I must say… It’s quite a relief to finally finish Poetry. I admit
that Poetry is actually my weakness in the world of Literature despite
my being a bookworm and a lover of wisdom (or Philosophy, which is quite
ironic since many well-known philosophers are poets).
It would be quite pointless for me to repeat the things we tackled so
I should just get this over with and tell my comments on Plato and
Aristotle on Drama. Basically, Plato is against drama which the avenging
Aristotle (the ‘avenging’ part is another weird but cute story but it’s
out of the context) contradicts…
Hmm.. This is actually quite hard for me to comment on. Firstly, I am
more convinced with Plato’s World of Ideas and I find his philosophy
quite more sensible than Aristotle’s. In fact, one might even consider
me a Platonist. And yes, he did make a quite great argument as to why
dramatists should be banished from the ideal society or what he calls
“The Republic”. However, I must also not disregard the sensible reasons
that Aristotle pointed out because that would be quite biased! So if
you’ll ask me, who is right?
Of course, not that my opinion really matters or that my opinion is
what’s really right.. But for the sake of writing something and for the
sake of an answer to a quite philosophical question, here it is: They
are both right in a way, but I reckon Plato is still more right. Yes,
there “might” be a need to prepare for the ‘actual’ pity and fear
situations as Aristotle clarifies through the “Catharsis” thing…But then
again, Aristotle is quite limited to physicality. Being a believer of
the “world of ideas”, of course I would think this is stupid. We need to
look beyond the physical, and being preoccupied with the copies of the
ideas will leave us no time to pursue the world of ideas. Also, I think
that’s quite lame and boring. Exposure to drama does make life quite
predictable at times, or we might reckon it’s too predictable that we
expect an outcome that would not really happen, based on what we see on
Dramas.
However, it’s not that I am saying that drama is stupid and we really
don’t need it! Even Plato does not banish poetry and myths totally,
since he himself uses it (e.g. Allegory of the cave). It is the same for
Drama. I think we do not need to totally disregard it, but we must not
use Drama for the sake of Drama, but for the sake of pursuing the Truth
(of the world of Ideas) just as Plato used the Allegory of the Cave to
express his special points and to reveal easier his Philosophy. We must
not let Drama hinder us from the reality… or to make us be contented
with this Physical world. It’s okay to go and entertain Drama, but
remember that there is always something beyond..
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