistent

with

our

ordinary

notions

of

what

is

humanly possible

or

likely.

Aristotle

also accommodates

our

intu-

itions

with his

requirement

that

whenever such-

and-such a personage says or does such-and-such

a

thing,

it shall

be the

probable

or

necessary

out-

come

of

his character

(1454a35-36).

As

tragic

and

epic

narratives

take

their

course

we become

aware

of certain

settled

dispositions

that

make

up

a

protagonist's

character,

and we

are

justified

in

expecting

that

what

that character

subsequently

does in his or

her various

circumstances

will strike

us as reasonable

or

plausible

given

those

longer-

standing dispositions.13

So

much for

probability,

but

what is

less clear

is

the role

Aristotle

gives

to

necessity

in the

Poetics.

Why

does

he

repeatedly

say

that

the

tragic plot

proceeds

through

a series of

probable

or

neces-

sary stages?

The

problem

with this

is

that human

behavior

is

never

entirely predictable.

While

we

will often

feel that

a certain

kind

of

person

in a

certain situation

is

very

likely

to react

to those

cir-

cumstances

in

a

certain

way,

human

behavior

has

a

complexity

that

makes

us reluctant

to

say,

except

in

very

unusual

circumstances,

that

he

or she

will

necessarily

behave

in a certain

way.

I

suggest

the

following explanation

for

why

Aristotle

speaks

of

probability and necessity as binding factors in a

unified

plot.

While the

presence

of

a

disposition

to do

A in

situation S

will not

necessarily

cause

a







Taylor

Sympathy

and

Insight

in Aristotle's Poetics

269

person

to do

A in

situation

S,

but will

only

cause

that behavior

in the absence of

countervailing

fac-

tors,

the

presence

of the

disposition

does

imply

that situation S will necessarily cause action A

in

the absence

of such

countervailing

factors.

If

people

are

hungry,

food is

available,

and

nothing

stands

in

their

way,

then

necessarily they

will

eat.

There

is

nothing

anachronistic

in

attributing

this

functionalist

idea to

Aristotle,

who

in his

Meta-

physics

defines

desire

according

to its role as a

cause of behavior

and

says

that when we are

truly

in

the

grip

of a desire we

will

necessarily

act on that

desire

in

appropriate

circumstances.14

Aristotle,

in

other

words,

shares with

many

present-day

philosophers

the view

that our

voluntary

behav-

ior is caused

by

our mental

states,

where caused

implies

a

necessary

connection:

our current

dispo-

sitions and circumstances

determine our actions.

On

this

view,

our reluctance

to

say

that

a

person

will

necessarily

act

in

a certain

way given

his

or

her

dispositions

and circumstances is

not

because

that

person's

behavior is not determined

by

those

dispositions

and

circumstances,

but because when

we

try

to

anticipate

someone's

actions,

the whole

variety

of

interrelated

psychological

states com-

prising

his or

her

present

state of

mind,

any

of

which could influence what that person will do,

is

usually

too

complex

for us to know with cer-

tainty

that

countervailing

considerations do not

apply.

This leaves

open

the

possibility

that

in

cer-

tain ideal circumstances

we could have sufficient

knowledge

of someone's inner states and situation

to

say

that

person

will

necessarily

act

in

a certain

way.

Given

Aristotle's view of human

action,

it is

plausible

that he believed this

too,

and this

pro-

vides

an

explanation

of his

repeated

insistence that

in a

good plot

the actions of the

characters follow

one another

with

probability

or

necessity.15

V.

CHANCE

AND DIVINE INTERVENTION

In

keeping

with

his view that the

proper subject

of

a

good plot

is human action and that its se-

quence

of

events,

being

an

imitation

of

action,

should be rational and

intelligible

in human

terms,

Aristotle considers it a

plot

weakness,

a

lapse

into

the

merely episodic,

if the connection between

one

part

of the

plot

and the next

is

merely sequen-

tial rather than causal (1451b33-35) or if nonhu-

man causes such as divine intervention

play

a role

in

bringing

about

the

denouement.16

Any

doubt

that for

Aristotle the dramatic

force of

tragic

and

epic

poetry

derives

from its

representation

of events as

dictated

by

human

agency-

that

for

him the psychology of agency is the focal point

of dramatic

representation-

is

dispelled

by

this

in-

sistence

that

all

forms of

connection

in

a

plot

not

based on

probabilities

and

necessities

of human

behavior

amount

to

artistic

lapses.

But Aristotle's

insistence on

plot

sequences

de-

termined

by

human action is

not

unproblematic.

He seems

to

be

insisting

on

plots

in

which

chance

and accident

play

no

role,

yet

when

we reflect on

what this

entails,

it turns

out to be an

unrealizable

principle.

The

trouble is that chance

influences

our

lives at

every

moment. If

someone

arrives at

a

crossroads,

they may

or

may

not encounter

a

stranger

there,

and

whichever of these

turns out

to

be true

depends

on chance. Since

the

influence of

chance is

pervasive,

it is

not

possible

to

describe

a stretch of human

activity

without

including

con-

tingencies

at

every

turn,

whether

you

are

report-

ing

actual events or

inventing

a

piece

of

fiction.

It seems

implausible

that

Aristotle should

have

overlooked

this.17So what does he

mean

by

saying

that,

in

a

good plot,

events follow one

another

with

probability

or

necessity?

I

believe he

meant some-

thing like this: that the hero plays a consistently

necessary

role in

the

sequence

of

events

leading

to the

eventual outcome of the

plot.

Recall that

for him a

plot

is

one action - a claim

that

em-

phasizes

the active role

of the hero. For

example,

Oedipus

the

King

can

be

described as

the

story

of

how

Oedipus,

a

revered

king,

unwittingly brings

about his

own downfall and

turns himself into

an

outcast.

Of

course,

various factors

that

contribute

to his demise are not

brought

about

by

Oedipus

himself,

but insofar as these

events are

part

of the

plot,

that is

so

in

virtue of how

they

enlist him in

activity

that eventuates in his

downfall. Thus

the

arrival of the

stranger

at the

crossroads

happens

without

Oedipus's

connivance,

but when

Oedipus

gets

into a

fight

with

this

man,

and then

kills

him,

he

is,

as

in

other

major junctures

in

the

story, fully

implicated

in

ongoing

events.

Confusion can arise here

because

when

Aristotle

says

that

[t]here

should be

nothing

im-

probable

about the actual

incidents

(1454b6-7),

this

could be read as

altogether

excluding

the

oc-

currence of chance

events,

on

the

reasoning

that

what is not improbable is probable, and must

therefore be dictated

by

a law

or

regularity.

But

this is a non

sequitur.

Some chance

events are

not







Taylor

Sympathy

and

Insight

in

Aristotle's Poetics

271

A

key

factor

here is the central character

around whom

the

story

revolves.

In

the normal

course

of a

tragedy

we see

the demise of a

sig-

nificant figure- the tragic hero. Aristotle tells us

that

the hero should

not be

morally

flawless,

be-

cause then their

demise would be too distasteful

to move us to

pity

and fear

(1452b-1453a).20

Nor

should

they

be

thoroughly

wicked,

because

then

they

would

not arouse our

pity.

Another reason

Aristotle

gives

for

why

the ideal

tragic

hero

should

not be

altogether

wicked is that

for his downfall

to

arouse fear

in

us the

tragic

hero must be like

us,

because

fear is a natural

reaction to the fall of

one like ourselves

(1453a5-6).21

This

last

phrase

is

worth

pausing

over. It is

tempting

to

think that what Aristotle

means

by

one like

ourselves is an

average person,

but this

cannot

be

right

because

he also

says

that

his

tragic

hero is better

than us

(1454b8-9),

as well as

being

someone of

great

reputation

(1453alO).

An

interpretation

of

Aristotle has to take into ac-

count

that

in

his mind

being

one like ourselves

is

compatible

with

being quite

unusual,

and cer-

tainly

does

not

imply

any

restriction

to a nar-

row band

of

middling

and

in no

way

extraordi-

nary people.

