I have to admit that the tragic color will always appear in a certain link on the road of life. How should we face this problem? Aristotle's prescription for relieving stress is this. We might as well fight poison with poison to go to the theater to see tragedy, and draw strength from it to fight against all kinds of injustice and sadness in life, which involves Aristotle's view of tragedy.
Aristotle's view of tragedy is embodied in his book Poetics. Why does this book discuss tragedy? Because the concept of poetry at that time was very broad, including drama. Aristotle fully affirmed the educational function of drama, which is completely different from Plato's belittling poetry and drama.
Moreover, Aristotle particularly emphasized the educational function of tragedy. He believes that tragedy plays a particularly strong role in revealing the essence of life, which can arouse the audience's thinking about the basic problems of life philosophy as a whole, and will not let the audience indulge in all kinds of reassuring little flukes in vulgar laughter.
From this perspective, the so-called "poetics" is to tell everyone what is an excellent literary and artistic work. Today, the importance of drama has been replaced by film and television drama, and watching film and television drama has become an important part of our daily life. Therefore, the literary evaluation criteria given by Aristotle in Poetics can also help us to quickly select a literary work worth seeing from the vast amount of film and television information, so as not to let those bad dramas waste our lives. From this point of view, Aristotle's Poetics should become the guiding philosophy of Douban scoring today.
Well, now let's look back at Aristotle's view of tragedy. From a philosophical point of view, what are the benefits of watching more tragedies and then watching more plays? This is because the characters in the play are the unity of generality and concreteness, and the intermediary between the abstraction of philosophy and the concreteness of life. Understanding the behavior of these dramatic characters can help the audience to see the results of the collision of different personalities and different world views in the simplest way.
Comparatively speaking, pure life is too concrete and lacks typicality, while pure philosophy is too abstract and lacks concreteness. Indulge in the details of life, we will lose our understanding of the big picture; While indulging in philosophical concepts, sometimes we can't be grounded. Drama has both.
Take King Lear, the hero of Shakespeare's famous play King Lear, as an example. Of course, first of all, he is a concrete person. His name is King Lear, so he has the action power on the stage of drama. Please note that abstract concepts are not operable, and only people can operate them. But at the same time, King Lear is a typical kind-hearted but not clear-headed fool. Although I have a good heart, my ability to recognize people's hearts is very weak. I don't know which of my three daughters is really a good person. Shakespeare's description of King Lear is to express a general concept, that is, pure kindness. If it cannot be combined with the virtue of proper vigilance, it will lead to unbearable consequences. However, if this view is only expressed in the form of a proposition, but not translated into a specific action of a specific person, it will become boring. For those who have been trained in philosophy, they can probably understand what this proposition is, but there is no way to educate the public.
Let's give another example. According to the Japanese writer Haruki Inoue's novel "We are Bubble Troupe" and the phenomenal Japanese drama "Naoki Banzawa" adapted from "We are Bubble Troupe", it can also provide annotations for Aristotle's view of drama. Naoki Nakazawa, the protagonist of this drama, has well unified various virtues such as public welfare, courage and wisdom, which has caused many audiences to sing. But if you abstractly say that Naoki Nakazawa Tomohide is a man with great public morality, courage and wisdom, and then write a sentence, who will go to see the play?
Obviously, Naoki Nakazawa Tomohide, who was invented, has demonstrated these virtues through all kinds of arduous struggles with the corrupt forces within the bank. Without the fulcrum provided by these wonderful plots, those empty moral labels are hard to attract everyone's attention.
How does a dramatist explain the abstract principle of human nature by fictional concrete characters? Aristotle's answer is this, through imitation.
Please note that this is not the first time we have mentioned imitation in this program. In Plato's drama theory, reality is an imitation of ideas and drama is an imitation of reality. Therefore, compared with reality, drama is separated from concept by another layer, so it is further away from reality.
So Plato himself doesn't like to imitate this concept, but Aristotle did mention the representative theory in a positive sense. He also said that drama imitates an object, but please note that in Aristotle's context, such an imitation object is not an idea, but an action. So what is action? Not everything that happens casually can be regarded as action. Action must involve people's will and choice, and the effect of these things must be of great significance.
The East China Sea earthquake in Japan is not an action, but a pure natural world, because the crustal movement has no will. Suppose I was eating at KFC when I learned the news of the East China Sea earthquake in Japan, and I was wondering whether to eat a set meal or a set meal. Is this an operation? This is not an action. Although my choice of package also involves my free will, it is of little significance. How about choosing a set meal, whether for your own life or for the lives of others? What about the b package?
