Losev A.F. History of ancient aesthetics

Losev A.F.

HISTORY OF ANCIENT AESTHETICS

ARISTOTLE AND THE LATE CLASSICS
History of Ancient Aesthetics, Volume IV

M.: "Art", 1975

Part one
MAIN PROBLEMS OF ARISTOTLE'S AESTHETICS,

OR AESTHETICS OBJECTIVE-IDEALISTIC

ON THE STAGE OF DISTINCTIVE-DESCRIPTIVE
INTRODUCTION
§one. External characteristic of Aristotle's aesthetics
1. Stylistic difference from Plato.

In the transition from Plato to Aristotle, we feel as if we have left one world and passed into a completely different world. This concerns, first of all, the external presentation of material by both philosophers.

But this external character of Aristotle's works also forces the researcher to bear a very heavy load, not only of an aesthetic, but also of a philological nature. Below we will prove that, unlike Plato, Aristotle is occupied not so much with the synthesis of categories as with their analysis, not so much with their construction as with their description, and not so much with their artistic presentation, as with the method of all kinds of very subtle distinctions, differentiations and logical opposites. But in this for the researcher lies also great difficulties, although of a completely different nature than those of Plato. When presenting the aesthetics of Aristotle, one can, in fact, be based only on some and, moreover, very few works of Aristotle or their individual chapters. Aristotle himself has a predilection for dissecting and describing details all the time, sometimes compiling even entire dictionaries of his philosophical terms with enumerations of their main values. All this, however, is only an appearance of relief for research work. Aristotle, as in all ancient aesthetics in general, does not have a sufficiently clear distinction between aesthetics and the general doctrine of being; and if it is planned, then Aristotle in a conscious form does not in the least pursue its consistent and constant use. Therefore, one still has to rummage around Aristotle in search of individual and random, but very useful texts.

To all this it is necessary to add the fact that the text of Aristotle's works often reveals not only a very difficult and boring manner of writing, but also a poor external condition. The Aristotelian phrase often sounds not only too prosaic, but also reveals all sorts of external defects, up to the absence of the main members grammatical sentence. The texts of Aristotle have come down to us in such a bad form that the question has long been raised among scholars of the last century whether this text is not a careless record of Aristotle's listeners and whether this record was subjected to appropriate editing by Aristotle himself. G. Bonitz, who spent several decades studying Aristotle, having compiled an unsurpassed index to Aristotle a hundred years ago, when interpreting many places in Aristotle's Metaphysics, writes directly: "To understand this place is beyond my strength." True, the researchers of Aristotle have sufficiently explained most of the difficult places in him. But anyone who has immersed himself in the translation and interpretation of Aristotelian texts knows that there is still a huge number of ambiguities and dead ends in this area for science. However, all such philological difficulties in relation to Aristotle are quite different from the obscurities and impasses in Plato.
2. Aristotle's writings related to aesthetics.

We said above that not all of Aristotle's text that has come down to us is related to aesthetics in Aristotle, as we found in Plato, but that he has only a small number of treatises or their chapters that need to be associated with aesthetics.

A) Judging by the information that has come down to us, Aristotle had a considerable number of these treatises. Unfortunately, we know nothing about these treatises, except for their titles. We list them according to Diogenes Laertius (V 21): "On Poets" in 3 books, "On the Poetic" in the 1st book, "On the Beautiful" in the 1st book, "Art" in the 1st book, " Collection of Arts" in 2 books, "On Speech" in 2 books, "On Music" in the 1st book, of the same title in the 1st book, "Homeric Questions" in 6 books, "On tragedies" in the 1st book, "Rhetorical Enthymemes" in the 1st book. It is possible that he had much more of these works of Aristotle that have not come down to us, related to aesthetics, since there are several lists of Aristotle's works coming from antiquity that do not completely coincide with the list of Diogenes Laertius. But of the works of Aristotle that have come down to us, four, in any case, are directly related to aesthetics. These are Aristotle's famous treatises in all world literature - "On the Art of Poetry", "Rhetoric", "Politics" and the XII book of "Metaphysics". A treatise by Aristotle entitled "Problems" that has come down to us has the closest relation to aesthetics. However, so many different kinds of doubts have been expressed about the authenticity of this treatise that it is very difficult at present to connect it directly with the name of Aristotle. But this does not prevent us from finding in this treatise thoughts expressed either by Aristotle himself, or by his closest students, or reproduced with more or less accuracy by later Aristotelians.

We will mainly base ourselves on these materials of Aristotle, drawing, as necessary, other treatises of Aristotle, which are no longer directly related to aesthetics, but accidentally contain one or another aesthetic theory or terminology.

B) Following tradition, we named among the works of Aristotle, which are closely related to aesthetics, the treatise "On Poetic Art", "Rhetoric" and "Politics". It should be noted, however, that this world tradition does not stand up to any criticism at all. The first two of these treatises deal only with certain types of art - tragedy, epic and eloquence. If literary criticism is identified with aesthetics, then these two treatises will indeed turn out to be treatises on aesthetics. However, the doctrine of different types of art can be attributed to that special area, which is called art criticism and which many not only do not identify with aesthetics, but even sharply contrast it with it. The author of this work does not at all think that art history has nothing to do with aesthetics. It is directly related to her. But aesthetics is much broader than art history, because it includes many areas that are not necessarily connected with art at all. Such is the general doctrine of the aesthetic, for example, of the beautiful; such is the aesthetic doctrine of nature. Yet, however, the attribution of these two treatises to aesthetics without any reservations is completely unfounded.

Despite the presence in both treatises of general aesthetic judgments, their aesthetic significance in comparison, for example, with Book XII of the Metaphysics, can be said to be negligible. The aesthetics of Aristotle can be built primarily on the materials of Metaphysics, Physics, as well as the treatises On Heaven or On Creation and Destruction. The whole fundamental aesthetics of Aristotle lies precisely in these treatises, not counting individual passages in other treatises. But the least aesthetics is contained precisely in the treatises "On the Art of Poetry" and "Rhetoric". As for the "Politics", even though it is not devoid of a certain number of aesthetic judgments, it is related to aesthetics only by its theory of artistic education. Therefore, despite the overwhelming number of researchers based on the first two treatises, we will present them very briefly. In addition, the treatise "On the Art of Poetry" enjoys world popularity, has been set out countless times, is very short in size, and can be read about in any history of aesthetics and Greek literature. Another thing is Aristotle's Metaphysics. It was also published, translated into different languages and commented on a sufficient number of times, and, moreover, by the largest representatives of philology and philosophy. But just in the aesthetic sense, this treatise remains almost unstudied. It is simply understood as a work from the area that Aristotle himself called the "first philosophy", that is, as a treatise on the main issues of metaphysical philosophy in general. But, as we will try to prove, in addition to general metaphysical reasoning, it also contains a full-fledged aesthetics. And besides, for the first time in all ancient philosophy, it is given as an independent, self-sufficient discipline. That is why it will be the subject of our chief interest; and that is why the rest of the "aesthetic" treatises will be expounded by us only in a minimal measure and almost only concisely, not so much for the sake of their connection with aesthetics (this connection turns out to be very often simply imaginary), but for the sake of observing the systematic character of our history of aesthetics. Huge literature on a small treatise "On Poetic Art" often has nothing to do with the history of ancient aesthetics; and in regard to art criticism, these treatises are too full of formalist-technical content to give them too much space.
3. The insignificant value of chronological studies of Aristotle's text, especially for its aesthetics.

