Scott subsequently demonstrates that Aristotle considers tragedy not to be a species of literature but one of dramatic musical theater that also requires dance and spectacle. Chapter 2 includes a revised version of Scott’s “The Poetics of Performance: The Necessity of Performance, Spectacle, Music, and Dance in Aristotelian Tragedy” (Cambridge University Press, 1999). The book also supplements his arguments of “Purging the Poetics” (Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy or OSAP, 2003), re-printed here as Chapter 5, and provides the additional, and seemingly insuperable, reasons why Aristotle could not have written the catharsis, pity and fear clause in the definition of tragedy, as a number of internationally known ancient Greek specialists have already been accepting.

The final chapters demonstrate what the true goal(s) of tragedy are for Aristotle; how he responds, without using the doctrine of catharsis, to Plato’s attack on tragedy and comedy; how the passage in Politics VIII 7 that mentions an explanation of catharsis in a book on poiēsis almost surely refers to the lost section on comedy; and how catharsis may be much more relevant to comedy than to even some sub-type of tragedy for Aristotle, for which the “pleasure through pity and fear” of Chapter 14 is indeed relevant. All of this allows a fresh and better reading of the treatise that even with its fundamental misinterpretations has been the foundation of Western literary, dramatic and artistic theory.

Testimonials

Provided below in chronological order is what some specialists in ancient Greek philosophy have written about the two articles that form the foundation of the book—"The Poetics of Performance” (Cambridge University Press, 1999) and “Purging the Poetics” (Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 2003)—or about subsequent works based on those articles.

“…the definition’s phrase about catharsis is not Aristotle’s language at all but a later insertion that scholars should excise (Petruševski 1954; Scott 2003; Veloso 2007)… Omitting a difficult passage from ancient texts must be a last resort. But one must recall the long unsatisfying history of attempts to make sense of catharsis. The debates over catharsis might be as intractable as they are, and textual support so indirect, because the task is impossible. The time of the last resort might have arrived.”
         —NICKOLAS PAPPAS, Professor of Philosophy at the City College/Graduate Center of New York, “Aristotle,” in Routledge Companion to Aesthetics, 3rd ed., 2013 (with the same evaluation in the 2nd ed., 2005, minus the reference to Veloso).

“My favourite articles in Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy this year are two in volume XXV: one by Gregory Scott, who cuts one Gordian knot of Aristotelian scholarship by athetizing the clause that introduces katharsis into Aristotle’s definition in the Poetics…”
         —GEORGE BOYS-STONES, Professor of Ancient Philosophy, Durham University (U.K.), “Subject Reviews,” Greece & Rome, Vol. 52, No. 1, The Classical Association: www.classicalassociation.org, 2005.

“There is no room for katharsis in the definition of tragedy as it occurs in chapter 6 of Aristotle’s Poetics. The passage is corrupt. At least three scholars Petruševski, Freire, and Scott have shown that intervention in the text is justified and necessary… I take it for granted here that katharsis in line 1449b28 cannot remain.”
         —CLAUDIO WILLIAM VELOSO, “Aristotle’s Poetics without Katharsis, Fear, or Pity,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 2007. Veloso is also the author of the Pourquoi la Poétique d’Aristote? DIAGOGE [Why the Poetics of Aristotle? Intellectual Enjoyment], Vrin, September 2018, with a Preface by Marwan Rashed.

“Does the katharsis phrase belong in our text at all? In a recent article, Gregory Scott argues that the phrase about katharsis may not belong in the text at all, and urges that it should be purged… Whether or not the katharsis phrase is an interpolation, it is not woven into the fabric of the book, and we had best set it to one side as we work to understand the text of the Poetics...    It is tempting for modern readers to infer that the Poetics is a work of literary criticism divorced from concerns about performance. But poetry had up to then been composed or written primarily for performance, so the distinction is probably not one Aristotle would have made. Moreover, Aristotle’s account of tragedy refers to features that tragic plays can have only in performance. So we should resist the temptation to think of the Poetics as concerned with literature narrowly conceived.”
         —PAUL WOODRUFF, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas, Austin, “Aristotle’s Poetics: The Aim of Tragedy,” A Companion to Aristotle, 2009.

“For some good arguments to the conclusion that Aristotle does not downgrade performance as an aspect of tragedy, see [Gregory Scott, ‘The Poetics of Performance…’].”
         —ANGELA CURRAN, Visiting Assistant Professor, Kansas State University, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Aristotle and the Poetics, 2016.

In discussing directly the views of Veloso (and indirectly of Scott) and before giving his own solution to the illegitimacy of katharsis in Dramatics (aka Poetics) 6, Marwan Rashed writes about the Greek manuscripts “Aristote ne peut avoir écrit le texte que nous avons sous les yeux” (“Aristotle could not have written the text that we have before our eyes”).
         —MARWAN RASHED, Professor of Ancient Greek Philosophy, Université Paris-Sorbonne, “Katharsis versus mimèsis: simulation des émotions et définition aristotélicienne de la tragédie,” Littérature, No. 182, 2016.