Aristotle's

requirements

can be

met

provided the hero is like ourselves according

one criterion

and better than

us

according

to

another.

Aristotle reminds

us in

chapter

15 that

a character

being

like the

reality -

that

is,

real-

istically

drawn-

is not the same as their

being

good

(1454a24-25). By

like the

reality

I think

he

means a character

who comes across as

per-

suasively

human.

Just

as most

human

beings

have

convictions,

doubts, desires,

fears,

and

hopes,

so

does

the

tragic

hero; furthermore,

the

hero's inner

states

and

dispositions

arise from the same sorts

of causes

that arouse those

states

in

the rest

of

us,

and once

aroused,

they

tend to

produce

character-

istically

human

impulses

and

responses

and to

in-

teract

with the hero's other mental

states

in

ways

that reflect the

give

and take of human

mental

functioning generally.

Tragic

heroes

may

be

larger

than

life- and our moral

superiors-

but the differ-

ences between

them and us are

not differences

of kind but

of content and

degree.

Their convic-

tions

may

be

nobler than

ours,

and their

passions

stronger,

but

functionally

and

structurally they

are

like we are. This makes sense

of Aristotle's recom-

mendation, toward the end of chapter 15, that the

poet

should

preserve

the

type

and

yet

ennoble

it

(1454bl3).22

We now see how

the hero can

be one like our-

selves in a

way

that admits a

broad

range

of

people,

from those

who stand out

as

exemplary

to those who are immoral or base. Morally, the

tragic

hero is at the

better end of this

range,

hence

undeserving

of his

tragic

misfortune,

but he

has

neither more nor less than

the full

array

of

feel-

ings,

needs and

capabilities

we associate with a

functionally

normal human

being.

Such a

person

is

neither

superhuman,

on the one

hand,

nor

psycho-

logically

deviant, alien,

or

strange

on

the other. In

our modern

terminology

the

range

excludes

mon-

sters,

psychopaths,

and extraterrestrials as

well as

moral

paragons, supermen,

and

saints.

It is not difficult to see the

point

of a

recommen-

dation that

confines

a

genre

of

dramatic

writing

to

the

range

of the human.

Even

though

there are

many

kinds of serious

writing

that,

for their own

purposes,

introduce characters from

beyond

this

range,

the more limited

range

suits

the

purpose

of

exploring

human nature. However

much we

may

be

fascinated

by

psychopaths,

Martians,

and

super-

heroes,

their

responses, feelings,

and

capabilities

are not

consistently

human

and therefore fail

to

engage

our

special

interest in our

own

species.

The

tragedies

Aristotle

is

interested in have

demon-

stratively human beings at their center, however

unusual these characters

might

be as

individuals.

For

example,

in

Oedipus

the

King,

when

Oedipus

turns to Tiresias for

help

in

finding

the murderer

of

Laius,

both

Oedipus

and Tiresias are

portrayed

as

conspicuously

human

characters,

despite

Oedipus

being

a

king

and Tiresias a seer.

Thus we find

it

perfectly

understandable that Tiresias is

reluc-

tant to

say

what he knows- that the

killer is none

other

than

Oedipus

himself- since

Tiresias natu-

rally

fears the effect his revelation will

have on the

temperamental Oedipus. Equally

understandable

is

Oedipus's anger

when

Tiresias

eventually

does

point

the

finger

at

him,

because

to

Oedipus

the

accusation is

naturally outrageous,

since he has no

idea that the man he had

an altercation with at

the

crossroads was Laius.

Sophocles

shows

par-

ticular

psychological subtlety

in the scene

where

he makes Tiresias tell

Oedipus

he is the

killer,

for Tiresias

produces

the

claim

just

after

Oedipus

has

accused

him of

plotting

against

Laius,

making

Tiresias's assertion seem like a defensive

reaction.

Throughout

the

play

the

probabilities

and ne-

cessities of human nature carrythe drama along

in

this

way,

ensuring,

as H. D. F.

Kitto has re-

marked,

that the

whole texture of the

play

is

...







272 The Journal of

Aesthetics and

Art

Criticism

vividly

naturalistic. 23However unusual as indi-

viduals,

Sophocles'

characters

are

very

much like

us

psychologically.

If we interpret the phrase like ourselves in

the

way

I

have

suggested,

the

appeal

of Aristotle's

tragic

hero has two

sides,

one

cognitive

and one af-

fective.

Cognitively,

heroes accord

with Aristotle's

principle

of

probability

or

necessity,

so

that how-

ever

exceptional they

are,

their behavior

is in-

telligible

to us. On the

affective side heroes are

easily

able to

engage

our

sympathy.

We

feel

that

what is

happening

to

them could have

happened

to us. Aristotle

says

in

the Rhetoric

(1385b)

that

people

naturally

feel

pity

for those

undeservedly

enduring

the

kind of

suffering

which a

person

could

imagine

himself,

or someone close to

him,

suffering.

VII.

REVERSAL, RECOGNITION,

AND

HA MARTI A

If for Aristotle

the

first essential

requirement

of a

good tragic plot

is

that

it forms a

unity

of

actions connected

by probability

or

necessity,

the

second essential

requirement

is that it has a

particular

kind of

complexity-

one that

incorpo-

rates certain crucial events. These include, notably,

episodes

of

reversal

(1452a22-23)

and

recogni-

tion

(1452a29-31),

which

in

turn

revolve around

hamartia

(1453al5-17)-

the

special

way

in

which

the hero

is

implicated

in his own downfall.24

The

central event in a

tragedy

is the occurrence

of a

change

in

the hero's

fortunes,

and

in Aristotle's

account this takes the form of a dramatic

rev-

elation,

preceding

which the

hero's actions

had

apparently

been

taking

a

satisfactory

course,

but

which now reveal

themselves,

both to the hero

and the

audience,

to have

entirely unexpected-

and disastrous-

implications.

An

important

part

of

this

change

of

fortune,

Aristotle tells

us at the end

of

chapter

9,

is that its

unexpectedness

in no

way

interferes with

the

unity

of the

plot.

Although

the

reversal comes as

a

shock,

the events

proceeding

and

following

it occur

in

consequence

of one an-

other

(1452a3-4). By

this we

can take him to

be

saying

that

despite going

against

all

expectations,

the hero's

changed

circumstances

follow

(and

can

be seen to

follow)

earlier

plot developments

in

accordance

with the

principle

of

probability

or

necessity.25

That the

downturn in the hero's

fortunes is to

a

significant

extent the

consequence

of

his own

actions

means that the hero

is not

simply

the vic-

tim of bad luck

but,

in a

phase

of

personal

weak-

ness or

blindness or

by

a crucial

mistake,

has

cre-

ated his own misfortune. So the downturn brings

a moment

of

recognition

when the

hero

passes

from

ignorance

to

knowledge-

a moment

made

more dramatic

by

the

fact that he has

discovered

something

about

his own actions

that

he had not

understood

before,

and more

painful by

his

real-

ization that

he carries

responsibility

for what

has

happened.

For

the audience

this is a moment

of

intensely

felt

sympathy,

accompanied,

Aristotle

says

(in

chapter

14), by

pity

and fear.

But there

is also

a

cognitive

dimension

to

this

response.

The fact

that the

consequences

of

the hero's

ac-

tions

are

entirely unanticipated,

yet

follow

plau-

sibly

from their

antecedents,

shows

a

potentiality

in human behavior

of

which the audience-

like

the hero-

was

previously

unaware.

This therefore

represents

a

moment of

insight, tempering

the

audience's

fear and

pity

with a

bracing

sense

of

discovery.26

VIII. PITY

AND FEAR

We have seen that for Aristotle a good tragicplot

is structured

in

the

way

it is

because that

struc-

ture

gives

the

play

its

power

to move

its audience

to

pity

and

fear. His

remark

in the Rhetoric

that

an observer

will

naturally

feel

pity

for

a

person

suffering

in the

way

the

observer

could

imagine

himself,

or someone

close

to

him,

suffering

draws

our

attention to

the

importance

of

sympathy

as an

element

in this

response.