In characterizing the text of Aristotle that has come down to us, we will point out here one problem that has no direct relation to us, but without an understanding of which any judgment about Aristotle's text would be too amateurish.

Precisely because the historian of aesthetics is not obliged to enter into the thick of the philological problems associated with the text of Aristotle, we must say that the text that has come down to us was very often subjected to radical revision and revision by researchers of the 19th century, and the most fantastic assumptions were put forward about the possible original text of the treatises. Aristotle and even their chronological order. For this kind of philological analysis of Aristotelian treatises, the immediate reason is the external state of the texts that have come down to us.

If we take the main treatise of Aristotle, "Metaphysics", then, indeed, its content develops very confusedly, the thought is often not brought to the end, but is interrupted by other thoughts, sometimes very lengthy arguments, so that the reader of "Metaphysics" manages to forget about the previous thought. In some parts of the Metaphysics, Aristotle seems to sharply criticize the Platonic doctrine of ideas; on the other hand, in other places it not only recognizes it, but even develops it deeper than Plato himself. For a philologist, all such malfunctions in the Aristotelian text are a very great temptation either to propose a radical rearrangement of the entire books of this treatise and individual chapters in this or that treatise, or to refer to a flaw in the text by Aristotle himself, or to explain it by conciseness and inaccurate recording of Aristotle's lectures by his listeners, either to qualify huge passages of this treatise as inserted later, even after the death of Aristotle himself, or to set up layers of subsequent editing along with the incompetent correction of the text by later publishers. For the philologist, who is hypercritical, this opens up enormous opportunities to remake, reshape, rearrange, delete, and generally combine in his own way the entire Aristotelian text, which is really very difficult and obscure, and in the sense of logical argumentation and consistency is often very confused and far from any integrity. To this it is also necessary to add the philosophical, and not just philological, subjectivism of most scholars of Aristotle. Those researchers who brought to the fore the absolute antagonism of Plato and Aristotle almost always wanted everything Platonic that Aristotle has, by all means, to be understood as later inserts, alien to Aristotle himself. Even V. Jaeger, a researcher who worked more than others on the chronology of Aristotelian writings and more subtly than others analyzed the multi-composition, heterogeneity and inconsistency of all fourteen books that make up the Metaphysics, even W. Jaeger (1) gives, from our point of view, an arbitrary and unproven scheme of the chronological development of Aristotle's treatises.

At first glance, W. Jaeger's assumption about the development of Aristotle as a philosopher seems quite clear and obvious. At first, Aristotle writes as a student of Plato, as an employee of the Academy, writes according to the model of his teacher in a dialogical form and, criticizing the Platonic doctrine of ideas, nevertheless leaves room for a global supersensible substance. Then Aristotle moves away from this position and replaces the doctrine of eternal substance with the concept of pure being, or being-in-itself. W. Jaeger has in mind here such books and chapters of the Metaphysics that do not at all contradict the doctrine of the eternal substance, and the latter itself is also hardly distinguishable from the Platonic doctrine of ideas. And then, according to W. Yeager, Aristotle allegedly moves to real empiricism, although the primacy of generic concepts, which for the first time turns fluid empiricism into exact science, is fully preserved by Aristotle here. If you like, such a scheme by V. Yeager can be accepted as a working one, because it brings order and reasonable consistency to the chaotic state of the Aristotelian text. But, probably, there are many such schemes. And therefore, paying due tribute to W. Jaeger's research wit and even learning from him the understanding of the inconsistency and frequent incoherence of Aristotle's traditional text, we must nevertheless leave all this chronological problems aside, as giving nothing to the history of aesthetics and as giving a lot except to understand Aristotle as a whole.

Since for any big problem with Aristotle it is still necessary or at least highly desirable to have an idea of the philosophical and aesthetic work of Aristotle as a whole, in the future we will still try to present this integral view of Aristotle's work based on the materials of V. Jaeger, whose research is already in for forty years have enjoyed very great prestige in the scientific world. Currently in the first edition of his book on chronological development Aristotle (1923) is even repeated in a new edition in a revised form (2). Note that it would be very difficult for us to consider the periods established by W. Jaeger as purely chronological periods of the philosopher's work. It is possible that these are not different chronological periods, but simply different layers of Aristotle's philosophical thought, which are partly close to one another, partly not close, partly contradict one another and are often the result not so much of the development of the philosopher himself as the result of the fateful fate of the texts. which fell from one ignorant hand to another, or were simply dumped in damp cellars and even lost their paleographic unity. In addition, we would like to acquaint the reader with this outstanding work by W. Yeager on the work of Aristotle, regardless of our own point of view, which often coincides with the point of view of the author of this work, and often contradicts it.
§2. Overview of the creative activity of Aristotle in general
1. Life-creative character of Aristotle's philosophy.

Aristotle is the first thinker in the history of philosophy who perceived himself as a link in the historical development of science. He is the creator of the idea historical development thoughts. This idea of development never leaves him at all. The main idea of his philosophy is "expressed form, vitally developing." Not without reason, at the beginning of his lectures on the first stages of state life, Aristotle says: "As elsewhere, we will get the right idea here too when we consider things in development from the moment of their origin" (Polit. I 2, 1252 a 24-26).

It is striking that the development of the thought of Aristotle himself was hardly studied, while a lot has been written about Plato in this regard. The reason for such an attitude towards Aristotle is the scholastic approach to his philosophy as a rigid conceptual scheme. They do not pay attention to the peculiar combination in Aristotle of the most penetrating apodictics and the visual, organic sense of form. They also do not notice that the Aristotelian strictness in proofs is just the stocks that the full-blooded vitality of the 4th century BC put on itself. This misunderstanding stems from the fact that the philosophical parts of Aristotle's writings, that is, logic and metaphysics, are separated from the empirical studies that have been going on in Peripate since the third generation. It so happened that Aristotle, one of the great men ancient philosophy and literature, did not survive its renaissance. He always remained in tradition and did not become a living modernity - precisely because he was too vitally needed by the new Europe. Melanchthon and the Jesuits built their theology on his Metaphysics. Machiavelli was based on Aristotle's "Politics", French poets and critics - on "Poetics". All philosophers borrowed a lot from Aristotelian logic, both before Kant and after Kant, and moralists and jurists took a lot from the Ethics.

As for the philologists, they naively compared the style of the Aristotelian textbooks with the style of the Platonic dialogues, admired the latter, and the former tried to explain, straighten, supplement with conjectures. And only now they begin to understand that if for Plato the form of his works is the key to understanding his philosophical thought, then in Aristotle we do not seem to meet any form at all: they have one content (3).

V.I. Lenin paid great tribute to the creative vitality of Aristotle's philosophy and well considered that only the dead was often taken from him. Aristotle has "a mass of archi-interesting, lively, naive (fresh), introducing into philosophy and expositions being replaced by scholasticism, the result without movement, etc. Priesthood killed the living in Aristotle and immortalized the dead" (4). "Scholasticism and priesthood took the dead from Aristotle, and not the living: requests, searches, a labyrinth, a person got lost. Aristotle's logic is a request, a search, an approach to Hegel's logic - and from it, from Aristotle's logic (which is everywhere, at every step, poses the question precisely about dialectics), they made a dead scholasticism, throwing out all the searches, hesitations, methods of posing questions. Precisely the methods of posing questions, as if the Greeks had trial systems, naive discordance, reflected excellently in Aristotle "(5). Thus, V.I. Lenin perfectly understood the whole vitality and the whole creative character of Aristotle.
2. Years of the Academy.

