Skip to main content

The Aristotelian notion of mimetic instinct

Always fabulous his fine psychological observations, close to life.

Poetry in general seems to have arisen from two causes, each deeply rooted in our nature. The first is the instinct for imitation, implanted in man since childhood, with the difference with respect to other animals that man is the most imitative living creature, and that through imitation he learns the first lessons from him; and no less universal is the pleasure obtained from imitated things. (Aristóteles. Poética. 1448b.4.Ed.Cit.15-15.)

The union of instinct with pleasure occurs in an epistemological environment, mimesis fulfills a cognitive function, first of all, it is something necessary in the way of being of all living beings, with the particularity that it is in the human where it reaches its higher levels of perfection. In addition, mimesis is such a necessary and complex natural function that it can derive its pleasure from the mimetic action itself without the need for knowledge of the original, since the pleasure of learning is obtained equally from the execution as such, from its interpretive colorism.

The epistemological dimension of mimesis was already implicit in the participation of Platonic forms, although Aristotle seems to place the mimetic instinct at the very base of all knowledge. However, the qualitative leap has been immense, mimesis does not obtain its discursive legitimation in another world but its operations are related to it, they are in the fabric of nature and mimesis is one of the main forces if we have to judge by its character of cognitive necessity. Mimesis, in short, becomes fully philosophical. On the other hand, the independence of mimesis with respect to the original is what gives it its autonomous character as a force of nature. Participation in the forms of Plato's mimetic theory caused the relationship between model and participant to be established by the divine craftsman. For Aristotle, the craftsman is the participant himself, since it is his nature that he will imitate, and not only the model but any copy that passes in front of him. The Platonic objection about the copy of the copy is irrelevant in the new natural context. Independence with respect to the other shamanic world allows a theory of mimesis and the mimetic arts based on things and knowledge that are only on the side of the logos of the living. 


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Limen et Continuum

  Existence is Encounter. Meeting at the limen. In the limen, the masks disappear, that is, the basic intuitions of identities, such as the identity that I feel and think in relation to the tree that I see in front of me. The identity of the tree is a projection of mine: the unity of my process of perceiving the tree generates a mask in me, the ghost of a limited unity separated from everything else. The simplest form of intuitive understanding of masks and limen is given to us by numbers. Numbers intuitively express the liminal tension that is Existence. A little etymological note. Rythmos in Greek means flow. Arythmos (number) is what does not flow, what remains solidified. Numbers express the liminoid, and flow, rhythm, expresses the liminal. A rhythm becomes liminoid when we can trace patterns in it, that is, when we can construct masks of identities. Mathematics has spoken of flow using the Latin word “continuum”, the continuous. All modern science, since Leibni...

Ritual, Scientific Experiment and Truth

 Human rituals have their roots in animal behavior, and the animal pattern has its roots in the need for repetition of living organisms, in the cyclical structure of physiological actions. At the human level, ritual behavior involves a delimitation of space and time, as well as a different meaning of both with respect to the spaces and times of everyday experience. From the ritual ceremonies of cold societies, we observe the care and thoroughness of the shaman to determine with precision the spaces, times and elements that intervene in the rite. Sacred space delimits the world, not only as a place of action, but also the scope of meaning of the things contained in that space. It is a space loaded with meaning: there is an order in things. Time itself acquires its meaning in relation to this order of things, and cyclically closes the space in the “tempo” of the rite, a tempo that is a symbol of the tempo of the World. What is not in the rite or is not referable to the rite has no re...

What do we marry?

  The narrative tradition of India contains true gems of fantastic literature that give rise to the most entertaining ethical and metaphysical speculations. In the collection of stories from the 11th century Katha-Sarit-Sagara ( The Ocean that Contains Streams of Stories ), which collects traditional stories from India, the loquacious ghost of a corpse taken down from a gallows tells the king who took him off the macabre swing a very interesting tragicomic tale. Two friends undertook a pilgrimage to a sacred spa of the goddess Kali, and there they saw a beautiful girl. One of them fell ill with passion, stopped eating and sleeping, and was sure that he would die unless he could have that girl as his wife. His friend contacted her father and explained the situation. The father, hurriedly, went to the girl's parents in order to organize the wedding. Shortly after the hasty marriage, the young couple and her friend left for her parents' house. On the way, they ca...