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  • Aristotles Concept of Mimesis

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    Jannatul Nayma Mou
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    Aristotle accepts Plato's distinction between mimesis and diegesis as modes of imitation, but believes both can be valuable for training emotions. Unlike Plato, Aristotle does not think forms are separate from phenomena, arguing we can only understand concepts through how they are embodied. For Aristotle, mimesis is a natural human activity, and he disagrees with Plato's view that observing bad characters in poetry would lead people to imitate them badly, believing bad examples can teach how not to behave as well as good examples teach how to behave.

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    Aristotles-Concept-of-Mimesis

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    Aristotle accepts Plato's distinction between mimesis and diegesis as modes of imitation, but believes both can be valuable for training emotions. Unlike Plato, Aristotle does not think forms are separate from phenomena, arguing we can only understand concepts through how they are embodied. For Aristotle, mimesis is a natural human activity, and he disagrees with Plato's view that observing bad characters in poetry would lead people to imitate them badly, believing bad examples can teach how not to behave as well as good examples teach how to behave.

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    Aristotles Concept of Mimesis

    Uploaded by

    Jannatul Nayma Mou
    Aristotle accepts Plato's distinction between mimesis and diegesis as modes of imitation, but believes both can be valuable for training emotions. Unlike Plato, Aristotle does not think forms are separate from phenomena, arguing we can only understand concepts through how they are embodied. For Aristotle, mimesis is a natural human activity, and he disagrees with Plato's view that observing bad characters in poetry would lead people to imitate them badly, believing bad examples can teach how not to behave as well as good examples teach how to behave.

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    Aristotle's views on Mimesis

    Mimesis is a Greek term that means imitation. The first step in understanding Aristotle's account
    of mimesis is remembering that he spent many years studying at Plato's Academy. In Platonic
    thought, the things we encounter via our senses, the phenomena, are imitations of ideal forms.
    Art (whether poetry or painting), in imitating the phenomena, is thus merely an imitation of an
    imitation. Plato also divides imitation by medium (words, paint, marble, etc.). He further divides
    the verbal techniques of imitation into pure imitation or mimesis, in which an actor impersonates
    a character on stage, and diegesis, or narration, in which a narrator speaks in the third person
    about events. Epic is a mixed form, using both impersonation and narration when performed by a
    rhapsode. Plato tends to condemn imitation as degrading, because (1) impersonation can
    inculcate bad or non-rational habits and (2) because it focuses attention on mere phenomena.

    Aristotle accepts the Platonic distinction between mimesis and diegesis, but finds both valuable
    as modes of training and educating emotions. Ontologically, he does not believe in separated
    forms, but argues that forms in here in phenomena, and thus the only way to understand concepts
    or qualities is as they are embodied and thus advocates rather than objects to close study of
    appearances.

    For Aristotle, mimesis is a natural human activity. He agrees with Plato that children learn by
    imitation. While Plato worried that people observing villains or despicable characters in poetry
    would imitate them, Aristotle believes that bad examples teach people how not to behave just as
    good examples teach people how to behave.

    Aristotle's theory of imitation:

    • Mimesis is manifested in 'particulars' which resemble or imitate the forms from which
    they are derived.

    • Thus, the mimetic world (the world of representation) is inferior for it consists of
    imitations which will always be subordinate to their original.

    • Mimetic activity produces appearances and illusions that affect the perception and
    behavior of people.

    Aristotle’s Concept of Mimesis:

    • Mimesis, a "natural" human inclination described as "inherent in man from his earliest
    days.

    • A fundamental expression of human experience within the world - a means of learning


    about nature that, through the perceptual experience, allow us to get closer to the "real".

    • Mimesis not only functions to re-create existing objects or them.

    • Mimesis creates a fictional world of representation in which there is no capacity for a


    non-mediated relationship to reality.

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