V. Jaeger divides the life of Aristotle (384-322 BC) into three periods: the time spent at the Academy (from seventeen to thirty-seven years), the years of wandering (about thirteen years) and the years of mature philosophy. In a letter to Philip of Macedon (frg. 18 Rose), Aristotle says that he was in Plato's Academy for twenty years. Since he was there until the death of Plato in 348/7, he entered the Academy in 368/7 as a youth of seventeen. The astonishing fact of Aristotle's twenty-year stay at the Academy has hitherto been paid too little attention. There is no other example in history when a man of such profound originality has remained for so long under the influence of another philosopher. All the internal development of Aristotle took place under the influence of Plato, and he owes Plato "the high tension of his thought" and its "flexible swiftness." Despite the fact that the genius of Plato is unlimited, and the genius of Aristotle is limited, the philosophy of the latter was still a step forward compared to the philosophy of Plato.

A) The continuity between Plato and Aristotle must be understood not in the sense that one adopted something from the other, but rejected something, and that Aristotle did not pay any attention to the most mythical and poetic form of Plato. Such an interpretation, according to V. Yeager, is too short-sighted. It makes no sense even to cite passages from Aristotle that testify to the fact that he understood the artistic essence of Platonic dialogues best of all. He would not have lived near Plato for twenty years if he had not been greatly influenced by the very striking personality of Plato. If we raise the question of what Aristotle borrowed from Plato, then just those successors of the latter who are carried away by Platonic symbols and expressions, who try to reproduce Platonic spiritual unity, etc., are most fruitless. Aristotle has none of this, but he, imbued with the very spirit of Plato, continued to work on the same problems as Plato. Naturally, in doing so, he had to discard the Platonic shell of thought (6). When Aristotle entered the Academy, it was no longer the same as in the years when the "Feast" was written. "Theaetetus", created around 369, and the later dialogues "Sophist" and "Politician", testify to the mood in the Academy during this period. The ideal of the Academy is no longer Socrates with his closeness to life and the spirit of transformation; no, Aristotle joined the Academy, which was already interested in pure research, and philosophers-mathematicians, primarily Pythagoras, became the life ideal for it. This is also evidenced by Plato's rapprochement with famous mathematicians such as Theaetetus and Theodore.

In 367 BC Eudoxus moves to Athens, close to the Egyptian and Eastern astronomical and philosophical teachings; there was close communion between Eudoxus and Plato. At the same time, Aristotle also met Eudoxus, who later recalled him with sincere warmth.

Further, Plato draws closer at this time, thanks to his travels, with Archytas and, in general, with the Sicilian scientists. But in Plato's Academy there was no hint of a systematic unification of the sciences, and each science and each scientist existed on its own. In general, during this period, only Democritus and Eudoxus anticipate the type of Aristotle as a scientist.

Plato himself in these years was primarily occupied with the problem of essence. But the division of what exists in terms of a single science became possible only when the Aristotelian concept of reality supplanted the Platonic idea of transcendent being (7). Of course, the main influence on Aristotle in the Academy was Plato as a philosopher, as a religious mystic and as a person (8).

B) At the Academy, Aristotle wrote whole line works in the form of dialogues. The fragments remaining from them are already important for understanding the main works of Aristotle. According to Yeager, all literary activity Aristotle generally falls exclusively on the period of his life at the Academy, because everything that he created later is only notes for his lectures and does not have a literary form (9). For Plato, the main thing is the desire to give shape to one's thought. He does not write to expound some doctrine. He is attracted by the very possibility of depicting a philosopher as a person in dramatic and fruitful moments of search and discovery, aporias and conflicts. Philosophy for Plato is not a field of theoretical research, but a reproduction of all the basic elements of life.

In imitation of Plato, all the students of the Academy wrote dialogues, but Aristotle wrote the most and the most significant. The fact that the Platonic dialogue is something simply unique, no one noticed, especially since the Greeks were generally incited to imitate everything newly discovered by someone. From the remaining fragments, about which Cicero speaks with particular enthusiasm, we conclude that Aristotle discovered a new form of dialogue, namely the genre of scientific dispute. These were no longer Socratic dialogues, but strictly methodical questions and answers, a kind of intellectual palette. But V. Yeager thinks that Aristotle also had dialogues quite similar to those of Plato in style. This is already indicated by such names as "Evdem, or About the Soul", "Grill, or About Rhetoric". Fragments of the first, Eudemus, reveal the typical Socratic technique of question and answer. It seems that in these dialogues closer to Platonic, Aristotle no longer appears personally as a leader in the conversation. In the same dialogue "Eudem" myths are told, parables are used, partly borrowed from Plato. Aristotle's dialogues were famous throughout antiquity, and if, as works of art, they were not placed next to Plato's, then for the religious movement of Hellenism they were perhaps even more important than Plato's dialogues. Aristotle's dialogues are highly appreciated by Philiscus, Crates, Zeno, Chrysippus, Cleanthes, Posidonius, Cicero, Philo; in the transmission of Cicero they influenced Augustine (Confess. III 4, 7)(10).

What is the philosophical position of Aristotle towards Plato in these dialogues? Many of the Aristotelian dialogues are named in the same way as Plato's dialogues ("Feast", "Menexenus", "Sophist", "Politician"). But Aristotle did not at all want to criticize Plato here and correct his teaching. Among the Hellenistic doxographers and interpreters, a version of the esoteric and exoteric writings of Aristotle was introduced to explain the difference between the Aristotle of the dialogues and the late Aristotle. However, there is no trace of such a distinction in Aristotle himself, and the modern scholar, according to Yeager, should abandon it as a neo-Pythagorean mystification. But modern scholars have gone to the other extreme, believing, on the basis of the testimony of Plutarch and Proclus (frg. 8), that in his "exoteric dialogues" Aristotle criticizes the teaching

Plato on ideas. The "evidence" of Diogenes Laertius (V 2) also allegedly speaks of the latter, according to which Plato himself said that Aristotle trampled him, as a foal kicks the mare that gave birth to him.

But in the view that Aristotle in his dialogues expresses other people's opinions or deliberately confuses the matter by addressing the profane, and in the idea that he already criticizes Plato in them, as he does in his later philosophy, the old and incorrect understanding of Aristotle is to blame. beyond any development, as an inflexible, cold critical mind free from illusions. In fact, as Yeager is sure, Aristotle's dialogues do not contain criticism of Platonic philosophy (11).