But this same

experi-

ence-the

sight

of someone

suffering

in a

way

the

observer

could

imagine

themselves

or

someone

close

to them

suffering-

could

equally

naturally

give

rise

to fear.

The

way

sympathy

can

give

rise

both to

pity

and fear

alerts

us to the

fact

that

we

ordinarily

talk of

sympathy

in

two different

ways:

first,

to

mean

compassion,

hence

giving

rise

to

pity,

and

second,

to

mean

empathy,

where

we

imagine

being

in someone

else's

unfortunate

cir-

cumstances,

hence

giving

rise to

fear.27

The two

uses

are connected.

One

way

of

feeling

with

someone

(compassion)

is to enter

into

their situ-

ation

(e/npathy).

When we understand

someone's

tragic

circumstances

from

within,

and

feel their

fear, this understandingmay now give rise to pity:

they

are

in the

frightening

circumstances

we

have

imagined,

so

we

pity

them.







Taylor

Sympathy

and

Insight


273

This is not to

say

that,

necessarily,

we feel

pity

for someone

only

when we have entered into their

situation to

the extent

of

feeling

with them. We

might pity them just because we can tell, look-

ing

at their circumstances from the

outside,

that

their situation is

frightening

and

threatening.

But

it

is

evident

from

the detail of Aristotle's

expo-

sition that it is the

first,

more

engaged response

that is central to his

theory

of

tragedy.

This is the

implication,

for

example,

of

his

remark,

at the be-

ginning

of

chapter

14,

that a

person hearing

an ac-

count of

the

events

making

up

a successful

tragedy

shall be filled with

horror and

pity

at the inci-

dents

(1453b4-6).

This is

not the manner of a

mere onlooker

making

an inference

on the basis

of observed evidence. This accounts for the

role of

mimesis

in

the Aristotelian account of

tragic

and

epic

drama,

especially

the

emphasis

on enactment

as the

primary

form of mimesis. It is

important

for

Aristotle

that the

tragic plot

should

engage

us in

such a

way

that we feel we are

watching

the real

thing,

or even

participating,

so that our emotions

are

directly engaged.

IX.

SIMULATION

AND

THE PROBLEMOF

VERIFICATION

With

these different elements of Aristotle's

ac-

count

of

tragedy

in

mind,

let

us

go

back to the

question

of

how

we

learn from fiction and to

the

special

difficulties

surrounding

this

question

that

I raised at

the

beginning.

I

argued

that we learn

from fiction not

by relying

on the writer's

au-

thority

as an

informant nor

by

confirming

what

is

implicit

in the

work

by

reference to some

other

external

authority,

but

entirely through

our en-

gagement

with the work

itself. But this is

problem-

atic. It raises what I called the

problem

of

verifi-

cation-the

problem

of how we can

both

(a)

learn

something

new from the

work and also

(b)

satisfy

ourselves that the

conveyed

insight

is true

without

using

outside

help.

Point

(a)

seems

to

presuppose

our

prior ignorance

and

(b)

our

prior knowledge.

Since Aristotle

maintained that events in a

good

tragic

plot

should be connected in a

way

that is

probable

or

necessary

in

human

terms,

we

could

interpret

him

as

saying

that

tragedy

is

informa-

tive

by acting

as

a

conduit of information.

On this

interpretation

the

tragic plot

is taken

to

embody

generalizations about human natureknown to the

writer and

conveyed

to the reader

by being

illus-

trated in the

work. But the

argument

I

am de-

veloping

takes us in

a

different

direction,

aiming

to show

that we can

learn from

tragedy

without

putting

our

faith in the

writer

as

an

authority.

It

is important for Aristotle that a good plot por-

trays

actions that

are

probable

or

necessary,

but

the

importance

of this

lies not in

the

fact that

these

actions

directly

illustrate how

humans

behave. We

do not

take the

accuracy

of

the

plot's

depictions

of

human action

on trust in

the

way

we

trust the

accu-

racy

of a

picture

when it shows

us how

something

looks.

Rather,

a

convincing

narrative

engages

our

imagination,

moving

us

to

strong

reactions,

and it

is

by

observing

our

own

reactions

that we are

able

to see what we

could

not see

before and

hence to

assess for ourselves

what

is

presented

in

the

play.

In this

way,

too,

we

discover

something

about

hu-

man

nature.

In

offering

an

account of how

this

works,

I

pro-

pose

to

supplement

what

Aristotle

says

with

ideas

derived

from

current debates in

the

philosophy

of

mind. Here I

am

primarily

concerned

with

pro-

viding

a

solution to

the

problem

of

verification,

without

claiming

that the

details of

my

account

are

attributable to

Aristotle,

though

I

think

my

debt to

him

will

remain

obvious. The

suggestion

I

take from

Aristotle's

emphasis

on the

ability

of

tragedy to grip our emotions is that individual

viewers' reactions

to the

unfolding story

are an im-

portant

part

of a

learning process.

As

viewers

be-

come

imaginatively

absorbed in

the

events of

the

play,

and

begin

to feel

as

though

they

are

witness-

ing,

or

even

participating

in,

real

events,

it is

not

first and

foremost what

they

observe

on the

stage

that is

illuminating,

but what

they

become

aware

of

about their own

reactions. That

they

should

discover

unexpected

ways

in

which

they

respond

to and

feel toward

a

sequence

of

highly

charged

events,

different from

anything they

have actu-

ally

lived

through

in

their own

lives,

is

not

only

unsurprising

but to

be

expected.

To

begin

with,

therefore,

we can

posit

a

broadening

of

first-hand

experience

as a

starting point

for

the

process

of il-

lumination which

accompanies

the

experience

of

tragic

drama.

But this can

only

be a

starting point.

My

aim

is to

explain

how narrative

drama

can

give

us

generally

valid

insights,

as

Aristotle

suggests

it

can,

and

subjective

knowledge

of the

kind

I

have

so far

described falls

short of

this

goal.

What I

need to show is how the progress of a play can

extend our

knowledge

of human

nature

as

such,

by making

us

aware of

unexpected

probabilities







274

The Journal of

Aesthetics and Art

Criticism

and necessities

applying

to human

beings

in

gen-

eral. As we have

seen,

this

requirement

is difficult

to meet. We need to account for how I

learn from

the play without taking its depictions of human

behavior on

trust

or

verifying

them via an exter-

nal

authority;

somehow,

the

play

must enable me

to confirm their

accuracy

for

myself.

A

solution

to this

problem

needs to establish a

way

in which

the

play

provides

an

independent

source of illu-

mination that then enables me

to assess

the

accu-

racy

of its

representations

as

they

occur.

My being

continuously

alerted to

my

own

responses

to

the

circumstances

in

which the

play's

characters

find

themselves does

not,

as

such,

account for how this

happens.

However,

progress

has been made.

My

ongo-

ing

awareness of

my

own reactions to the

play

is an

independent

and continuous source of in-

sight.

Even if this

is not

insight

of

quite

the

right

kind,

the solution to the

problem

no

longer

seems

so intractable. The

way

Aristotle

singles

out fear

and

pity

as

key

or essential audience reactions to

tragic

drama

suggests

the

final

step necessary

for

resolving

the

problem-

a resolution that accords

with the

simulation view often canvassed

in

de-

bates

in

contemporary philosophy

of mind about

how we acquire knowledge of other minds. I said

earlier

that someone who reacts with fear to the

terrible demise of the

tragic

hero is one who has

imagined being

in

the

hero's

situation.

Watching

Oedipus

the

King,

I

imagine

being

Oedipus,

and

with his sudden demise I feel the terror of some-

one

who in

a few moments has

gone

from revered

ruler,

husband,

and father to one who has lost ev-

erything, taking

his

family

with him into the

abyss.

