Brecht's Criticisms of Aristotle's Aesthetics of Tragedy

Angela Curran

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 59, No. 2. (Spring, 2001), pp. 167-184.

Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8529%28200121%2959%3A2%3C167%3ABCOAAO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-V

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism is currently published by The American Society for Aesthetics.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained
prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in
the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/journals/tasfa.html.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.

The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic
journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers,
and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take
advantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

http://www.jstor.org
Thu Mar 6 10:13:41 2008
 ANGELA CURRAN
Brecht's Criticisms of Aristotle's Aesthetics of
Tragedy
An ancient debate in aesthetics centers on
the role of art and the emotions in moral and
intellectual education.1 Does emotional en-
gagement with the characters in drama help
or hinder our critical intellectual reflections
on the characters and situations represented
by the work? Plato is famous for his sugges-
tion in Republic X that the emotions tragedy
evokes in the audience members makes
them intellectually disabled and leads them
morally astray. This criticism of an emotional
response to tragedy is not shared by Plato's
most famous pupil, who values tragedy pre-
cisely because it elicits emotions that oper-
ate in conjunction with a cognitive under-
standing of ourselves and the world. This is
the interpretation of Aristotelian aesthetics
recently presented by scholars Martha
Nussbaum and Stephen Halliwell.2 Both in-
dependently suggest that tragedy, on Aris-
totle's view, engages both the understanding
and the emotions through representations
that call for genuine, independent reflection
on our related possibilities.
This interpretation of Aristotle is striking
when compared with the criticism of Aristo-
telian "dramatic theater" offered a number
of years ago by the German playwright
Bertolt Brecht. Brecht criticizes the aesthetic
tradition initiated by Aristotle for its prefer-
ence for dramatic narratives that please but
do not instruct or provide real learning
about the source of human suffering. Brecht
attacks Aristotelian catharsis as a kind of
"opium of the masses," arguing that empa-
thizing with characters prevents viewers
from reflecting critically on the social causes
of human suffering.3
Brechtian aesthetics is itself receiving crit-
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 592 Spring 2001
icism from those who argue that Brecht mis-
takenly assumes that emotion and reason
cannot both be part of an integrated aes-
thetic response.4 I believe these criticisms of
Brecht miss the essential points of Brecht's
critique of Aristotelian aesthetics.5 In what
follows I argue that Brecht is correct to find
fault with Aristotelian aesthetics, for critical
thinking in relation to drama and an account
of the role of the emotions in a critical ap-
proach to drama are essentially not ac-
counted for in Aristotle's discussion. While
critical of Aristotle's aesthetics, I note a key
legacy of Aristotelian aesthetics: the impor-
tant role that emotions play in our identifica-
tions with characters and situations depicted
in art.
Brecht's critique of Aristotle's aesthetics
will be stronger if we can locate Brecht's
complaints more specifically in Aristotle's
text, something that Brecht himself failed to
do. So I shall reconstruct Brecht's critique as
criticisms aimed at a plausible interpretation
of Aristotle's text. My interpretation of Aris-
totle focuses on a rather neglected aspect of
his theory: his requirement for preferred
tragic plot patterns and character. I focus on
two aspects of Aristotle's account: (1) his
view that plots must feature the individual
error (or hamartia) of a morally admirable
protagonist, and (2) his view that engaging
with the thoughts and feelings of the tragic
protagonist is central to responding to trag-
edy. I argue that these practices, as Aristotle
describes them, do not permit drama that is
socially critical unless a playwright supple-
ments them with other devices that link the
action of the protagonist with a larger social
nexus. These supplemental devices are the

kinds of dramatic practices that Brecht him-
self recommends. So we will see that Brecht's
recommendations for drama are useful for
supplementing the failings in Aristotle's pre-
ferred dramatic practices.
