Abstract
AbstractIn Poetics 13, Aristotle claims that the protagonist in the most beautiful tragedies comes to ruin through some kind of ‘failure’—in Greek, ἁμαρτία. There has been notorious disagreement among scholars about the moral responsibility involved in ἁμαρτία. This article defends the old reading of ἁμαρτία as a character flaw, but with an important modification: rather than explaining the hero's weakness as general weakness of will (ἀκρασία), it argues that the tragic hero is blinded by temper (θυμός) or by a pursuit for fine, good and desirable things—that is, by what may be labelled ‘qualified’ weakness of will. The upshot is that ἁμαρτία ends up as being less blameworthy than ‘proper’ ἀκρασία, but still explains why morally outstanding people are unsuitable for the most beautiful tragedies.
Highlights
In Poetics 13, Aristotle claims that the protagonist in the most beautiful tragedies comes to ruin through some kind of ‘failure’—in Greek, ἁμαρτία
Tragedy should imitate a person who falls between these two extremes and comes to ruin through some kind of ‘failure’—in Greek, ἁμαρτία
The notion may denote a wide range of failures, spanning moral wickedness to innocent mistakes, and the problem arises: what kind of failure does Aristotle have in mind for the best tragic plot?
Summary
This allows us to extend the range of failures involved in ἁμαρτία: it may be acts caused by ignorance, acts done through ἀκρασία, and wrong acts done knowingly because of a greater good (μικταὶ πράξεις).[17] These may all cause an undeserved shift to misfortune, and we can reconcile Aristotle’s description of the best tragic plot with several plays To allow for this flexibility, Stinton’s reading needs to rest on an important premise, namely that Aristotle rejects virtuous men (ἐπιεικεῖς ἄνδρες) as unsuitable for the best tragic plot only because the disaster of the very good man would inhibit tragic pleasure. For it is clear that a central premise of their readings runs into a considerable problem
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