On The Relationship Between Aristotle’s Mimesis And Reason

Mimesis as a foundational concept in the study of ancient Greek culture is often applied in a variety of disciplines.The concept is closely related to philosophy,poetics,drama and rhetoric.Aristotle’s exploration of imitation is an important theoretical resource for our understanding of all aspects of ancient Greek culture,and his theory of imitation is mostly focused in his exploration of the arts,ethics and politics.In the arts,he argues that imitation explains the origins of human poetic art;on the one hand,imitation is our instinct,and we humans are better imitators than any other animal.On the other hand,each of us derives pleasure from the product of imitation.In ethics,Aristotle believed that the pity and fear we feel for the actions,events,episodes,etc.shown in tragedy are the best expression of our human ethical understanding.In political science,Aristotle argues that the reason for our emotional response to the art of imitation lies in the fact that humans are political in nature,demonstrating through imitation the ability to live together.It is usually argued that because Aristotle distinguishes between theoretical knowledge,practical knowledge,and technique knowledge,imitation,by virtue of its technique and practice,has led to the distinction between imitation and reason that is generally made in the history of scholarship within the framework of Aristotle’s thought.The importance of Aristotle’s theory of imitation has become increasingly evident as contemporary scholars pay more and more attention to the concept of imitation,especially in the context of which the relationship between imitation and reason has begun to be discussed once again.Some scholars argue that the pleasure that human beings derive from imitation is in fact the pleasure of learning through the action of reason,and that the process of understanding,reasoning,and even education in the learning process involves the participation of reason.Another part of the scholars argues that,at least in the light of Aristotle’s extant texts,there is insufficient justification for directly linking understanding,reasoning and even education to the pleasure of imitation,which,at least in the Poetics section,can only be considered to evoke human emotion alone.Indeed,because of the ambiguous character of the concept of imitation,this paper argues that a different dimension should also be distinguished in the discussion of it.Imitation itself is emotional,and the object of its action is also emotional,but through the rational grasp of emotion,humans can ultimately reap a knowledge of the world,and this rational knowledge is the ultimate effect of imitation when it evokes emotion.Finally,when evaluating Aristotle’s theory of imitation,it is necessary to sort out his core theoretical connotations without misinterpretation,but also to have a new understanding of it in the context of contemporary developments,which is crucial to our renewed understanding of ancient Greek culture.