This paper has two main parts. In Part I, I
present an overview of Aristotle's aesthetics
of tragedy and then examine in more detail
his recommendations for tragic plots and
protagonists in Poetics 13 and 14. In Part 11, I
discuss Brecht's critique of Aristotelian dra-
matic practices, then reply to objections to
Brecht's critique and to the practices favored
by his "epic theatre." In my conclusion, I dis-
cuss what Aristotelians can learn from
Brecht's critique, and I also suggest what
Brechtians can learn from Aristotelian aes-
thetics.
I. ARISTOTLE'S AESTHETICS OF TRAGEDY
In the Poetics Aristotle says that tragedy has
a final purpose or end (telos) to be an imita-
tion or representation (mimesis) of action
and life. This representation should have a
characteristic pleasure: experiencing the re-
lief from pity and fear (1449b25).6 The evo-
cation of pity and fear effects a catharsis (lit-
erally "purification") of these emotions
(1453b12). There is the further suggestion in
Poetics 4 and 11that a response to works of
imitation involves the pleasure of some kind
of learning (1448b15-17). Thus, on Aris-
totle's view, tragic catharsis involves a cer-
tain kind of emotional and/or intellectual
learning.
The Poetics, or what remains of this text,
says very little about what catharsis involves.
Any adequate interpretation will therefore
have to go beyond Aristotle's actual text to
supply an interpretation of the significance
of catharsis in Aristotle's aesthetics of trag-
edy. Martha Nussbaum develops an interest-
ing account using the Rhetoric, arguing that
Aristotelian catharsis involves emotional ed-
ucation and intellectual "clarification" con-
cerning who we are and what we value.7 As
Nussbaum reads Aristotle, catharsis involves
not just feeling, but also making the appro-
priate intellectual judgments about the situa-
tions represented in tragedy's narratives.
Pity requires the judgment that a good per-
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
son suffers misfortunes that are undeserved.
Fear involves the judgment that a person
"like [ourselves]" (1453a50) suffers a painful
or evil disturbance.
This account of the emotions forms the
basis for Nussbaum's view that for Aristotle
the pleasures of tragic catharsis involve gen-
uine learning or understanding. To feel pity
and fear in response to tragedy, the spectator
must feel some kind of affinity between her-
self or himself and the agent who acts and
suffers. In order to feel pity and fear for
Oedipus, for example, we must judge that we
(the audience) could experience a reversal
of fortune of the kind that Oedipus experi-
ences. So, Nussbaum argues, by attending to
our emotional responses to tragic characters,
we learn about and "clarify" our judgments
about our related possibilities. Stephen
Halliwell also offers a cognitivist account of
the learning Aristotle thinks is involved in
our emotional responses to tragic represen-
tations. Halliwell goes so far as to say that
tragedy's representations can even get view-
ers to question and criticize the assumptions
they use to make sense of tragic representa-
tions.8
The issue of whether the text of the Poetics
supports a cognitivist account of catharsis or
a noncognitivist interpretation of tragic plea-
sure is the subject of much debate. Jonathan
Lear, for example, proposes instead that for
Aristotle the pleasure of catharsis is not the
pleasure of learning or of education. Rather,
it is pleasurable emotional reinforcement of
basic truths accepted by the audience.9 For-
tunately, it is not necessary to settle the dis-
pute over the meaning of "catharsis" in Aris-
totle's text in order to assess Brecht's
criticisms. We will see, however, that Brecht's
criticisms suggest that Aristotle's account of
tragic response omits the aspect of critical
and independent thought that the cognitivist
interpreters attribute to him. So my discus-
sion will highlight an aspect of the cognitivist
interpretation of catharsis that is in need of
further defense.
The debate over catharsis has centered for
the most part on Poetics 4 and 7. One text
that is usually neglected in this discussion is
Poetics 13 and 14. In these chapters Aristotle
lays down his requirements on plot and char-
Curran Brecht's Criticisms of Aristotle
acter, using this criteria to give his evaluation
of the plots of some ancient Greek tragedies.
We need to look closely at Aristotle's discus-
sion in these texts, for there is a connection
between Aristotle's views on the "essence"
(horon tes ousias, 1449b20) of tragedy and
his recommendations for plot construction.