C) The dialogue "Eudem", written under the influence of the death of Eudemus from Cyprus, a friend of Aristotle, that is, around 354 BC, served for Neoplatonists along with Plato's "Phaedo" as a source of teaching about the immortality of the soul. But the method of refuting the idea of the soul as the harmony of the body is here purely Aristotelian: there is something opposite to harmony, namely disharmony; however, nothing is opposed to the soul; therefore, it cannot be harmony (frg. 45). Thus, already here Aristotle uses his characteristic syllogism. If we think through the thought of Aristotle to the end, then he affirms here that harmony and the soul belong to two different categories. Namely, the soul is, obviously, a substance, while harmony is a quantitative category. Here one can see, on the one hand, the continuation of the thoughts already contained in the "Phaedo" (93 b-d), and on the other hand, the beginnings of the future teaching of Aristotle on categories. Another proof that the soul is not harmony, used by Aristotle in the Eudemus, also goes back to Plato (12). Thus, we see here the complete continuity of the Aristotelian doctrine of the soul. Only the form of presentation has changed: it has become dogmatic in Aristotle. The Platonic-Aristotelian proof of the immortality and indestructibility of the soul was later expressed by Plotinus in an extremely dogmatic form (IV 7, 8): he said that the soul is an essence (oysia), while harmony is not.

D) In his later teaching on the soul, Aristotle took an intermediate position between his early Platonism, expressed in the Eudemus, and the materialistic doctrine of the soul as harmony. Namely, in De an. III 1, 412 a 19-21 the soul is a substance only insofar as it is "the entelechy of the physical body, which has life in potency." The soul is inseparable from the body, and therefore it is not immortal; but in conjunction with the body the soul is the formative principle of the organism. In this sense, we can say that Plotinus criticizes the late Aristotle from the standpoint of the early Aristotle when he says: "The soul does not have being because it is a form of something (eidos tinos), but it is immediately a reality (oysia). It borrows its being is not from the fact that it is in a certain body, but it already exists before it begins to belong to the body" (IV 7, 8). Indeed, the Aristotelian "Eudem" teaches precisely about the pre-eternal existence of souls, which, according to Jaeger, is already clear from the fact that the soul is oysia in itself.

But if the early Aristotle in the content of his teachings is entirely dependent on Plato, then in his logic and methodology he is not only completely independent of him, but, perhaps, even feels his superiority over Plato (13).

First of all, this superiority lies in the sharpness, elaboration and accuracy of Aristotelian logic, especially Aristotelian dialectics. At the same time, Aristotle calls dialectics something completely different from Plato: for him it is an argument based on purely probabilistic, subjectively obvious premises. The aim of such a dialectic is eristic; her arguments cannot be accurate, as, for example, when Aristotle proves the immortality of the soul on the basis of the religious views of different peoples, cult practices, stories of ancient myths, etc. In the same dialectic, Aristotle widely relies on the opinions famous people, common beliefs, etc. As Jaeger puts it, the intellectual radicalism that has reigned since Romanticism is ready to reproach Aristotle for this adherence to established opinion and common sense; meanwhile, for Aristotle, there was nothing more natural than to look for truth in the generally accepted and generally established, without trying to transform everything according to one's own logic and methodology.

The myth of Midas and Silenus, which Aristotle introduces in his Eudemus dialogue, also brings to mind Plato. So, the words of Silenus, that the highest good for everything in the world is “not to be born” (to me genesthai), Aristotle interprets in the sense of “not undergoing becoming”: it means that the ideal state of the world would not be complete non-existence, but eternal and unchanging existence. Aristotle teaches in his Eudemus that the only noteworthy human soul- this is the mind, and the mind is immortal and divine in it (frg. 61).

Finally, Jaeger believes that Aristotle's dialogues also contained the doctrine of ideas (14).

E) Another work of Aristotle during the Academy period, "Protreptikos", was written for a certain Themiston, the ruler of Cyprus, about whom we know nothing. This is an admonition to Themiston, apparently some enlightened tyrant, indicating for him the best way of life. What was the literary form of this work is unknown.

Aristotle calls on Themiston to lead a "theoretical life" (bios theoreticos). Aristotle does not "dedicate" his work to Themiston at all: there was no such custom in his time. He is addressing him with an educational speech.

And here Aristotle reigns apodictics and syllogistics. Should a person philosophize? asks Aristotle. He himself answers: a person must either philosophize or not. If a person has to philosophize, the question is settled. If a person should not philosophize, then he should at least philosophize to substantiate this position. Thus, a person must philosophize in any case (frg. 51). It is the Aristotelian form that constitutes the novelty of the Protreptic, which remains quite Platonic in content. The "Protreptic" is also characterized by the typical sophistical expression "One must have the conviction that ...", which is repeatedly repeated in it.

The "Protreptic", a significant part of which was discovered by I. Bywater in 1869 in the work of the same name by Iamblichus, in some places is very similar to the introductory arguments of Aristotle's "Metaphysics" (15). But only in the Protreptic are they developed much more fully and in more detail than in the Metaphysics, where they seem to be an abbreviated presentation of the thoughts of the Protreptic.

Jaeger seems certain that chapters IX-XII of Iamblichus' Protreptic are also taken from the Aristotelian "Protreptic", since the latter reveal the Aristotelian style and views. Chapter IX deals with art. "Nature does not imitate art," Iamblichus says here, obviously stating Aristotle, "but art imitates nature, and art exists in order to help nature and fill in what it left unfinished." Further, Iamblichus-Aristotle, proceeding from the theory of art's imitation of nature, proves the necessity of philosophy for the ruler. Politics, like any science and art, and more than any science (techné), needs to know the true being. Correct action is possible only on the basis of insight into the last laws of being (horoi). But politics can achieve this only by relying on pure science and the most exact science; in other words, politics must merge with philosophy.

HISTORY OF ANCIENT AESTHETICS

ARISTOTLE AND THE LATE CLASSICS

History of Ancient Aesthetics, Volume IV

M.: "Art", 1975

Part one

MAIN PROBLEMS OF ARISTOTLE'S AESTHETICS,

OR AESTHETICS OBJECTIVE-IDEALISTIC

ON THE STAGE OF DISTINCTIVE-DESCRIPTIVE

INTRODUCTION

§one. External characteristic of Aristotle's aesthetics

1. Stylistic difference from Plato.

But this external character of Aristotle's works also forces the researcher to bear a very heavy load, not only of an aesthetic, but also of a philological nature. Below we will prove that, unlike Plato, Aristotle is occupied not so much with the synthesis of categories as with their analysis, not so much with their construction as with their description, and not so much with their artistic presentation, as with the method of all kinds of very subtle distinctions, differentiations and logical opposites. But in this for the researcher lies also great difficulties, although of a completely different nature than those of Plato. When presenting the aesthetics of Aristotle, one can, in fact, be based only on some and, moreover, very few works of Aristotle or their individual chapters. Aristotle himself has a predilection for dissecting and describing details all the time, sometimes even compiling entire dictionaries of his philosophical terms with enumerations of their basic meanings. All this, however, is only an appearance of facilitating research work. Aristotle, as in all ancient aesthetics in general, does not have a sufficiently clear distinction between aesthetics and the general doctrine of being; and if it is planned, then Aristotle in a conscious form does not in the least pursue its consistent and constant use. Therefore, one still has to rummage around Aristotle in search of separate and random, but very useful texts.