In contrast, in the latest Japanese film "Fukushima 50 Death", the front-line personnel of TEPCO Fukushima nuclear power plant chose to stay and live and die with the nuclear power plant? Or choose to be a deserter and stay away from this trouble point? Such a choice obviously involves an action. Because the relevant personnel participated in these choices with their free will, and their choices are also related to the lives of tens of millions of people. According to the description of the plot in the movie, if more than a dozen nuclear reactors at the Fukushima nuclear power plant collapse, half of Japan will enter a state of perdition, and the ecological environment of the whole Northeast Asia will also have irreparable problems. Therefore, the choice of the Fukushima 50 deceased is worth depicting in the play. When I was watching this film, it didn't matter whether I chewed French fries or chocolate.
The trend of major choices involved in the action is a comprehensive embodiment of the values, personality and historical background of the characters in the play. Therefore, these major movements have repeatedly become the focus of dramatists' attention in excellent plays and novels. From this, it is not difficult for us to understand the philosophical meaning of Hamlet's famous saying-to be or not to be, which is a question. In other words, how to choose? How to choose? Choosing life or righteousness is the ultimate big problem facing life.
Because excellent drama can often quickly guide the audience to pay attention to such a big problem in a limited time, it shows that excellent drama itself has some quasi-philosophy. In this regard, Aristotle even thinks that even historical research lacks the quasi-philosophy of drama creation. Because historical research is limited by the physical time of objective historical events, there is no way to freely fictionalize people and events, and through this fictionalization, actions involving free choice can be displayed in a relatively short drama time.
Many people don't like reading official history and feel bored. Instead, they find historical novels interesting. It is for this reason that literary works based on historical facts are interesting.
Obviously, as a dramatist or novelist, you must determine which of the many things that happen every day are meaningful and can be regarded as actions or actions that human beings choose to participate in. However, the average person often lacks this sensitivity and is easily led by the lace news that lacks historical significance.
For example, I watched some wartime news in Britain from 65438 to 0944 and found that the so-called interesting things that people paid attention to at that time were not worth mentioning at all today. For example, how American troops stationed in Britain make trouble after drinking, and so on, such news actually occupies the headlines. The real events, such as how to plan the Normandy operation, were not told in the news. But sensitive writers and senior journalists should be able to smell the coming events. Otherwise, what are so many American soldiers doing in Britain?
Having said that, you may ask, the above are the principles of general drama creation, but why should we highlight tragedy here? In Aristotle's view, tragedy is a kind of drama, which can arouse two emotions: sympathy and fear. Compared with the general feeling of relaxation and pleasure, the above two emotions have philosophical characteristics, so they have the power to purify the audience's soul.
But why do you say that? Let's talk about compassion first. Compassion is obviously an important factor in tragedy, otherwise why is tragedy called tragedy? But sympathy itself is not some kind of cheap tears, and tragedy is not some kind of cheap tears drama. What is a tear drama? It is to repeatedly show how sad the protagonist's life is and make everyone cry. But after crying, the audience suddenly realized that it was a play and that their life was actually much better than the protagonist, so they were happy again. This kind of low-level tear drama itself is likely to become a hypocritical prop, which can not educate the citizens' morality of the city-state.
Cognition can always calm people and restrain compassion. Another force to balance compassion is the fear I mentioned before. Fear is an excellent tragedy, and it is the most important emotional force that can quickly get rid of low-level tears. ?
To illustrate this point, let me give you an example. If you watch a documentary that only describes how miserable the life of African residents is, you will only feel pity, and because your life is relatively well-off, you will feel lucky that I have not been reborn in Africa after all. Then you will feel that what you see is someone else's business, not your own.
But suppose you happened to watch a documentary when you were playing with an exquisite ivory product, which showed the pain of African elephants being slaughtered by humans. At this time, you may not feel pity, and you will suddenly realize that you are also a link in such a sinful ivory sales chain. At this time, you feel scared. What are you afraid of? You are afraid of heaven and conscience. In this case, you will feel that what you see is not only other people's stories, but also your own affairs.
A good drama should have the power to shock the audience from the heart. You must make the audience think, not just make them cry. However, it is not easy to make the drama have such power and let the audience have such fear.
One of the lowest and dirtiest ways is to make a horror movie, which means to make the audience scream in a dark cinema. For example, California Chainsaw Madman, Death Comes, Piranha and other movies that stimulate the senses. But obviously, no matter how horrible the plot is, such a movie will not make people feel that they are talking about their own affairs, but will also arouse everyone's small luck. After reading it, everyone thought that although the plot was horrible, it was fake after all, and it had nothing to do with me.