Aristotle says that he is providing an account
of tragedy's essential being or nature
(1449b20). Tragedy is a human-made artifact
with natural causes and is the realization of a
final end or telos (1449a15). On the analogy
with biological organisms, Aristotle says that
tragedy has an inner nature, or basic princi-
ple, which is its plot (1450a38-39). Plot-
which is the representation of action-is said
to be the goal of tragedy and is, as it were, the
heart and soul of tragedy (1450b3). On Aris-
totle's view then, tragedy has an inner na-
ture, defined by a set of necessary features
that a tragedy must have if it is to be a repre-
sentation of certain kinds of actions and pas-
sions.
For an action to be tragic, it must incorpo-
rate features capable of eliciting pity and
fear to effect a catharsis of these emotions in
the audience. Aristotle's views on plot con-
struction are based on his assessment of
which plot patterns will evoke the emotions
of pity and fear, the characteristic emotions
he associates with the genre of tragedy.
Hence, in telling us what plot patterns a trag-
edy should have, Aristotle is doing more
than just providing recommendations for
plot construction. He is stating his views on
what plot patterns are necessary for produc-
ing a representation that is truly tragic, based
on his view of what the essential goal of trag-
edy should be.
We should consider the significance of Ar-
istotle's identification of pity and fear as the
dominant emotions aroused by tragedy. The
emotions of pity and fear call for a recogni-
tion of some kind of affinity between the au-
dience and the characters who act and suffer.
To feel pity and fear for a character, the audi-
ence members must suppose that they also
could be vulnerable to a reversal of fortune.
The sufferings of the tragic protagonist must,
in other words, touch the audience's sense of
its common humanity with him. This means
that Aristotle's account of tragedy and why
it affects us (the audience) appeals to a uni-
versal "essence" of human nature, for
Aristotle assumes that the depiction of cer-
tain events will elicit a response of pity and
fear in anyone who witnesses these dramati-
zations. This assumes an idealized spectator
whose response of pity and fear is grounded
in her or his nature or essence as a human
being who is capable of identifying with the
character's misfortune.
Aristotle's essentialist approach to trag-
edy therefore has two aspects: an account of
plot as the inherent nature of tragedy, and a
view of a universal or idealized spectator
who will respond with pity and fear when
witnessing the appropriately depicted suffer-
ings of the tragic agent.
In Poetics 13 and 14 Aristotle tells us what
sorts of plot structures elicit pity and fear
from the audience. Aristotle's methodology
in these chapters is both normative and de-
scriptive. As he does elsewhere, Aristotle
employs in the Poetics what we can call a
"norm-defect" methodology.lo One kind of
tragedy from the ancient Greek corpus is se-
lected to stand as the norm or ideal tragedy
based on its plot structure. This norm identi-
fies the "essence" or quasi-soul of tragedy,
articulating plot structures and characters
that a playwright must use to effect a cathar-
sis of pity and fear. These requirements also
serve as guidelines for literary critics to use
in interpreting and evaluating tragedy.11
Chapter 13 introduces the idea of the
tragic character's hamartia or error as a way
of explaining the tragic character's fall to
misfortune.12 Chapter 14 states require-
ments on the appropriate intentions and ac-
tions of the protagonist. The best tragic plots
show harm occurring (or about to occur) to
kin or loved ones (philia) due to the tragic
character's ignorance of what he is doing.
The tragic character's responsibility for the
misfortune is therefore excusable in that his
hamartia provides a causal link between his
actions and the subsequent misfortune. But
it does not explain the misfortune in terms of
the character's evil intent or motives.
From this brief summary, these necessary
features of Aristotle's best tragedy emerge.13
Chapters 13 and 14 tell us that in a paradig-
matic example of tragedy, a person "interme-

diate in virtue" goes from good fortune to
bad (or the turn to bad fortune is threatened,
but is at the last minute averted, as in Euripi-
des's Iphigenia in Tauris). Chapter 13 em-
phasizes that the turn to misfortune is
brought about through the individual error
(hamartia) of the tragic protagonist. Chapter
14 stresses that while individual error may
contribute to misfortune, the protagonist
acts in ignorance of what he is doing. Aris-
totle's ideal tragedy, then, is one in which the
ideal tragic character is a basically good per-
son who brings about (or threatens to bring
about) his own misfortune and those of his
kin, but who acts in ignorance of what he is
doing. This means that Aristotle has a nar-
row view of what counts as ideal tragedy.
