Brecht's Criticisms of Aristotle's Aesthetics of Tragedy

Abstract

An ancient debate in aesthetics centers on the role of art and the emotions in moral and intellectual education.1 Does emotional engagement with the characters in drama help or hinder our critical intellectual reflections on the characters and situations represented by the work? Plato is famous for his suggestion in Republic X that the emotions tragedy evokes in the audience members makes them intellectually disabled and leads them morally astray. This criticism of an emotional response to tragedy is not shared by Plato's most famous pupil, who values tragedy precisely because it elicits emotions that operate in conjunction with a cognitive understanding of ourselves and the world. This is the interpretation of Aristotelian aesthetics recently presented by scholars Martha Nussbaum and Stephen Halliwell.2 Both independently suggest that tragedy, on Aristotle's view, engages both the understanding and the emotions through representations that call for genuine, independent reflection on our related possibilities. This interpretation of Aristotle is striking when compared with the criticism of Aristotelian theater offered a number of years ago by the German playwright Bertolt Brecht. Brecht criticizes the aesthetic tradition initiated by Aristotle for its preference for dramatic narratives that please but do not instruct or provide real learning about the source of human suffering. Brecht attacks Aristotelian catharsis as a kind of opium of the masses, arguing that empathizing with characters prevents viewers from reflecting critically on the social causes of human suffering.3 Brechtian aesthetics is itself receiving criticism from those who argue that Brecht mistakenly assumes that emotion and reason cannot both be part of an integrated aesthetic response.4 I believe these criticisms of Brecht miss the essential points of Brecht's critique of Aristotelian aesthetics.5 In what follows I argue that Brecht is correct to find fault with Aristotelian aesthetics, for critical thinking in relation to drama and an account of the role of the emotions in a critical approach to drama are essentially not accounted for in Aristotle's discussion. While critical of Aristotle's aesthetics, I note a key legacy of Aristotelian aesthetics: the important role that emotions play in our identifications with characters and situations depicted in art. Brecht's critique of Aristotle's aesthetics will be stronger if we can locate Brecht's complaints more specifically in Aristotle's text, something that Brecht himself failed to do. So I shall reconstruct Brecht's critique as criticisms aimed at a plausible interpretation of Aristotle's text. My interpretation of Aristotle focuses on a rather neglected aspect of his theory: his requirement for preferred tragic plot patterns and character. I focus on two aspects of Aristotle's account: (1) his view that plots must feature the individual error (or hamartia) of a morally admirable protagonist, and (2) his view that engaging with the thoughts and feelings of the tragic protagonist is central to responding to tragedy. I argue that these practices, as Aristotle describes them, do not permit drama that is socially critical unless a playwright supplements them with other devices that link the action of the protagonist with a larger social nexus. These supplemental devices are the