A little more advanced, the way to introduce fear is to write cool online articles, that is, the Jack Sumalisu complex. These protagonists have been upgraded all the way in the plot, and they are brave in the workplace or officialdom. In this kind of story, the characters are generally tall and full of positive value. Of course, there will be bad guys in these stories. In every link of the story, the protagonist may even be repeatedly cornered. This horrible plot can also make readers feel afraid and worried about the fate of the protagonist. However, this kind of worry has no real connection with the reader, because the reader knows in his heart that, after all, Wen Shuang's hero finally has a way to overcome these problems. Under the guidance of the story routine that the bad guys are punished, the readers' revenge psychology has also been vented, and they can put the story down with peace of mind and continue to do their own thing. And their worldview of the world and the foundation of their souls have not been touched.
How can we introduce the power that really touches the soul and makes people afraid into drama? The key is to try to let readers see the questioning of human nature boundary from the works. Questions like this: Who am I?
We might as well give another example. Oedipus is the main character in King Oedipus written by Sophocles, an ancient Greek tragic writer. Such a hero can be said to have many perfect people, who are superior in wisdom, patriotic and selfless, and fearless ... Well, speaking of which, it seems that Oedipus the King has launched a model of online humor, but wrong, the main point of this story is not here at all.
The focus of the story is Oedipus, who has been warned by the Oracle for a long time. He is doomed to kill his father and marry his mother, which means he will commit a great crime of human relations. Oedipus was kind by nature and felt that he would never do such a stupid thing. In order to escape the curse of the Oracle, he fled his hometown of Corinth, because he thought the King and Queen of Corinth were his biological parents. But Oedipus never imagined that it was this deliberate avoidance that accelerated the pace of his life tragedy. He killed Raios, the old king of Thebes, by mistake on the road, and then married Raios' widow in Thebes, but he didn't know that he killed his father and married his mother. When the guilty hero learned the truth, he stabbed himself in the eye and exiled himself.
This story has some terrible power, which directly hits people's hearts. The question involved in the story is whether people have the ability to get rid of what they are destined to do. What is man himself? Is it a toy of fate, or a little god who can fight against fate through his own free will? We have seen that Oedipus tried to declare war on his fate with his free will, so what happened next, such as his leaving his motherland as a prince and wandering abroad, was enough to be what Aristotle called an action. But the question is, has this freedom been defeated by the cunning of fate at a higher level? For example, in Sophocles' drama, fate is so cunning that it can be further predicted that the protagonist will meet the Oracle and go to the second trap set by the Oracle because he escapes from the Oracle.
Well, if the audience has realized that fate itself has such terrible power, I believe any audience will think of such a problem. How much better than Oedipus? He is not afraid of the Sphinx, but he can't defeat his fate in the end. Can we ordinary people overcome fate? Is it always an extravagant hope to win the battle in half a day?
It should be noted that the drama itself mentioned above is undoubtedly fatalistic or fatalistic. From a philosophical point of view, the conclusion of fate may not be a correct philosophical view, and other philosophers may put forward opposing views. In this case, some people may ask, assuming that fate itself is a wrong philosophical view, is it still meaningful to watch a drama that promotes fate itself? The answer is yes. Because such a drama can at least raise the thoughts of people without philosophical training to a higher ideological level. Even if they can think about whether fate is right or not, whether human power is really boundless in the face of fate.
Great tragic works have the ability to bring the audience to this level, and pity and fear are roughly the correct ways to appear in excellent tragic works.
Here, I also want to give myself a small advertisement by the way. I also wrote a long historical novel called "The Prequel to Dawu", which will be published by Shanghai People's Publishing House soon. What does this work have to do with today's topic? This is a novel with China's classical theme, written in strict accordance with Aristotle's tragic theory. The protagonist of this novel is Sun Jian, the father of Wu Zhu Sun Quan, who is familiar to everyone, and Sun Jian's life is to test the biggest boundary of life with his own free will. He started as a low-level civil servant in the border areas at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, and even had no establishment within the system. Then he climbed up step by step. Through a brutal power struggle, he once touched the threshold of the highest power, but in the end he fell all the way from the highest peak, and the level of force designed by the Huang family was not enough for him to use and died.
I also hope that readers can think about a series of life propositions full of Aristotle's philosophy through my novels. For example, what is the essence of life? What is the boundary of success? How to balance the relationship between personal ambition and personal ability?
Well, at this point, our discussion on all aspects of Aristotle's philosophy of life has basically ended. In the following time, I will summarize the contents of this section, but in order to make our review not repeat the previous contents too much, this review will also be combined with the introduction of the history of Roman thought. See you next time.
In recent ten years, domestic film and television works are basically happy endings, or the setting of Mary Su or Wen Shuang, which has always been regarded as just a market-oriented behavior at the box office. However, the classics and even romance novels I read as a child all ended in tragedy, leaving people with infinite reverie. Before learning this lesson, I only saw that the former did it to cater to the market, because it was impetuous and because most people didn't want to think about it. I don't understand the profound significance of tragedy setting (I only know that I have to think about it). After learning today, I understand that we should strengthen the deeper reflection on the significance of this kind of works.