Many tragedies in the Greek corpus count as
defective in relation to Aristotle's para-
digms: Sophocles's Oedipus Rex and Euripi-
des's Iphigenia in Tauris.14
11. BRECHT'S CRITICISMS OF ARISTOTLE
Brecht's contrast between the sort of drama
Aristotle recommends and Brecht's theater
can be seen in the following passage:
The dramatic theatre's spectator says: Yes, I have
felt like that too-Just like me-It's only natu-
ral-It'll never change-The sufferings of this
man appal me, because they are inescap-
able-That's great art; it all seems the most obvi-
ous thing in the world-I weep when they weep, I
laugh when they laugh.
The epic theatre's spectator says: I'd never have
thought it-That's not the way-That's extraordi-
nary, hardly believable-It's got to stop-The suf-
ferings of this man appal me, because they are un-
necessary-That's great art; nothing obvious in
it-I laugh when they weep, I weep when they
laugh.15
Here Brecht contrasts two types of theaters:
the tradition Aristotle initiates and the
model Brecht uses in his own theater and in
his writings on theater. Brecht presents two
problems with the drama Aristotle prefers.
First, Brecht argues that Aristotelian dra-
matic practices lead the viewer to conclude
that human suffering is an "inescapable"
part of the human condition. In contrast,
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
"epic theatre" presents suffering as some-
thing that can be changed through the social
transformation of political institutions.
"Non-aristotelian drama would at all costs
avoid bundling together the events por-
trayed and presenting them as an inexorable
fate, to which the human being is handed
over helpless despite the beauty and signifi-
cance of his reactions; on the contrary, it is
precisely this fate that it would study closely,
showing it up as of human contriving."l6
Second, Brecht critiques the response he
associates with Aristotelian tragedy in which
the audience identifies with the dramatic
character and takes on his emotional states
("I weep when they weep; I laugh when they
laugh"). Brecht's theater aims to prevent
what he calls "empathy" (Einfuhlung) or
"feeling with" a character, as well as the re-
sponse of "feeling for" a character (what
could be called "sympathy"). Brecht argues
that these modes of response are barriers to
critical reflection on the social dimension of
tragedy, for the viewer sees the action of the
play from the point of view of the central
character, and hence loses a broader view-
point from which to analyze the social
themes represented in the play. Brecht's the-
ater employed "alienation effects": dramatic
devices Brecht designed as barriers to empa-
thy and the noncritical modes of engage-
ment he associated with Aristotelian drama.
Brechtian performance techniques also were
used to "distance" the actor from empathy
with the character: "his feelings must not at
bottom be those of the character, so that the
audience's may not at bottom be those of the
character either. The audience must have
complete freedom here."l7
We should specify a bit more precisely
what Brecht intends by "empathy." Here
Paul Woodruff's study of Brecht is very in-
structive.18 Brecht's concern, Woodruff says,
is not with banishing emotion altogether
from the theater. Rather, Brecht is centrally
concerned with a certain kind of "mode of
engagement" with characters in drama,
which Brecht associates with an empathy
with characters. As Woodruff suggests, by
"empathy" with a character in drama, Brecht
means a range of phenomena, from the audi-
ence feeling sympathy for ("feeling for") a
Curran Brecht's Criticisms of Aristotle
character to sharing feelings with ("feeling
with") a character. But in its core meaning,
by "empathy with" a character, Brecht
means some kind of identification and
shared feeling between the spectator and the
character. Aristotelian dramatic theater en-
gages the viewer through this mechanism of
affinity with a central protagonist.19
Before we go further, several points of
clarification on Brecht's critique are in order.