To all this it is necessary to add the fact that the text of Aristotle's works often reveals not only a very difficult and boring manner of writing, but also a poor external condition. The Aristotelian phrase often sounds not only too prosaic, but also reveals various kinds of external defects, up to the absence of the main members of the grammatical sentence. The texts of Aristotle have come down to us in such a bad form that the question has long been raised among scholars of the last century whether this text is not a careless record of Aristotle's listeners and whether this record was subjected to appropriate editing by Aristotle himself. G. Bonitz, who spent several decades studying Aristotle, having compiled an unsurpassed index to Aristotle a hundred years ago, when interpreting many places in Aristotle's Metaphysics, writes directly: "To understand this place is beyond my strength." True, the researchers of Aristotle have sufficiently explained most of the difficult places in him. But anyone who has immersed himself in the translation and interpretation of Aristotelian texts knows that there is still a huge number of ambiguities and dead ends in this area for science. However, all such philological difficulties in relation to Aristotle are quite different from the obscurities and impasses in Plato.

2. Aristotle's writings related to aesthetics.

a) Judging by the information that has come down to us, Aristotle had a considerable number of these treatises. Unfortunately, we know nothing about these treatises, except for their titles. We list them according to Diogenes Laertius (V 21): "On Poets" in 3 books, "On the Poetic" in the 1st book, "On the Beautiful" in the 1st book, "Art" in the 1st book, " Collection of Arts" in 2 books, "On Speech" in 2 books, "On Music" in the 1st book, of the same title in the 1st book, "Homeric Questions" in 6 books, "On tragedies" in the 1st book, "Rhetorical Enthymemes" in the 1st book. It is possible that he had much more of these works of Aristotle that have not come down to us, related to aesthetics, since there are several lists of Aristotle's works coming from antiquity that do not completely coincide with the list of Diogenes Laertius. But of the works of Aristotle that have come down to us, four, in any case, are directly related to aesthetics. These are Aristotle's famous treatises in all world literature - "On the Art of Poetry", "Rhetoric", "Politics" and the XII book of "Metaphysics". A treatise by Aristotle entitled "Problems" that has come down to us has the closest relation to aesthetics. However, so many different kinds of doubts have been expressed about the authenticity of this treatise that it is very difficult at present to connect it directly with the name of Aristotle. But this does not prevent us from finding in this treatise thoughts expressed either by Aristotle himself, or by his closest students, or reproduced with more or less accuracy by later Aristotelians.

b) Following tradition, we named among the works of Aristotle, which are closely related to aesthetics, the treatise "On Poetic Art", "Rhetoric" and "Politics". It should be noted, however, that this world tradition does not stand up to any criticism at all. The first two of these treatises deal only with certain types of art - tragedy, epic and eloquence. If literary criticism is identified with aesthetics, then these two treatises will indeed turn out to be treatises on aesthetics. However, the doctrine of different types of art can be attributed to that special area, which is called art criticism and which many not only do not identify with aesthetics, but even sharply contrast it with it. The author of this work does not at all think that art history has nothing to do with aesthetics. It is directly related to her. But aesthetics is much broader than art history, because it includes many areas that are not necessarily connected with art at all. Such is the general doctrine of the aesthetic, for example, of the beautiful; such is the aesthetic doctrine of nature. Yet, however, the attribution of these two treatises to aesthetics without any reservations is completely unfounded.

3. The insignificant value of chronological studies of Aristotle's text, especially for its aesthetics.

At first glance, W. Jaeger's assumption about the development of Aristotle as a philosopher seems quite clear and obvious. At first, Aristotle writes as a student of Plato, as an employee of the Academy, writes according to the model of his teacher in a dialogical form and, criticizing the Platonic doctrine of ideas, nevertheless leaves room for a global supersensible substance. Then Aristotle moves away from this position and replaces the doctrine of eternal substance with the concept of pure being, or being-in-itself. W. Jaeger has in mind here such books and chapters of the Metaphysics that do not at all contradict the doctrine of the eternal substance, and the latter itself is also hardly distinguishable from the Platonic doctrine of ideas. And then, according to W. Yeager, Aristotle seems to move on to real empiricism, although the primacy of generic concepts, which for the first time turns fluid empiricism into an exact science, is completely preserved by Aristotle here too. If you like, such a scheme by V. Yeager can be accepted as a working one, because it brings order and reasonable consistency to the chaotic state of the Aristotelian text. But, probably, there are many such schemes. And therefore, paying due tribute to W. Jaeger's research wit and even learning from him the understanding of the inconsistency and frequent incoherence of Aristotle's traditional text, we must nevertheless leave all this chronological problems aside, as giving nothing to the history of aesthetics and as giving a lot except to understand Aristotle as a whole.

Since for any big problem with Aristotle it is still necessary or at least highly desirable to have an idea of the philosophical and aesthetic work of Aristotle as a whole, in the future we will still try to present this integral view of Aristotle's work based on the materials of V. Jaeger, whose research is already in for forty years have enjoyed very great prestige in the scientific world. At present, the first edition of his book on the chronological development of Aristotle (1923) is even repeated by a new edition in a revised form (2). Note that it would be very difficult for us to consider the periods established by W. Jaeger as purely chronological periods of the philosopher's work. It is possible that these are not different chronological periods, but simply different layers of Aristotle's philosophical thought, which are partly close to one another, partly not close, partly contradict one another and are often the result not so much of the development of the philosopher himself as the result of the fateful fate of the texts. which fell from one ignorant hand to another, or were simply dumped in damp cellars and even lost their paleographic unity. In addition, we would like to acquaint the reader with this outstanding work by W. Yeager on the work of Aristotle, regardless of our own point of view, which often coincides with the point of view of the author of this work, and often contradicts it.

Losev A.F. History of ancient aesthetics. Aristotle and the Late Classic

HISTORY OF ANCIENT AESTHETICS ARISTOTLE AND THE LATE CLASSICS

History of Ancient Aesthetics, Volume IV
M.: "Art", 1975

Part one
MAIN PROBLEMS OF ARISTOTLE'S AESTHETICS,
OR AESTHETICS OBJECTIVE-IDEALISTIC
ON THE STAGE OF DISTINCTIVE-DESCRIPTIVE INTRODUCTION

1. Stylistic difference from Plato. - 2. Aristotle's writings related to aesthetics. - 3. The insignificant value of chronological studies of the text of Aristotle, especially for its aesthetics.

1. Life-creative character of Aristotle's philosophy. - 2. Years of the Academy. - 3. Years of wanderings. - 4. The heyday. - 5. The value of chronological studies of Aristotle's work.

ONTOLOGICAL AESTHETICS OF ARISTOTLE

1. The need to compare Aristotle with Plato. - 2. The method of comparing Aristotle with Plato.

1. The opinion of Aristotle himself about his attitude towards Plato. - 2. Types of unity according to Aristotle. - 3. The essence of the difference between Aristotle and Plato in the problem of unity with the conclusions for aesthetics. - 4. Some details. - 5. Bottom line.

1. Changeable things presuppose an unchanging being. Aristotle's hesitation in this matter. - 2. More detailed development of this issue. - 3. Immutable being, or Mind, and its non-materiality. - 4. The Eternal Mind is the "idea of ideas", unconditionally separated from everything material and preceding it. - 5. The doctrine of self-thinking of the mind. - 6. The central point of ontological aesthetics in "Metaphysics". - 7. The central point of ontological aesthetics in other works of Aristotle. - 8. Intelligible matter. - 9. The first theory in ancient aesthetics of the self-contained actual-contemplative value of non-material pleasure from the inner life of a pure mind.