The

simulation

view

offers

an

account of

how

imagining being

Oedipus

can enable me to make

claims about his

feelings

and other inner states

that are not

merely conjectural

but are

proba-

ble

in

Aristotle's sense. But let us

begin

with a

case where we

engage, through

simulation,

with

a

real

person.

For

example,

I witness someone

being

verbally

abused for

doing something

careless,

and

I

find

myself imagining

that I am that

person.28

I

now feel

myself reacting

with

sensations

of

guilt

and embarrassment and also a

rising indignation.

Implicitly,

I infer that the abused

person's

inner

feelings

are

analogous

to those

triggered

in

me,

so

that as

I

watch her

groping

for a

response

to

her

abuser, I feel I know what she is experiencing-

why

her face is flushed and

she is

looking

around

in

apparent

confusion.

My

inference seems to ex-

plain

her outward

reaction,

and

may

enable

me

to

anticipate

what

she will do next- for

example,

gather

herself and fire back an

angry

retort.

At the

same time her observable reactions seem to offer

confirmation

of

my

inferences.

According

to the simulation

view,

it is not

just

a

coincidence that

my

own

reactions seem to

explain

those of the

person

I am

observing.

A

premise

of

the view is that

I

share,

at some

level,

the

other

person's biological

and

psychological

constitution.

This

grounds

the inference

I make about her

inner

reactions. As

Jane

Heal has

suggested,

we use our

own

person,

with its hidden

biological

and

psycho-

logical complexity,

as a model

for human

beings

in

general,

rather

in

the

way

we

might try

to

find

out what effects an

ingested

drug

has had on an-

other

person

by taking

the

drug

ourselves.29 Of

course,

I

know

that it is not

really

me who has

just

been

abused,

so

when

I

simulate the

abused

per-

son,

my

reactions occur

off-line,

triggered

by

my

imagining being

that

person.30

Neither can

I

assume

I

share

with the other

person

all her dis-

positions,

but

only

those that

make us both

human,

so the

accuracy

of

my

simulation-based

inference

can be

increased

if,

in

imagining

being

her,

I

incor-

porate

into the

imaginative

act relevant

beliefs

and personality features which I happen to know

she

possesses,

though

I

may

not.

In

summary,

the simulation view

holds that

we

attune ourselves to

the

feelings

and

responses

of

other

people

by

putting

ourselves

in their shoes

and

using

our own

mental

makeup

as a model

for

theirs.

Let us now

apply

the

simulation

concept

to

fiction.31

A

starting point

is the commonsensical

idea that

vivid

representations

can make

us feel

we are

spectators

to real

events.

If

we combine

this

with Aristotle's observation

in Politics

(Book

8,

chapter

5)

that to feel

pain

or

pleasure

in

re-

sponse

to

representations

is

very

near

to

having

the same

disposition

towards

reality,

it is

plau-

sible to

say

that

Sophocles'

vivid

representation

of

Oedipus

can set

in motion

that same

capacity

for simulation that

ordinarily helps

us to

read the

minds of real

people.

Watching

the

play,

we

put

ourselves

in

Oedipus's

shoes,

and then

attribute

to

him

feelings

and

impulses

analogous

to those

that

this

triggers

in

us.32

As we follow

the

unfolding

drama,

our sense of

identification

with

Oedipus

may

acquire

momentum

as more features

of

his

history and circumstances are revealed and we

build

these into our

inner dramatization

of be-

ing Oedipus.

At

the climax

of the

play,

when

his







Taylor

Sympathy

and

Insight

in Aristotle's

Poetics

275

life

unravels,

we

may

now

feel we know

from

the

inside

what it is like to lose a

kingdom,

a fam-

ily,

and

an

accomplished

life all

in

a few moments.

Thus we are not only able to understand the ex-

tent

of

Oedipus's suffering

but to

judge

for our-

selves

whether,

for

example,

the

extremity

of his

reaction as the

play's

final scene takes

its

course

is a

plausible

outcome

of

the

events which

have

preceded

it.

But how is it that our

imaginative

identification

with

Oedipus

enables

us to

judge

for

ourselves

how

plausibly

the

play depicts Oedipus's

reaction

to his

downfall,

when it is the

play

itself that in-

spires

and

guides

the

imaginative

process?

The

simulation view can

explain

this,

and

in

doing

so

it also

provides

a solution to the

problem

of veri-

fication. The

spectator's

own reactions to

the

un-

folding plot

give

him or her

insight

into the

likely

reactions of the

play's

characters to those same

unfolding

events,

thereby enabling

the

spectator

to

judge

the

accuracy

of

the

play's depictions

of

how those characters behave. The simulation the-

ory explains

how

imaginative

identification can be

a source of

independent

insight, enabling

the

spec-

tator to

judge

the

accuracy

or lifelikeness of the

action contained

in the

very

drama whose vivid de-

velopments have inspired that insight. As a stage

in the

plot

unfolds,

I am

taken,

along

with the

characters,

into a

new

situation,

and find

myself

reacting

in a certain

way, enabling

me

to confirm

the

plausibility

of the characters' own reactions.

This

in

turn

reinforces

my imaginative

involve-

ment as the

story

continues,

drawing

further re-

actions from me

which once

again

enable me to

assess what the characters are

saying

and

doing

at

this

stage,

and so on. As the

play proceeds,

simu-

lation

processes inspired

and

guided by

the

play

expand my range

of

experience

as

though

I

were

learning

from

life.33

Someone

might object

that this

application

of the simulation

theory

to fiction leaves un-

explained

how

my

simulation-based

judgments

about

Oedipus's

inner

feelings

can be

right

or

wrong,

for unlike the case where

I

identify

with a

real

person,

there is

in

reality

no one out there

with

feelings corresponding

to those

I

attribute to

the

purely

fictional

Oedipus.34My reply

is that in

engaging

with

Sophocles' play,

I

assume

he

is

writ-

ing

in a

broadly

realist

genre,

and that he there-

fore intends the actions of his characters to be- in

Aristotle's terms-

probable

or

necessary

in

the

fictional world

in

which

they

occur. This makes

it

appropriate

for

me to

respond

to the

fictional

Oedipus

much

as

if

he were

a real

person,

allow-

ing

him

to set in

motion the

capacity

for

simula-

tion that ordinarily helps me to engage with real

people,

and to make

inferences

about his

inner

thoughts

and

feelings

on

this

basis. Since

Oedipus

is in fact

well drawn in

Aristotle's

terms,

I

find

that

his

ongoing

behavior

generally

confirms

my

infer-

ences.35This shows

that

I

am

tracking Sophocles'

intentions and

justifies

me in

thinking

I am

getting

the

action of the

play

right-

that

my

inferences are

true of

Oedipus

in the

fictional

world of

the

play.

x.

conclusion

I

said in

Section

I

that

Aristotle's view

of dra-

matic

poetry provides

the basis

of a

defense of

cognitivism-

the view

that art has

the

capacity

to

teach us

interesting things,

and

that,

furthermore,

it derives

some

of

its value as

art from

this

capac-

ity. Using

materials

largely

derived

from

Aristotle,

I

have offered

an account of

how we learn

from

literature which

avoids the idea

that

literature in-

forms

by conveying

what the

author

knows

(the

conduit

view)

or

by

asserting,

or

being

viewed as

asserting, propositions implicit in the work. On

my

account

we

learn

by

focusing directly

on the

work's

explicit

content-

namely,

the

fictional nar-

rative

comprising

its main

subject

matter- which

takes us

through experiences

in

something

like

the

way

real-life events

do. As in

the latter

case,

what-

ever true

beliefs we come

away

with

are formed

by

us

in

response

to these

experiences,

rather than

existing

(even

if

only

implicitly)

ready

made

in

the

work.

Because the

learning process

is

based

in

the

primary

narrative

content of the

work,

it is

an en-

gagement

with

the work

as

literature, extending

our

appreciation

of its

literary

value.