Notice regarding the 2nd Edition

With the goal of clarifying arguments and providing easier readability, this edition has undergone significant editing. The philosophical content and conclusions, however, have not changed in any significant way whatsoever.

The most notable difference is that this edition contains two volumes with 1.5 line spacing rather than the single line spacing of the enormous volume of the first edition. Both hardcopy and paperback versions are available, whereas the first edition was only in paperback.

New scholarship has been addressed, including that of Andrew Ford, Sir Anthony Kenny, and Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi. A relevant, long out-of-print work by Sir W.D. Ross on catharsis in comedy is also introduced, and recent articles by Eric Csapo on the origins of drama and especially comedy is discussed. Mark Griffith’s new publications on satyr play, on the background of ancient Greek music and dance before Plato, especially from Crete, and on Korybantism are also taken into account.

For purchasers of Edition 1 (with proof of purchase): In consideration of the errors in the first edition (typographical, editorial, software-caused broken internal cross-references, etc.) and to help advance new principles of digital publication, especially Print On Demand, ExistencePS Press will send a softcopy of (both volumes of) Edition 2 free of charge. Optionally, ExistencePS Press will upgrade any purchase of Edition 1 to the new hardcover version of Edition 2 for the incremental difference in cost. This means we will credit the entire cost of the first edition (including tax and shipping) to the new total cost.

Contents and softcover/hardcover prices are:
Volume 1 — Tragedy for Aristotle as fully performed musical drama requiring dance and spectacle; why both Plato and Aristotle use the Platonic-Diotiman sense of poiēsis as "music and verse" and not the sophist Gorgias's sense as "language and verse"; when rhuthmos means “dance” and not “rhythm” in the Laws and Gorgias of Plato and in the Poetics and Politics of Aristotle (Introduction & Chapters 1-4 of the first edition; no index). 364 pages: $48/$64.

Volume 2 — Catharsis and why it is inauthentic in the definition of tragedy; why pity and fear are also illegitimate in the definition although legitimate in the middle chapters for some, but only some, sub-types of tragedy; a refutation of Stephen Halliwell's reply in 2011 to "Purging the Poetics" (OSAP, 2003) which itself is reprinted as Chapter 5; Aristotle’s real goal(s) of tragedy and his response without catharsis to Plato's attack on drama; comedy and catharsis; the rewards and dangers of applying principles of “musical” drama to other art forms; and the history of the Poetics with respect to tragedy's nature as literature versus fully performed musical theater and to catharsis (Chapters 5-9, the Appendix, and the Bibliography of the first edition; and a complete Index of the two volumes). 300 pages: $39/$53.

For more information on replacement of the first edition or upgrades, please Contact us via email, phone, or Skype.

Being directed to the specialists in the field, ADMC is necessarily rigorous and lengthy and is therefore unsuitable for undergraduates or anyone else wishing a mere introduction to Aristotle’s Dramatics. Scott argues that this is a better title than Poetics, one reason being that there is not one poem in the whole treatise. A second reason is that Aristotle only focusses primarily on the two major dramatic musical arts of his day, tragedy and comedy, with the only other art examined, epic, being explicitly said to be a subset of tragedy. According to Chapter 6, tragedy necessarily has plot, character, reasoning, language, music-dance, and spectacle. (Plot could be accomplished with mere acting or dancing for Aristotle and is not the same as language.)

By including comments on the 26 chapters of Aristotle’s treatise, with the emphasis on correcting both the standard mis-interpretation of seven core Greek terms and the ten chapters that have been badly misunderstood, the Primer allows the student, or even a classicist wanting an easy introduction to these issues, to grasp the basics of Aristotle’s treatise in the way that he intended. For example, the core term poiēsis has been universally translated in this context until now as “poetry,” which was only coined by the sophist Gorgias when Aristotle’s mentor Plato was a boy. For the first time ever, Scott hypothesizes that Aristotle actually employs the term roughly as Plato himself explains via Diotima in the The Symposium as “‘music’ [in the Greek sense] and verse.” Aristotle adds plot as another necessary condition of the term, making it a technical word in his Lyceum, and seeing this allows us to resolve many heretofore perennial dilemmas in the treatise. By understanding this change of meaning, readers can simply and usually treat poiēsis/“poetry” as “musical verse” or “dramatic musical composition” anytime they read the word in typical translations and arrive at the better interpretation.

For Aristotle, the Unmoved Mover has no potentiality, matter or physicality of any sort whatsoever and exists forever. With no potentiality, it itself could not therefore go out of existence. Moreover, it somehow guarantees the eternal existence of the universe that could disappear but, because of the Mover, does not. In this sense—call in "conceptual" or "imaginative" or "by definition"—the universe is "contingent" because were the Mover, contra the hypothesis, not to exist then the universe could not exist (or at least could not move, which for nature amounts to not existing for Aristotle).