1. Elements of the doctrine of the cosmic Soul in the doctrine of the Mind. - 2. The main transcendental argumentation regarding the prime mover. - 3. Different shades of the main argumentation and especially the physical-teleological argument. - 4. The general conclusion of Aristotle himself.

1. Aristotle repents before Plato. - 2. Progress and regression in comparison with Plato.. - 3. Aristotle's seven-step dialectic, covered by formal logical methodology.

ARISTOTLEAN AESTHETICS OF EXPRESSION

1. Internal and external. - 2. Potency and energy. - 3. Entelechy (entelecheia). - 4. Somethingness (to ti ёn einai).

1. Potentia and possibilitas. - 2. The potency of movement and the potency of essence. - 3. Energy and movement. - 4. Energy and potency. - 5. Potency and false. - 6. Potency and matter. - 7. Summary. - 8. Energy precedes potency. - 9. Energy and expression of essence. - 10. General - the principle of energetic expression of the essence. - 11. The aesthetic essence of the Aristotelian doctrine of potency and energy.

1. Potency, energy and entelechy. - 2. Entelechy and movement. - 3. Entelechy and four causes. - 4. Low popularity of the term.

1. Whatness and definition of meaning. - 2. Somethingness and singularity. - 3. What-ness and "what is available". - 4. Whatness and essence. - 5. Whatness and becoming. - 6. Somethingness and wholeness. - 7. Whatiness and point of identity of eidos with matter. - 8. Whatness and ideal reason. - 9. Whatness and the problem of the general. Summary. - 10. The need for an aesthetic assessment of whatness.

1. The most general aesthetic category. - 2. Moral and cosmic beauty. - 3. "Stillness" of the beautiful. - 4. Beautiful and good. - 5. The final delimitation of beauty and goodness. - 6. A few necessary distinctions. - 7. The ultimate formula of beauty. - 8. To literature.

1. The essential necessity of the term "kalokagathia" for Aristotle. - 2. The concept in "Big Ethics". - 3. The concept in the "Ethics of Evdemova". - 4. Three more texts. - 5. Move to other categories.

1. Simplicity. - 2. Directness. - 3. Cleanliness (in the non-aesthetic sense).

1. Introductory remarks. - 2. Materials of "Poetics". - 3. "Fear" and "compassion". - 4. Materials of the "Politics". - 5. Some guesses about the essence of catharsis on the basis of modern data. - 6. One-sidedness of the proposed points of view. - 7. Noological understanding of catharsis. - eight. The latest interpretation catharsis.

1. One, or measure. - 2. Whole. - 3. Perfection.

1. Beginning, or principle (arche). - 2. Middle. - 3. End or goal (telos). - 4. General conclusions regarding the Aristotelian use of the categories of beginning, middle and end. - 5. Order (taxis). - 6. Symmetry, or proportionality (symmetria).

Part two
AESTHETICS OF RELATIVITY IN ARISTOTLE

1. The usual understanding of Aristotle's metaphysics. - 2. Moments of relativity in Aristotle. - 3. The combination of relative and absolute aesthetics in Aristotle.

1. The dialectics of art. - 2. Dialectical and sophistic aesthetics. - 3. An independent task of probabilistic knowledge. - 4. Meaning "Topics". - 5. Aristotle's final assessment of dialectics. - 6. Topics, logic and dialectics. - 7. Rules of thumb dialectics. - 8. Bottom line. - 9. Three examples of Aristotle's aesthetics of relativity.

1. Space. - 2. The limits of space. - 3. Hierarchy of space. - 4. The result of the previous one.

1. Aesthetics of space in connection with the teachings of Aristotle about the cosmos. - 2. The essence of the aesthetics of relativity in Aristotle. - 3. Aesthetics of time in connection with the teachings of Aristotle about the cosmos.

1. Treatise "On Flowers". - 2. Treatises "On the Soul" and "On Sensory Perception". - 3. Additions to the doctrine of the essence of light.

1. The origin of simple flowers. - 2. Their meaning. - 3. Critical remarks on the question of simple colors.

1. The essence of confusion. - 2. Color mixing results.

1. "About flowers". - 2. "Meteorology".

1. What is staining. - 2. Coloring of plants. - 3. Coloring of animals.

1. The principle of the aesthetic significance of colors. - 2. Aristotle's criticism of his predecessors. - 3. General conclusion.

PHYSIOGNOMIC AESTHETICS

1. The general symbolic nature of Aristotle's aesthetics. - 2. Treatise "Physiognomy" and features of its terminology.

1. Aristotle's introduction to his Physiognomy. - 2. Definition of physiognomy.

1. From mental to physical. - 2. Once again about the correspondence of mental and physical with some details. - 3. General and private states of the soul.

1. Subtlety of shades. - 2. A way of direct interpretation of physiognomic signs and a way of their conclusion.

1. The difference between the two types. - 2. The brightest representatives of the two types.

1. Separate members and organs of the body. - 2. The color of the human body. - 3. Hairiness. - 4. Voice.

1. Gait, body movements and eye movement. - 2. Growth.

1. General physical proportionality. - 2. The primacy of the division into male and female and a comparative assessment of body parts according to their importance for a physiognomist.

1. Physiognomic unity of soul and body. - 2. The main features of the physiognomic aesthetics of Aristotle.

Part Three
ARISTOTLE'S ART ABOUT ART

1. Science, art and craft. - 2. Separation of science and art from craft. - 3. The class character of Aristotle's teaching about the difference between art and science, on the one hand, and crafts, on the other. - 4. Terminological confusion.

1. Leisure. - 2. The ambiguity of the concept of science and the need to take it into account for comparison with art. - 3. Art as a realm of the possible or as a realm of dynamic being.

1. Problem-probable dynamics, or possibility. - 2. The generalized nature of this possibility. - 3. The figurative nature of art. - 4. Expression as an aesthetic sharpness of an artistic object. - 5. Philosophical substantiation of the structural self-sufficiency of art. - 6. Content character of Aristotelian structuralism. - 7. The danger of modernizing Aristotle's teachings about art.

1. Art and the subjective idea. - 2. Art and the field of random.

1. Introductory remark. - 2. Art does not belong to the field of practical reason. - 3. Expediency without purpose. - 4. Art and utilitarianism.

1. Beauty and morality support each other in art, but they are different. - 2. Details on the difference between these two areas in art. - 3. Contemplation and bliss in their relation to art.

1. Aristotle's general attitude towards mythology. - 2. Art and cosmology (the doctrine of Mind). - 3. Subjective idea of space.

1. General terminology for science, art and craft. - 2. Art and science in their opposition to craft. - 3. Art as opposed to science. - 4. Neutral-existential basis of art. - 5. Art and nature. - 6. Art and morality. - 7. Art and blissful contemplation, or contemplative bliss. - 8. Artistic hierarchy. - 9. Aristotelian method of presenting the specifics of art and the final summary formula of art.

1. Terminological remarks. - 2. An object of imitation. - 3. Materials of "Poetics" in a systematic way. - 4. The essential novelty of the Aristotelian doctrine of imitation. - 5. Details of the concept of imitation in Aristotle. - 6. Universality of imitation. - 7. Aristotelian mimesis against the background of general antique mimesis.

1. Aristotle's general approach to this issue. - 2. The origin of the arts. - 3. Separation of artistic creativity poetry.