I have

taken to heart

Aristotle's

emphasis

on

the contrast between

poetry

and

history.

While

historians make

assertions,

what is

important

in

dramatic

poetry

is that its

subject

matter

is

pre-

sented

plausibly.

Without

at

any stage

believing

its described

events are

true,

we

allow the

work to

take us

into an

imaginary

world,

and it is

through

imagining

this world

that we

make

discoveries

about ourselves

and human

beings

in

general.

At

that

stage

we

may recognize

the

accuracy

with

which the work portrays characters and events,

but

this is

emphatically

not to

respond

to the

work

as an

assertion,

but

rather,

it is

to assess it on

the







276

The

Journal

of Aesthetics

and Art Criticism

basis of

insights

we have derived

from its effects

upon

us.

Furthermore,

the

process

at work here

is

an

integral part

of

appreciating

the work as liter-

ature. Putting myself in Tiresias's shoes, I realize

how difficult it

is

for

him to tell

Oedipus

the

truth,

and

in

seeing

this I achieve a fuller

understand-

ing

of what is

happening

in the

play,

and

a fuller

appreciation

of- as Kitto

says-

the

vividly

natu-

ralistic texture

of

Sophocles'

writing.

This is to

appreciate

the

play

as a

play.36

What

kind

of

knowledge

does the

experience

of literature

provide?

If the account

I have of-

fered is

correct,

the

way

I

might

learn

something

by watching

a

play

or

reading

a novel is

noth-

ing

like the

way

I

might

learn from

listening

to a

lecture,

say,

or

reading

an academic

book,

and is

much more like

learning

from a distinctive

first-

hand

experience,

such as

falling

in love for the

first time or

suddenly finding myself

facing

a life-

threatening

crisis. We

might

therefore be

tempted

to

say

that what we learn from

literature is

knowl-

edge by experience,

as distinct

from

proposi-

tional

knowledge.

It is

certainly

true that

on the

account

I have

offered,

our

experience

of litera-

ture will

generally

extend

the

range

of our

experi-

ence.

By being

taken,

in

imagination,

into unfamil-

iar situations, we experience something of what it

is like

to live

through

those

situations,

and we

may

discover ourselves

reacting

with

unexpected

feel-

ings

and

impulses.

Thus,

identifying myself

with

a character who falls

in

love,

I

might

find

myself

reacting

in

unexpected

ways-

for

example,

I react

with

surprising

ruthlessness to

my

rivals

in

love.

In this

way

I

gain

self-knowledge.

However,

no

Aristotelian account

of

learning

from literature

can

stop

here,

because

Aristotle's

view is that dra-

matic

poetry

is like

philosophy

in

that

it can

give

us

knowledge

of

generalities.

I

have

used the simu-

lation

theory

to show

how,

by

extending

the

range

of

my

own

experience,

literature

also enables me

to

make inferences about

human

beings

in

gen-

eral.

I

discover

a

generality:

that

human love

has

a ruthless side to

it. This is a kind

of

propositional

knowledge.

Finally,

an Aristotelian

account of

learning

from literature

shows how

literature can

over-

come a

tendency

to

resist

unpalatable

truths about

human

nature. Recall that

Aristotle stresses

the

importance

in

tragic

drama of

the dramatic

mo-

ment when the hero and audience suddenly see

disaster loom out

of a series of

events that

had

initially

seemed

unthreatening.

We have seen that

Aristotle insists

that m a

good

plot

neither chance

nor divine

intervention

ever takes

control

to the

extent

that the

hero has

a

merely passive

role

in determining his future, and furthermore, that

the control

the hero

consistently

exerts

is

always

recognizably

human-

the

hero is

like ourselves.

These features of

a

good

plot

can

help

to

un-

dermine

an idealized

picture

of human

nature-

one which

self-deception,

or

plain

sentimental-

ity,

might

otherwise

sustain.

Provided

our

lives

are

going

reasonably

well,

we tend

to view

great

extremes of

behavior-

self-mutilation,

the aban-

donment

of

children,

self-exile-

as

outside

the

range

of

anything

to

which

we,

or

those we

re-

gard

as

normal,

could

be driven. Our

tendency

is to dismiss behavior of this kind as deviant or

pathological.

But

watching

Oedipus,

we

are

shown

that

Oedipus

and Jocasta-

people

who are

like

ourselves

psychologically

and

may

well be

our

moral

superiors-

have been

driven to

just

these

extremes.

This extends

our

knowledge

of

the

range

of what is

human,

compelling

us to

acknowledge

proclivities

of

human

nature- hence

our

own na-

ture-which

we otherwise

tend to

deny.37

PAUL

A.

TAYLOR

Division of Economic and Financial Studies

Macquarie

University

Sydney,

Australia

2109

internet

:

[email protected]

1. This

problem

is

prefigured

n the

opening paragraph

of Arthur

Danto's

The

Artworld,

n

Aesthetics nd

the

Phi-

losophy of

Art: The

Analytic

Tradition,

d. Peter

Lamarque

and Stein

Haugom

Olsen

(Oxford:

Blackwell,

2004),

pp.

27-

34.

Here Danto

describes Socrates

challenging

he

mimetic

view of art

on the

grounds

that

insofar as

art serves

to hold

a mirror

up

to

reality,

t

only

reflects

what

we can

already

see,

and hence

yields

idle

accurate

duplications

of the

ap-

pearances

of

things,

and is of

no

cognitive

benefit

whatever

(p.

27).

If,

on the other

hand,

someone

replied

that art

might

hold

up

a

mirror o a

part

of the

world

we have not

seen,

she

is faced

with the other

horn of

the dilemma:

we would

then

not

know that

what we

had been

shown

was a

part

of the

world.

As Terence

Diffey

has

pointed

out,

we

cannot tell

that

a

work has

presented

us

with the truth

unless

we

already

know

. . . that the

world s as

the work

shows it

to

be ;

What

Can

We Learn

from

Art? in

Art and

Its

Messages:

Mean-

ing,

Morality

and

Society,

ed.

Stephen

Davies

(Pennsylvania

State

University

Press,

1997),

pp.

26-33,

quote

from

p.

32.

See

also Jerome

Stolnitz,

On

the

Cognitive

Triviality

of

Art,

in

Aesthetics

and

the

Philosophy of

Art,

337-343,

esp.

pp.

340-342.

2. David Novitz

has defended

the idea

that fiction

can

furnish

us with

practical

hypotheses,

which we then

put







Taylor

Sympathy

and

Insight


277

to the test

in

real

life;

see David

Novitz,

Fictionand the

Growth

of

Knowledge,

n

Contemporary

hilosophy

of

Art:

Readings

n

Analytic

Aesthetics,

ed.

John

W.

Bender and

H.

Gene

Blocker

(Englewood

Cliffs,

NJ:

Prentice

Hall,

1993),

pp.585-593,quote on p. 589.

3.

Plato,

The

Republic,

trans. Desmond Lee

(Harmondsworth: enguin, 1974),

398b.

4. See

Stolnitz,

On

the

Cognitive

Triviality

of

Art,

p.

340,

and

Diffey,

WhatCan We Learn

from Art?

pp.

30-

32. While Stolnitz

and

Diffey oppose

the idea

that

liter-

ary

works

make truth

claims,

Peter

Lamarque

and

Stein

Haugom

Olsen,

in

Truth,

Fiction and

Literature:A Philo-

sophical

Perspective Oxford University

Press,

1994),

ap-

proach

the

issue from the

viewpoint

of the reader or

critic,

arguing

hat discourse

about literature

ncludes neither de-

bate about the truth

of claims found

in

literary

works nor

attempts

to

verify

such claims

(pp.

331-338).

See also Peter

Kivy,

The

Laboratory

of

Fictional

Truth,

n his Philoso-

phies of the Arts:An Essayon Differences CambridgeUni-

versity

Press,

1997),

pp.

120-139,

see

especially pp.