First,it could be replied that Brecht's critique
of Aristotle misses its mark from the start, for
Aristotle does not recommend drama that
aims to evoke in the viewer the same feelings
as those of the protagonist, as Brecht's quote
above ("I weep when they weep") seems to
assume.20 According to Aristotle, we fear for
Oedipus as he attempts to track down the
murderer of the King of Thebes, and we feel
pity for him when he discovers the true na-
ture of his identity and actions. But our emo-
tions are not congruent to what Oedipus
feels, nor does Aristotle suppose that this is
so. So Brecht's critique may seem to go
wrong because of inaccuracy in representing
Aristotle's account of the relationship be-
tween the viewer and the character.
We can restate Brecht's point here, how-
ever, so that it is an accurate reflection of Ar-
istotle's view. Brecht is suggesting that in
Aristotelian drama there is a central protag-
onist whose thoughts and feelings serve as a
focal point and guide to the action of the
play. Aristotle expresses this idea in saying
that fear is felt for a person whom the audi-
ence members believe to be "like them-
selves" (1453a5). Further, Aristotle says in
the Rhetoric that people "pity those like
themselves in age, in character, in habits, in
rank, in birth; for in all these cases something
seems more to apply to the self . . . people
pity things happening to others in so far as
they fear for themselves."21 This account of
pity and fear, as noted, forms the basis for
Nussbaum's argument that in feeling pity
and fear for the protagonist, the viewer takes
the character as a model for her or his own
life's possibilities.
Brecht is correct, therefore, that on Aris-
totle's account, the audience is introduced to
the action of the play from the viewpoint of a
central protagonist, whom the audience
members find to be "like them," even if it is
also true that Aristotelian drama does not
aim to evoke an exact congruence of feelings
between the tragic character and the audi-
ence.
Second, what exactly is the intended target
of Brecht's critique? In places, Brecht
sounds like he is raising criticisms against the
particular plays Aristotle's theater endorses:
"The theatre as we know it shows the struc-
ture of society (represented on the stage) as
incapable of being influenced by society (in
the auditorium). Oedipus, who offended
against certain principles underlying the so-
ciety of his time, is executed: the gods see to
that; they are beyond criticism."22 Brecht's
worry is that Oedipus Rex presents the suf-
fering of its protagonist as "inevitable" and
therefore does not leave room for the kind
of critical social reflection leading to social
change that Brecht sees as central to theater.
Here, then, is at least one place where Brecht
raises a worry about the specific plays that
Aristotle endorses.
I believe, however, Brecht's central target
to be the specific narrative conventions Aris-
totle recommends, rather than the specific
plays that end up on Aristotle's list of ideal
tragedies. Brecht's aesthetics emphasizes the
ways in which staging and performance prac-
tices are central for conveying a certain mes-
sage in a play. In discussing Sophocles's
Antigone, for example, Brecht says that dif-
ferent performance and acting techniques
will bring out different themes implicit in the
play's text.23 This means there could be ways
of staging Aristotle's favorite plays that
made salient the social themes implicit in
these dramatic texts. So Brecht's complaint
is not with Oedipus Rex or Zphigenia in
Tauris; it is aimed at the dramatic practices
Aristotle highlights in praising them as para-
digmatic tragedies. This reading of Brecht is
also consistent with the idea that Brecht rec-
ognized some affinities between ancient
Greek tragedy as a dramatic form and his
own "epic theatre" (hence the use of the
term "epic"). Brecht, in fact, borrowed some
of classical theater's dramatic devices, in-
cluding the Chorus, for his "epic theatre." So
it is more accurate to reconstruct Brecht's
critique as aimed at the dramatic practices

Aristotle recommends, including plot lines
and character representations, and the dra-
matic effects Aristotle believes tragedy
should achieve.
Brecht's objections to Aristotelian theater
can now be summarized as follows:
(1) Plots that represent the protagonist's
error as central to his misfortune do not
enable the playwright to write a play
that is socially critical, for the focus is on
the representation of misfortune due to
individual error, rather than the "er-
rors" in the social and political structure
that make for needless misfortune.