1. Superfluous and extraneous in the treatise. - 2. Separate thoughts and sayings. - 3. Definition of tragedy. - 4. "Myth" in Aristotle's Poetics. - 5. (Myths and characters. - 6. Unclearness in Aristotle's teaching about the tragic error. - 7. Contradictions in the understanding of other moments of the tragedy. - 8. Tragedy and epic. - 9. Some considerations about the perception of time in the 5th century BC .e.

1. Aesthetic information. - 2. Special literary observations. - 3. Formalistic features of the treatise. - 4. General incoherence of presentation. - 5. Careless quoting. - 6. Chernyshevsky's opinion.

1. Other possible sources for Aristotle's theoretical-literary views. - 2. Information about comedy in "Poetics" and other works of Aristotle. - 3. Coalen's treatise (Tractatus coislinianus). - 4. General conclusion about the Aristotelian theory of comedy.

1. Aristotle and Homer. - 2. The result of Aristotle's attitude to Homer. - 3. Aristotle and other epic works. - 4. Elegy and iambic. - 5. Aristotle and Melos. - 6. Aristotle and Aeschylus. - 7. Aristotle and Sophocles. - 8. Aristotle and Euripides. - 9. Aristotle and Agathon. - 10. Aristotle and Theodect. - 11. Aristotle and other tragedians. - 12. Aristotle and Greek comedy. - 13. general characteristics Aristotle as a literary critic. - 14. One modern judgment about Aristotle as a literary critic.

RHETORICAL AESTHETICS

1. Usual exaggeration. - 2. The logic of irrationality. - 3. Dialectics, topics, rhetoric.

1. Beautiful - desirable in itself and laudable. - 2. Fine and self-satisfaction. - 3. The beautiful is not necessarily moral, but often even the opposite of morality. - 4. Beautiful and in general can go far beyond beauty in the exact sense of the word. - 5. Conventionality of rhetorically beautiful.

1. Style as art. - 2. Theory classical style. - 3. Conclusion about the style. - 4. General conclusion.

MUSIC AND OTHER ARTS

1. Preliminary questions. - 2. The doctrine of pure musicality. - 3. Other problems.

1. Pure procedurality. - 2. Items of non-musical arts. - 3. Mental procedurality. - 4. The mathematical nature of music. - 5. Music and pleasure. - 6. Moral (or, generally speaking, value) character of music. - 7. Creativity and professionalism.

1. The term "architectonics". - 2. Sculpture. - 3. Painting. - 4. The most likely reason for Aristotle's indifferent attitude to the entire field of fine arts.

AESTHETIC EDUCATION

1. Introduction. - 2. State point of view. - 3. Slave statehood.

1. Gymnastics. - 2. Musical education.

1. General overview of the educational system. - 2. Conclusion.

Part Four
FINAL CHARACTERISTICS
AESTHETICS OF ARISTOTLE

1. Aristotle and Plato. - 2. Socio-political situation in the time of Aristotle. - 3. Aristotle's doctrine of slavery by nature. - 4. Moderate idealism of Plato and irreconcilable idealism of Aristotle. - 5. "Average" socio-political line of Aristotle and its meaning.

1. The true meaning of the struggle between Aristotle and Plato. - 2. Simplified concept and more pointed criticism of the principles. - 3. Noological basis of Aristotle's aesthetics. - 4. Idealistically more developed concept of aesthetics. - 5. The four Aristotelian principles substantiate the aesthetics and mythology of being more clearly than Plato's.

1. Deliberately structural nature of aesthetics. - 2. Somethingness (to ti ёn einai) and entelechy. - 3. Specific autonomy of beauty and art. - 4. The main philosophical and artistic intuition of Aristotle.

1. Creativity of nature and creativity of man. - 2. Four Aristotelian principles. - 3. Eidetic expediency. - 4. Aristotle and his predecessors. - 5. World Mind and peace. - 6. More examples of the universal artistic construction of being by Aristotle.

1. A work of art as an instrument of the soul (organism). - 2. Aesthetic middle as a universal principle. - 3. The middle as the basis of essence in logic. - 4. Average in physics. - 5. Cognition and the middle. - 6. The soul as the middle. - 7. Highest virtue. - 8. Cosmic Mind as the ultimate middle beauty. - 9. The formula of the Aristotelian middle.

1. World Mind of Aristotle. - 2. Everything that is outside the Mind is its property. - 3. Mind, soul and body. - 4. All human life is subject to the principle of the relationship of master and slave. - 5. Socio-historical and philosophical-aesthetic contradiction of Aristotelianism. - 6. "The man got lost."

Part Five
ARISTOTLE'S SCHOOL,
OR PERIPATHETIAN SCHOOL

1. Biographical information. - 2. Theophrastus and Aristotle. - 3. Literature and music. - 4. Plutarch on Theophrastus' musical theory. - 5. "Characters".

I. General information. - 2. General theory music. - 3. Separate theories of music. - 4. Bottom line.

1. Evdem of Rhodes. - 2. Dicaearchus from Messina. - 3. Clearchus. - 4. Other early Aristotelians.

1. Initial and unconditional point. - 2. The impossibility of the absolute polarity of the ideal and the material. - 3. Noological aesthetics. - 4. Cosmological aesthetics.

1. Ontology and aesthetics in the proper sense of the word. - 2. "Potency". - 3. "Energy". - 4. "Entelechy". - 5. Number, or numerical structure. - 6. "Whatness", or a symbol. - 7. "Myth".

1. One of the age-old prejudices. - 2. Absolute certainty and probabilistic plausibility. - 3. Topological logic is not the absence of any logic at all.

1. The result of the previous characteristic. - 2. Eidos and its empirical-sensual basis. - 3. Numerical structure. - 4. Aristotle's struggle for empirical sensibility, in spite of his general evolution of Platonism. - 5. Transformative expression. - 6. General and singular. - 7. Probability, or even irrelevance. - 8. Final formula.

1. Self-sufficing contemplation. - 2. Practical-life and utilitarian-applied character. - 3. Freedom by nature and slavery by nature. - 4. Eve of Hellenism.

Bibliography (omitted)

Notes

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A.F. Losev

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HISTORY OF ANCIENT AESTHETICS

ARISTOTLE AND THE LATE CLASSICS

History of Ancient Aesthetics, Volume IV

M.: "Art", 1975

Part one

MAIN PROBLEMS OF ARISTOTLE'S AESTHETICS,

OR AESTHETICS OBJECTIVE-IDEALISTIC

ON THE STAGE OF DISTINCTIVE-DESCRIPTIVE

INTRODUCTION

§one. External characteristic of Aristotle's aesthetics

1. Stylistic difference from Plato.

But this external character of Aristotle's works also forces the researcher to bear a very heavy load, not only of an aesthetic, but also of a philological nature. Below we will prove that, unlike Plato, Aristotle is occupied not so much with the synthesis of categories as with their analysis, not so much with their construction as with their description, and not so much with their artistic presentation, as with the method of all kinds of very subtle distinctions, differentiations and logical opposites. But in this for the researcher lies also great difficulties, although of a completely different nature than those of Plato. When presenting the aesthetics of Aristotle, one can, in fact, be based only on some and, moreover, very few works of Aristotle or their individual chapters. Aristotle himself has a predilection for dissecting and describing details all the time, sometimes even compiling entire dictionaries of his philosophical terms with enumerations of their basic meanings. All this, however, is only an appearance of facilitating research work. Aristotle, as in all ancient aesthetics in general, does not have a sufficiently clear distinction between aesthetics and the general doctrine of being; and if it is planned, then Aristotle in a conscious form does not in the least pursue its consistent and constant use. Therefore, one still has to rummage around Aristotle in search of separate and random, but very useful texts.