120-126,

and,

for a

good

overview

of these

issues,

Noel

Carroll,

The

Wheel of Virtue:

Art,

Literature and Moral

Knowledge,

TheJournal

of

Aesthetics

and Art Criticism 0

(2002):

3-26,

see

especially pp.

6-7.

Stolnitz,

Diffey,

and

Lamarque

and

Olsen

all draw

skeptical

conclusions

about the

possibility

of

literature,

qua

literature,

giving

us

knowledge

of the world.

Carroll

and

Kivy

concede

that there is force

in

the

skeptics'

arguments,

but

Kivy

claims that the

assessment of truths

implicit

n

literary

works nevertheless

does enter into liter-

ary appreciation,

and Carrollholds

that

literary

works can

provide conceptualknowledge.

5.

Diffey,

WhatCan We

Learn from

Art?

p.

30.

6. Berys Gaut, Art and Knowledge, in The Oxford

Handbook

of

Aesthetics,

d. JerroldLevinson

(Oxford

Uni-

versity

Press,

2003),

pp.

436-450,

see

especially p.

436.

7.

Except

where

I indicate

otherwise,

quotations

are

from Aristotleon

the Art

of Poetry,

trans.

Ingram Bywater

(Oxford:

Clarendon

Press,

1920).

8.

Stephen

Halliwell,

Aristotle'sPoetics

(London:

Duck-

worth,

1998),

p.

128.

9.

Halliwell,

Aristotle's

Poetics,

p.

132.

10. 'Plausible'

seems a

good

word

for what Aristotle

means

by possible

as

being probable

or

necessary.

Be-

ing stronger

than

'possible'

and

weaker

than

'probable,'

t

seems to

capture

Aristotle's

thought

n

several

places

in the

Poetics.

It is worth

noting,

however,

that unlike

probability

and necessity, plausibility s a subjectivenotion, in that

it concerns the extent

to which events strike us

as

believ-

able. This

anticipates

a theme that

will be made

explicit

below,

namely,

that it is more

important

for Aristotle that

drama

portrays

events

persuasively

han that it does so ac-

curately.

Aristotle,

The

Art

of

Rhetoric

(London:

Penguin,

1991),

trans.

H. Lawson-Tancred.

11. I

prefer

to

say

that

on Aristotle s account

poetry

draws

our attention to

general

features of the world than

to

say

it makes universal

statements,

as

Bywater's

transla-

tion

( its

statementsare

of the natureratherof

universals )

encourages

us to

say.

Like most translations

of the Poet-

ics,

Bywater

uses the word 'universals'

where

'generalities'

seems to

capture

Aristotle's

meaning

more

accurately.

As

ananonymousreferee of thisjournalhaspointedout to me,

'generalities'

its better with Aristotle's

claim that the

poet

describes he kind of

thing

that

might

happen

or would

prob-

ably

happen-

that

is,

something

that holds

generally

rather

than

universally.

n

what

follows,

therefore,

I will

talk

here of

generalities

ather than

universals. The

Bywater

trans-

lation is also

misleading

n

attributing

o Aristotle

the claim

that, like philosophy, poetry makes statements - hat is,

asserts that certain

propositions

are true.

My

referee

points

out,

relevantly,

that in the

Greek text truth is

mentioned

nowhere

in

the

passage

we are

referring

o here. It would be

a

mistake to

interpret

Aristotle as

saying

that

poetry

states

truths.

His

point

is

rather that what is

described

as

happen-

ing

should be the kind of

thing

that

might

well,

or

probably

would,

happen

in

reality.

Rather than

stating

truths,

good

poetry

is

plausible

or true to life.

12.

A

prior point

worth

noting

is that

Aristotle's stress

on action as a

plot's primary ubject

matter

(in

chapter6)

is

meant to

oppose

the

idea that a

plot's

main

subject

concerns

the

individual

agents

whose actions

make

up

the

story

or

the character

ypes they represent.

Aristotle is clear that a

tragedy s essentiallyan imitationnot of personsbut of ac-

tion and life

(1450al6-17)

and that the

Characters ome

second

(1450a20-21);

the latter are there for

the sake of

the

action and not vice versa. Aristotle takes

tragedy

to be

aimed at what is

general:

ts

subject

matter s

human action

as such-

whatsuch and such a kind of man will

probably

or

necessarily ay

or do- which s the aim of

poetry, hough

t af-

fixes

proper

names to the characters

1451b8-10).

Though

these charactersare

represented

as

individualswith

names,

he seems to be

saying, they

are

really only

important

as

ex-

emplars

of this or that kind of man in

plots designed

for

exploring

human behavior n

general.

13.

Aristotle's remarksabout

probability

and

unity

cap-

ture

much

of

what

we

mean

by

realism n

fiction,

understood

not as a particular iterarymovement but as a qualityto be

found

in

varyingdegrees

in most

literature.

14. See

Metaphysics 1048a):

Everything

. .

which has

a rational

potency

must,

when it

desires that for which t

has

the

potency

and in the

circumstances

appropriate

to

that

potency,

do the

thing

in

question ;

Aristotle,

Metaphysics,

trans.

John

Warrington London:

J.

M.

Dent and

Sons,

1961),

p.

231,

emphasis

added. For

a

commentary

on this

passage,

see Richard

Sorabji, Body

and Soul

in

Aristotle,

n

Arti-

cles on Aristotle:

.

Psychology

and

Aesthetics,

ds.

Jonathan

Barnes,

Malcolm

Schofield,

and

Richard

Sorabji (London:

Duckworth,

1979), pp.

42-62,

esp. pp.

56-57.

15. It addsto the

plausibility

of

the

position

I am

attribut-

ing

to Aristotle that our

knowledge

of

a fictional

character's

inner states and situationmaywell approachcompleteness,

because

a

fiction writer

can,

through

asides and

other de-

vices,

make us

directly privy

to

what is

happening

in

the

mind of a

character,

nd because the worldof a

literary

work

is

simplified

or

non-comprehensive,

ince it is

limited to

what

the

author has

written into it.

'Non-comprehensive'

is Nicholas Wolterstorff

term;

see his

Worksand Worlds

of

Art

(London:

Clarendon

Press,

1980),

pp.

131-134.

On

fictional

worlds,

see also Kendall

Walton,

Mimesisas Make-

Believe

(Harvard

University

Press,

1990),

pp.

57-67,

and

Gregory

Currie,

The

Nature

of

Fiction

(Cambridge

Univer-

sity Press, 1990), pp.

56-73.

16. Aristotle's

proscription

of divine

intervention led

him

to some counterintuitiveclaims- for

example,

that in

Iphigenia n TaurisApollo's oracularmessage,which sends

Orestes

on the

path

that

will

save his

sister,

is

outside the

Plot of the

play (1455b7).

On this see

Halliwell,

Aristotle's







278

The Journal

of

Aesthetics

and

Art Criticism

Poetics,

pp.

231-233.

Discussing

the rules of

composition

in

chapter

15,

Aristotle

acknowledges

he dramatic

value of

revelations of divine

foreknowledge,

but these too

should

be

kept

outside the

play

(1454b3).

17. I thereforedisagreewith Halliwell when he saysthat

the total

coherence of a

work,

f

Aristotle is

right

. . will be

disturbed

by

even

a

single

chance event

within the

sequence

of action

(Halliwell,

Aristotle's

Poetics,

p.

210).

18.

In

Truth,

Fiction and Literature

(pp.

315-320)

Lamarque

and Olsen

outline a view

of the kind

I

am dis-

tancing myself

from

here.

According

to this view literature

should be seen as

aiming

to

report

truthsabout

kinds,

in-

formed

by

the facts and

constrained,

perhaps

n the manner

prescribed by

Aristotle,

by probabilities

p.

316,

original

emphasis).

On this view

literary

works are taken

to

convey

informationabout

real-world

probabilities.