The Mover, insofar as it is identified with "God," also (only) thinks of itself thinking, always, like a hyper-intellectual Narcissus who cares not a jot about the universe or its inhabitants.

With derision, Cicero (106-43 BCE) rejected the doctrine, and Franz Brentano (1838-1917), a teacher of Sigmund Freud and Edmund Husserl, called it "prattle without all sense and reason." Ironically, Werner Jaeger (1888-1961), a renowned specialist of Aristotle, correctly asserted that the ancient Greek evolved some of his important doctrines as he matured, became more empirical, and gained distance from his mentor Plato, but Jaeger missed that Aristotle dropped the doctrine of the Unmoved Mover. Neither Cicero nor Brentano provided the reasons whether (or not) Aristotle thought that the universe necessarily lasts forever without Pure Actuality.

Scott does.

All classicists know that Aristotle, the Northern Greek from Stagira, accepted the infinite past of the universe. This book demonstrates that he also held indubitably the Principle of Plenitude—"for eternal things, what may be, is"—and that he even held it in modified form for finite things: "In infinite time, any (sort of genuine) possibility is actualized." Since every (sort of) genuine possibility has already been fulfilled in infinite (past) time and since the universe still exists, the Stagirite concludes in Metaphysics Theta 8 that there is no fear the heavens will ever stop moving. For additional reasons based on his profound understanding of the modalities "necessity" and "possibility," and with no dependence on the Unmoved Mover, he compellingly asserts that the eternal motion is necessary. These modals are very ambiguous, and in this book, Scott revises and extends the ground-breaking recognition by Jaakko Hintikka and Sarah (Waterlow) Broadie that in some contexts Aristotle uses necessary as omnitemporal, "what always exists" and vice-versa (although the two scholars never explored the precise ramifications in this theological context). Conversely, impossible means "never happening (in an eternity)" and possibility qua (ontological or genuine) contingency means "happening at least once (finitely) in all of time."

Because the universe is not contingent (in the ontological sense) in Theta 8, the Stagirite can, and does, drop his relatively youthful doctrine of Pure Actuality, which itself is shown to be just a variation of the "Unmoved Movers" of Xenophanes and Anaxagoras, with the latter calling his own Mover Nous ("Mind"). All of this solves another perennial problem in ancient Greek philosophy. The later Peripatetics in Aristotle’s Lyceum and the other, later schools of philosophy like the Stoics never embraced the Unmoved Mover, even though they contested any important doctrine that they found implausible. Scott’s interpretation finally explains this. At least the later Peripatetics "in the know" understood that the mature Northern Greek accepted the inherent necessity of the eternal universe (without any Unmoved Mover), and they, too, embraced that doctrine in spite of variations in details.

It should be stressed that the Commentary in Aristotle DRAMATICS is not a blow-by-blow description of the various points, major and minor, in each chapter or even a summary of the themes of each chapter. That has been done in the already published A Primer on Aristotle's DRAMATICS, as also shown above (which has no translation and which is for use alongside the ancient Greek manuscript or a high-quality traditional translation). Rather the Commentary includes: a general introduction to the whole book and the principles that underlie the revolutionary interpretation; bracketed remarks that are occasionally interspersed in the chapters explaining how the extant book is really an agglomeration of different papyri by the Stagirite; and footnotes adding other insights.

The Introduction covers:

1. The title and nature of Aristotle's book;
2. The core Greek terms that have been badly misunderstood for generations;
3. Whether our extant text(s) were originally one or, instead, various related papyri consolidated by a later editor;
4. Catharsis, and why it need not be dealt with;
5. Why a completely original translation is in no way needed; and
6. A summary of the principles guiding the whole translation.

The most rigorous arguments for Scott's translation are given in his book shown above: Aristotle on Dramatic Musical Composition: The Real Role of Literature, Catharsis, Music and Dance in the POETICS (“ADMC”, 2016; 2nd ed., 2018).

ADMC stems from "The Poetics of Performance: The Necessity of Performance, Spectacle, Music, and Dance in Aristotelian Tragedy" (in Performance and Authenticity in the Arts, editors Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell, Cambridge Series on Philosophy and the Arts, 1999) and “Purging the Poetics” (Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, “OSAP”, 2003). ADMC also provides the most rigorous evidence for why the Northern Greek could not reasonably have written the catharsis-clause in the definition of tragedy, and includes a thorough refutation of the only scholar, Stephen Halliwell, to attempt (in Between Ecstasy and Truth, 2011) a rigorous rebuttal of OSAP (2003).

"The Poetics of Performance" is revised and included in Chapter 2 of ADMC, and “Purging the Poetics” is reprinted as Chapter 5.