To all this it is necessary to add the fact that the text of Aristotle's works often reveals not only a very difficult and boring manner of writing, but also a poor external condition. The Aristotelian phrase often sounds not only too prosaic, but also reveals various kinds of external defects, up to the absence of the main members of the grammatical sentence. The texts of Aristotle have come down to us in such a bad form that the question has long been raised among scholars of the last century whether this text is not a careless record of Aristotle's listeners and whether this record was subjected to appropriate editing by Aristotle himself. G. Bonitz, who spent several decades studying Aristotle, having compiled an unsurpassed index to Aristotle a hundred years ago, when interpreting many passages of Aristotle's Metaphysics, writes directly: "To understand this passage is beyond my strength." True, the researchers of Aristotle have sufficiently explained most of the difficult places in him. But anyone who has immersed himself in the translation and interpretation of Aristotelian texts knows that there is still a huge number of ambiguities and dead ends in this area for science. However, all such philological difficulties in relation to Aristotle are quite different from the obscurities and impasses in Plato.

2. Aristotle's writings related to aesthetics.

a) Judging by the information that has come down to us, Aristotle had a considerable number of these treatises. Unfortunately, we know nothing about these treatises, except for their titles. We list them according to Diogenes Laertius (V 21): “On Poets” in 3 books, “On the Poetic” in the 1st book, “On the Beautiful” in the 1st book, “Art” in the 1st book, “ Collection of Arts” in 2 books, “On Speech” in 2 books, “On Music” in the 1st book, of the same title in the 1st book, “Homeric Questions” in 6 books, “On tragedies" in the 1st book, "Rhetorical Enthymemes" in the 1st book. It is possible that he had much more of these works of Aristotle that have not come down to us, related to aesthetics, since there are several lists of Aristotle's works coming from antiquity that do not completely coincide with the list of Diogenes Laertius. But of the works of Aristotle that have come down to us, four, in any case, are directly related to aesthetics. These are Aristotle's famous treatises in all world literature - "On the Art of Poetry", "Rhetoric", "Politics" and the XII book of "Metaphysics". It is closely related to

A.F. Losev

HISTORY OF ANCIENT AESTHETICS. ARISTOTLE AND THE LATE CLASSICS

Part One MAIN PROBLEMS OF ARISTOTEL'S AESTHETICS, OR OBJECTIVE-IDEALIST AESTHETICS AT THE DISTINCTIVE-DESCRIPTIVE STAGE

INTRODUCTION

§one. External characteristic of Aristotle's aesthetics

1. Stylistic difference from Plato.

But this external character of Aristotle's works also forces the researcher to bear a very heavy load, not only of an aesthetic, but also of a philological nature. Below we will prove that, unlike Plato, Aristotle is occupied not so much with the synthesis of categories as with their analysis, not so much with their construction as with their description, and not so much with their artistic presentation, as with the method of all kinds of very subtle distinctions, differentiations and logical opposites. But in this for the researcher lies also great difficulties, although of a completely different nature than those of Plato. When presenting the aesthetics of Aristotle, one can, in fact, be based only on some and, moreover, very few works of Aristotle or their individual chapters. Aristotle himself has a predilection for dissecting and describing details all the time, sometimes even compiling entire dictionaries of his philosophical terms with enumerations of their basic meanings. All this, however, is only an appearance of facilitating research work. Aristotle, as in all ancient aesthetics in general, does not have a sufficiently clear distinction between aesthetics and the general doctrine of being; and if it is planned, then Aristotle in a conscious form does not in the least pursue its consistent and constant use. Therefore, one still has to rummage around Aristotle in search of separate and random, but very useful texts.

To all this it is necessary to add the fact that the text of Aristotle's works often reveals not only a very difficult and boring manner of writing, but also a poor external condition. The Aristotelian phrase often sounds not only too prosaic, but also reveals various kinds of external defects, up to the absence of the main members of the grammatical sentence. The texts of Aristotle have come down to us in such a bad form that the question has long been raised among scholars of the last century whether this text is not a careless record of Aristotle's listeners and whether this record was subjected to appropriate editing by Aristotle himself. G. Bonitz, who spent several decades studying Aristotle, having compiled an unsurpassed index to Aristotle a hundred years ago, when interpreting many places in Aristotle's Metaphysics, writes directly: "To understand this place is beyond my strength." True, the researchers of Aristotle have sufficiently explained most of the difficult places in him. But anyone who has immersed himself in the translation and interpretation of Aristotelian texts knows that there is still a huge number of ambiguities and dead ends in this area for science. However, all such philological difficulties in relation to Aristotle are quite different from the obscurities and impasses in Plato.

2. Aristotle's writings related to aesthetics.

These treatises, judging by the information that has come down to us, Aristotle had a considerable number. Unfortunately, we know nothing about these treatises, except for their titles. We list them according to Diogenes Laertius (V 21): "On Poets" in 3 books, "On the Poetic" in the 1st book, "On the Beautiful" in the 1st book, "Art" in the 1st book, " Collection of Arts" in 2 books, "On Speech" in 2 books, "On Music" in the 1st book, of the same title in the 1st book, "Homeric Questions" in 6 books, "On tragedies" in the 1st book, "Rhetorical Enthymemes" in the 1st book. It is possible that he had much more of these works of Aristotle that have not come down to us, related to aesthetics, since there are several lists of Aristotle's works coming from antiquity that do not completely coincide with the list of Diogenes Laertius. But of the works of Aristotle that have come down to us, four, in any case, are directly related to aesthetics. These are Aristotle's famous treatises in all world literature - "On the Art of Poetry", "Rhetoric", "Politics" and the XII book of "Metaphysics". A treatise by Aristotle entitled "Problems" that has come down to us has the closest relation to aesthetics. However, so many different kinds of doubts have been expressed about the authenticity of this treatise that it is very difficult at present to connect it directly with the name of Aristotle. But this does not prevent us from finding in this treatise thoughts expressed either by Aristotle himself, or by his closest students, or reproduced with more or less accuracy by later Aristotelians.

Following tradition, we named among the works of Aristotle, which are closely related to aesthetics, the treatise "On Poetic Art", "Rhetoric" and "Politics". It should be noted, however, that this world tradition does not stand up to any criticism at all. The first two of these treatises deal only with certain types of art - tragedy, epic and eloquence. If literary criticism is identified with aesthetics, then these two treatises will indeed turn out to be treatises on aesthetics. However, the doctrine of different types of art can be attributed to that special area, which is called art criticism and which many not only do not identify with aesthetics, but even sharply contrast it with it. The author of this work does not at all think that art history has nothing to do with aesthetics. It is directly related to her. But aesthetics is much broader than art history, because it includes many areas that are not necessarily connected with art at all. Such is the general doctrine of the aesthetic, for example, of the beautiful; such is the aesthetic doctrine of nature. Yet, however, the attribution of these two treatises to aesthetics without any reservations is completely unfounded.

3. The insignificant value of chronological studies of Aristotle's text, especially for its aesthetics.