Lamarque

and

Olsen

rightlypoint

out,

however,

hat

[probability

.. is de-

pendent upon

evidence,

and it is

logically

anomalous to ask

about evidence for a made-upevent-description p. 317).

Furthermore,

it s not

part

of the

literary

tance to construe

literary

works

in

terms

of their

probability

p.

318).

As

I

interpret

Aristotle,

literary

works should

be

plausible,

and

this

can be

illuminating,

but not

because the works

convey

ready-made probable

ruths dentified

by

the

writer.

19. That this- our

being

drawn into the drama-

is the

most

important hing

for Aristotle

is

supported

by

his

saying

(chap.

24)

that

[a] likely impossibility

s

always

preferable

to an

unconvincingpossibility

1460a26-27),

and

(chap.

25)

that

[f]or

he

purposes

of

poetry

a

convincing mpossibility

is

preferable

o

an

unconvincingpossibility

1461bll-12).

20. Halliwell

(Aristotle's

Poetics,

pp.

219-222)

suggests

that

a furtherreason

why,

for

Aristotle,

the hero

cannot be

morally lawless s the requirement hat his downfallshould

be

brought

about

by

his own

actions,

for there is a

ques-

tion about how a

morally

flawless

person

could act

in a

way

that had disastrous

consequences.

However,

Halliwell

himself

points

out that it

is

possible

for

people

to cause

their own demise

through

innocent

mistakes

(p.

221),

like

Oedipus's

ignorance

about

his true

parentage,

and as

Aristotle

remarks

(chap.

14),

for the deed to

be done

in

ignorance

.. is

nothing

odious

(1454a2-4).

Another

inter-

esting question

is whether

a

morally

flawless

person

is even

conceivable

in Aristotle's scheme of

things,

for he

seems to

have

accepted

that virtues

can come

into

conflict,

making

t

impossible

or an

agent

not

to err at least

in situations

where

all alternativecourses

of action are

repugnant.

On

this see

MarthaNussbaum,TheFragilityof Goodness (Cambridge

University

Press,

1986), pp.

327-336.

21. We can

reasonably

add that

the

requirement

that

charactersbe neither

purely

villainous

nor

perfectly

virtu-

ous is also

supported by

the

need for

plausibility.

When

we encounter

fictional characters

who have no

virtues or

no vices at

all,

they

can leave us

unmoved because

we

are

unpersuaded,suspecting

the

writer of a deficient

sense

of

reality

or

of

indulging

n

fantasy

or

sentimentality.

22. Butcher's

translation;

see S.

H.

Butcher,

Aristotle's

Theory of Poetry

and Fine

Art

(New

York:

Dover,

1951),

p.

57.

23. H. D.

F.

Kitto,

Greek

Tragedy:

A

Literary Study

(London:

Methuen,

1966), p.

140.

24. Or near downfall. Aristotle allows (chap. 13) that

there can be

good

tragic plots

where a

final disaster

is

averted.

25.

Halliwell,

Aristotle's

Poetics,

p.

212.

26. The

disparity

between

the

apparent

and

real,

Aristotle

suggests,

an move an

audience

o a state

of wonder

(chap.

9)-

a notion

evidently

connected

to the idea

of cathar-

sis, introduced n Aristotle's famous definition f tragedy

in

chapter

6.

Though they

are the

outcome

of

pity

and

fear,

wonder

and

catharsis re

both somehow

uplifting,pos-

sibly

because

both

are associated

with

the

pleasure

of

in-

sight.

Aristotle makes

it clear

that

wonder

depends

on

the

way

the hero is

implicated

n a disaster

through

his own

actions.

There s

more of

the marvelous

n

[these

events]

then,

he

writes,

than

f

they

happened

of themselves

or

by

mere chance

(1452a4-6).

27. Of

course,

ordinary

fear

is

accompanied

by

a be-

lief

that

there is an

imminent

threat of

pain

or

harm. But

we

can also feel

what we are

inclined

to call

fear

when

encountering

a vivid

representation

of

something

threaten-

ing,

for

example

in a

play

or film- hence

where

no belief

is involved. Aristotle remarksin Politics that to feel pain

or

pleasure

in

response

to

representations

of

painful

and

pleasurable

hings

is

very

near

to

having

the same

disposi-

tion

towards

reality ;

rans.

T.A. Sinclair

Harmondsworth:

Penguin,

1962),

Book

8,

chapter

5.

For a

persuasive

account

of fear

(and

other

feelings)

aroused

by

fictional

repre-

sentations-and

one

which fits

well into

the context

of the

Poetics because

of the

central role

it

gives

to

imagination-

see

Kendall

Walton,

Fearing

Fictions,

Journal

of

Philos-

ophy

75

(1978):

5-27.

I

am

inclined

to

agree

with

Walton

(pp.

6-10)

that the

fear and

other emotion-like

states

we

experience

in

response

to

fictions

are not

genuine

cases

of

these emotions

but

quasi

motions

that

share a

number

of

features with

their real

counterparts.

These

quasi-emotions

result from our makingbelieve that fictionaldepictionsof

situations

are

real,

whereas

real

emotions

incorporate

actual

beliefs,

and

though

often

accompanied

by

bodily symptoms

and behavioral

mpulses

associated

with their

real counter-

parts,

he behavioral

ffects

of these

quasi-emotions

are rela-

tively

inhibited.

I will therefore

henceforth

speak

of them

as

analogues

of their

real

counterparts

and use

scare-quotes

in

referring

o

fictionally

nduced

fear,

pity,

nd

so forth.

28. Simulation

requires

not that

you

imagine

yourself,

with

your dispositions

and

character,

n the circumstances

of the

other

person,

but

that

you

imagine

being

that

other

person.

For a

good

discussion

of this

distinction

see

Peter

Goldie,

The Emotions:

A

Philosophical

Exploration

(Oxford:

Clarendon

Press,

2000),

pp.

176-180.

I

disagree

with KendallWalton'sclaim (in FearingFictions, p. 24)

that

when we

engage

with

fiction

we

always

make believe

that we

ourselves

exist

as

participants

n

the

fictional

world,

hence

that

in

imagining

a fictional

character

rom the

inside,

I must

imagine

that

/ am

in that character's

ituation.

On

this,

see

the

counterarguments

f

Susan

Feagin

in

Reading

with

Feeling:

The Aesthetics

of

Appreciation

Cornell

Uni-

versity

Press,

1996),

p.

88,

and

Alex

Neill

in

Empathy

and

(Film)

Fiction,

n

Philosophy

of

Film and

Motion

Pictures:

An

Anthology,

ed.

Noel Carroll

and Jinhee

Choi

(Oxford:

Blackwell,

2006),

pp.

247-259,

see

p.

105.

29. Jane

Heal,

Replication

and

Functionalism,

n Folk

Psychology,

ed.

Martin

Davies

and

Tony

Stone

(Oxford:

Blackwell,

1995),

pp.

45-59,

see

p.

47.

See

also

Stephen

Stich

and ShaunNichols, FolkPsychology:Simulationor Tacit

Theory?

n Folk

Psychology,

pp.

123-158-

a critical

discus-

sion

of the

simulation

view

in which

the

authors

compare







Taylor

Sympathy

and

Insight

in

Aristotle's

Poetics

279

mental

simulationwith

testing

an aircraft

n a wind tunnel

(see pp.

125-127).

The

broader

significance

of the simula-

tion

view in the

philosophy

of mind is that it

provides

an

alternative

o the view that

we come to know others'

men-

tal states by applyinga theoryof the mind. In defense of

the simulation

view see also Robert

M.

Gordon,

Folk

Psy-

chology

as

Simulation,

n Folk

Psychology, pp.

60-73,

and

Alvin

I.

Goldman,

Interpretation

Psychologized,

n Folk

Psychology,pp.

74-99.

30. On off-line

esponses,

ee Stich

and

Nichols,

Folk

Psychology:

Simulation

or Tacit

Theory? pp.

