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4. A Love Song for the Life of the Mind: Arcadia
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4 A Love Song for the Life of the Mind Arcadia O you who are within your little bark, eager to listen, follow then my ship, crossing the sea—deep, dark, singing—turn to see your shores again: . . . The thirst innate and everlasting for the godlike realm bears us away swiftly as the heaven you see is passing. Paradiso 2.1–21 All men by nature desire to know. Aristotle (Meta. 1.1) 1. Of Happiness, Politics, and Art Before we know, we desire to know. How can this be? And what a strange desire!—what a strange animal! Before we are happy, and before we know what happiness is, we desire to be happy. But there is a natural pleasure in mimesis, and through mimesis we first learn. One of the first things that happens through mimesis is that we enjoy a pleasure not associated with or 236 237 LoveSong forthe Lifeofthe Mind caused by the ordinary animal appetites: the pleasure of mimesis. And being naturally mimetic, we enjoy this often. Out of this process the arts first grew, but this natural process is at work in us everywhere, not just in the theater . Repeating and remembering mimeses and their accompanying pleasure is repeating and remembering a “for its own sake” kind of thing. Mimesis is not something we do for the sake of something else. From memory and repetition of these earliest experiences a human being first develops distinctions (cf. An. Post. 100a3–6); first develops feelings for certain sorts of activities ; and might even develop a preference for a life superior to that of cattle (cf. NE 1195b19–22), or not, depending on what he imitates. One might grow up imitating cattle, wolves, barbarians, or slaves, and the pleasure in mimesis will make these acts more and more habitual. Or the opposite; so “we become just by practicing just acts, temperate by temperance, brave by bravery” (NE 1103b1–3). To have our feelings turned and tuned in the appropriate way makes all the difference. Mimesis is how we “are ethicked into” (ejqivzesqai; 1103b23–25) them; we aren’t syllogized into appropriateness: we don’t purposefully practice it at first, though we later can “ethick” ourselves (1119a25–27). A similar story is told in Laws where again Plato uses a word (ajpotupoumevnou": “to stamp” [681b]) that emphasizes the mechanical rather than the cognitive nature of this mimetic process.1 After this he says that “we have unwittingly, it seems, set foot on the archē of legislation” (681c). The first law we follow is that of mimesis of our neighborhood; we follow it not as law, but as nature. Mimesis continues to shape us, however, even after we have our wits about us, and as technai the mimetic arts aim at such working on us—aiming at our catharsis. This is Aristotle’s teaching about all poetry; that, and how, various catharses are available to variously “ethicked” audience members has been explained. So the real concern of all human culture and all its arts has already been touched upon, but we must now take these matters to their furthest extent. Catharsis is produced through a human technē applied to a natural activity. It is then a thing of nature and of art, and so, like constitutions, can be more and less adequate to the nature it affects. In order to judge of more or less adequate poems, we must answer the question, What is that nature and its highest good? Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and every undertaking seems to aim at some good, and if the final good of all our arts and 1. Cf. Fossheim, “Mimesis and Aristotle’s Ethics,” in Making Sense of Aristotle: Essays in Poetics. [34.201.37.128] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 23:51 GMT) 238 LoveSong forthe Lifeofthe Mind undertakings is happiness (eudaimonia2 ) as the philosopher has demonstrated , then art, like politics, is not the most final and self-sufficient good. To think that it is so is not only to err about art, but to err about the nature of humanity, and to miss the purpose of life. The purpose of life is happiness, and happiness is not merely pleasant amusement and relaxation, but activity in accordance with virtue—and if there are several with the best and most complete in a complete life. Art is therefore important for life insofar as, and because it contributes instrumentally to or is a constitutive part of, that end...