127-129. Since

I do not

really

believe I am

in

the

abused

person's

situation

when

I simulate

or

empathize

with

them,

the

guilt

and

embarrassment

feel

when I do so are not

full-fledged

occurrences

of those

emotions,

but

quasi

emotions.

(The

situation

is thus

analogous

to what

applies

in the

case of

fictional

emotions -

see note

27.)

Of

course,

in simulat-

ing

the abused

person

I

may

additionally

feel certain real

emotions,such as pity,arisingfrommy genuine belief that

they

have

been abused.

And since I can feel

indignation

at someone

else's

plight

as

much as at

my

own,

the

indig-

nation

I feel while

watching

someone

being

abused

may

be real.

31.

While

my

own

purpose

in

applying

the

concept

of

simulation to

fiction-

and,

in

particular,

o how we inter-

pret

and understand

ictional characters-

s

specifically

to

help

resolve

the

problem

of

verification,

he simulation dea

has over the

last several

years

been

applied

to fiction

by

a

numberof

writers.

Gregory

Currie

has been a

prolific

con-

tributorhere.

He considers he

general

connection

between

simulationand fiction

in

Imagination

nd Simulation:

Aes-

thetics Meets

Cognitive

Science,

n Mental

Simulation,

ed.

Martin Davies and TonyStone (Oxford:Blackwell,1995),

pp.

151-169. Currie

discusses

the

question

of its

applica-

tion to

fictional characters

in The Moral

Psychology

of

Fiction,

in Art and Its

Messages:Meaning, Morality

and

Society,

ed.

Stephen

Davies

(Pennsylvania

State Univer-

sity

Press,

1995), pp.

49-58;

in Realism

of

Character

and

the

Value of

Fiction,

in Aesthetics and Ethics:

Essays

at

the

Intersection,

d. Jerrold

Levinson

(Cambridge

Univer-

sity

Press,

1998),

pp.

161-181;

and

in Anne Bronte and the

Uses

of

Imagination,

n

Contemporary

Debates in Aesthet-

ics and the

Philosophy of

Art,

ed. Matthew

Kieran

(Oxford:

Blackwell,

2006),

pp.

209-221,

see

especially

pp.

211-215.

There is a

thorough

discussion of the role

of simulation

in

understanding

ictional characters

n

Feagin,

Reading

with

Feeling,pp. 94-112, and she explores the issue furtherin

Imagining

Emotions and

Appreciating

Fiction,

Canadian

Journal

of Philosophy

18

(1988):

485-500.

It need

hardly

be

said that defenders

of the idea

that we use simulation to

understand ictional

charactersand

other

aspects

of

literary

works are

not

saying

that we

employ

simulation

exclusively

when

engaging

with

fiction;

here is no intention

to exclude

other forms of

attentiveness,

uch as

(nonempathic)sympa-

thizing

with fictional

characters,

assessing

the moral

impli-

cations

of a

story,

or

enjoying

the artisticuse of the medium

of

expression-

the

quality

of the

language

in a

novel,

the

acting

in a

stage production,

the camerawork

in

a

film,

and

so

on.

32. It

might

be

thought

that when we

simulate fictional

characters, urempathicresponsesare too far removed rom

what those characters

re

actually upposed

o be

experienc-

ing

in

the fictional

world for our

empathic

feelings

to teach

us

anything

about what it is like

actually

to

undergo expe-

riences of the kind

depicted

in the

fiction.

This

skepticism

may

be

encouragedby

the variousreasons that can

be

given

against saying,

for

example,

that the fear I

experience

when engagingwith fiction is genuine fear (see note 27).

But as KendallWaltonhas

pointed

out,

this is a red

herring,

since the

important question

is

to what extent the

fear

I

experience directly

results from

my capacity

for real fear

and releases

feelings,

sensations,

and

impulses resembling

those

accompanying

the actual

emotion;

Kendall

Walton,

Spelunking,

Simulation

and

Slime- On

Being

Moved

by

Fiction,

n Emotion and the

Arts,

ed. M.

Hjort

and S.

Laver

(Oxford

University

Press,

1997),

pp.

37-49. As Walton

says,

What imulation

requires

s that the

input

and

output

states

be

analogous

to

inputs

and

outputs

of the

experience

being

simulated

p.

43).

I

believe there is a self-evident

correspon-

dence between

(for

example)

the fear

I

have

sometimes

felt in

response

to vivid

fictional

representations

of

fearful

situations and real fear.Waltonpoints to the genuinedis-

tress he is able to induce in

himself

by

imaginingcrawling

on his stomach

through

a narrow

and dark

subterranean

tunnel

while

on

a

spelunkingexpedition

and

argues-

I

think

persuasively-

that the

imaginative

xercise

surely

causes this

distressbecause it activates

psychological

mechanisms re-

ally

possess (p.

39).

33. This

process

can be

called

quasi-perceptual:

t is

for

me as

if

I

am

experiencing

events which

are

unfolding

be-

fore

my

eyes,

and these

experiences

elicit from

me affec-

tive reactions

analogous

to those I

might

have

undergone

had the events

really

been

happening.

It

is worth

noting,

in

particular,

hat the

process

of

expanding

awarenessaccom-

panying

these

experiences

arises

directly

from

my

contact

with the work itself. In this way the accountI have offered

satisfies the intuition

I

mentioned at the

beginning

of this

article when

I

said that it is the

story

itself that

strikesus as

illuminating,

and in a

direct

way

(p.

265).

Here we

might

compare

and contrastsome other

accounts

of

how literature

can be

illuminating.

For

example, Kivy,

n The

Laboratory

of Fictional

Truth,

and

Carroll,

n

The Wheel of

Virtue:

Art,

Literature and Moral

Knowledge,

both attribute an

epistemic

role to

literary

works

(see

note

4),

but

do not see

illumination

arisingdirectly

rom

contact with the

work,

but

rather as

occurring

n the course of

reflecting

on

the work

after a

period

of contact with the text- what

they

call the

afterlife of the

readingprocess.

34.

In

Reading

with

Feeling,Feagin rightly

stresses that

'simulation's a success term (p. 93). The notion of simu-

lation is

only

applicable

n

a context where it makes

sense to

attribute

greater

or lesser success to the act of

simulation

n

conjuring

he

other

person's

mental

states,

hence

raising

he

question

I

am

addressing

here. On other

problems

raised

by

the

distinction

between

empathizing

with

real

people

and

empathizing

with fictional

characters,

ee

Feagin, Reading

with

Feeling,pp.

93-112;

Feagin, Imagining

Emotions and

Appreciating

Fiction ;

Neill,

Empathy

and

(Film)

Fiction ;

and

Currie,

AnneBronte and the

Uses of

Imagination ,

s-

pecially pp.

211-215.

35. One

way

for

fiction writersto create

characterswho

will

resonate with the

responses

of an

empathic

audience

is for them to

imagine

their characters'

circumstances rom

withinwhilecomposingscenes. Aristotle comesclose to this

suggestion

with his

advice,

at the start of

chapter

17

of the

Poetics,

that when he is

constructing

his Plots ... the

poet







280

The Journal

of

Aesthetics and

Art

Criticism

should remember

..

to

put

the

actual scenes as

far as

pos-

sible before his

eyes.

In this

way, seeing

everything

with the

vividness of

an

eye-witness

as it

were,

he will devise what

is

appropriate,

and be least

likely

to

overlook

incongruities

(1455a22-26).

36.

Thus,

earning,

while it

may

be a

product

of the read-

ing

process,

s

not,

in such

cases,

the

purpose

of

reading,

but

a

necessary part

of

reading

well

and a

means of

fully

appreciating

he work.

37.

I would like

to thank

an

anonymous

referee

of this

journal

or a

numberof

very helpful

suggestions

hatenabled

me to improvean earlierversionof thispaper.I would also

like to thank

Ian

Plant for his

good

advice

on the Greek

text

of

the Poetics.

sympathy and insight on aristotle's poetics.pdf

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