(2) Dramatic practices that feature empa-
thy with characters (some kind of affin-
ity with the tragic protagonist and
shared feeling as a result of this connec-
tion) impede the adoption of a critical
perspective on the social dimension of
the character's situation.
(3) Aristotelian theater utilizes a mode of
engagement that provides the viewer
with pleasure but not instruction or gen-
uine learning.
Now let us consider Brecht's argument for
each of these claims. First, Brecht argues
that, using Aristotle's recommendations, a
playwright cannot write a play that prompts
reflection on the social causes of human suf-
fering, for it is the tragic protagonist's error
or hamartia that provides a causal link be-
tween his actions and his subsequent misfor-
tune, rather than the "error" or failure of
faulty social arrangements.
Brecht's point here can be made clearer
by contrasting Aristotle's focus on hamartia
with the dramatic devices favored by
Brecht's "epic theatre." The essence of
Brecht's theater is "gest": gestures, words,
and actions that show the emotions and
ideas of the characters as part of a larger
context of specific social situations. Brecht
was especially interested in what he calls
"social gest." Brecht tells us that "the social
gest is the gest relevant to society, the gest
that allows conclusions to be drawn about
the social circumstances."24 The key idea is
that a gest reveals the social context as cru-
cial for understanding the action of the play.
The analogue in Aristotle's aesthetics is
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
hamartia, which instead directs the audi-
ence's attention to the individual causes of
tragic misfortune. Brecht's point is that
drama that is socially critical should repre-
sent error leading to misfortune as part of a
larger social context that influences the
agent. As Brecht explained it, "The concern
of the epic theatre is thus eminently practi-
cal. Human behaviour is shown as alterable:
man himself as dependent on certain politi-
cal and economic factors and at the same
time as capable of altering them."25
We can illustrate this idea by considering
Brecht's play Mother Courage and Her
Children (1939). This play follows twelve
years of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648)
in twelve episodes that show the horror and
loss of the people who lived through it. The
story follows the wanderings of Mother
courage, a woman who makes her living fol-
lowing the armies and selling goods to sol-
diers during the time of war. Although
Mother Courage has many admirable quali-
ties, she experiences a great loss as a result of
her economic dependence on the war. Each
of her three children gets caught up in the
horror of the war and dies a violent death.
leaving Mother Courage alone at the end of
the play. The play features many techniques
of "epic theatre," including the use of music,
contrast, and contradiction. The action of the
play is set in a time far removed from Ger-
many in the 1940s to "alienate" or instill in
both actors and the audience a distinction
between the world of the drama and the con-
text from which they view the action of the
play. The story is not held together by a tra-
ditional narrative line. but consists of a series
of contrasting episodes separated in time.
This play certainly could be called a trag-
edy, for it makes vivid the suffering and loss
of those caught up in the war. But the
drama's focus is on the social relations
among Mother Courage, her children, and
those they come into contact with during the
course of participating in the war effort. A
leading theme of the play is that war is an ex-
tension of the business of peace and hence is
essentially a capitalist enterprise. The action
of the play reveals that as a businesswoman,
Mother Courage views every social relation,
even those involving her children, in terms of
Curran Brecht's Criticisms of Aristotle
the cost and benefit to her business. Through
this focus on Mother Courage's social role
and the kinds of relations with family and
others this occupation entails, the story
prompts reflection on what social relations
must be like, during war and peacetime, in a
society structured around a system of private
profit and individual gain. Through the inter-
actions of Mother Courage with her children
and with her business associates in the war
effort, the play suggests that in the context of
capitalism, even family relations come to be
understood not in human terms, but as either
an obstacle or a vehicle for the goal of mak-
ing money.
The play does represent the individual suf-
fering and loss Mother Courage experiences
from the death of her children in the war.
But this loss is presented so that the relation-
ship between Mother Courage's individual
loss and her occupation as a businesswoman
whose livelihood depends on the war is
made clear. Rather than suggesting that
Mother Courage's experience is a universal
one, the action of the play prompts the audi-
ence to consider how her loss arises from
very specific social and historical circum-
stances. In particular, the play emphasizes
the relevance of entrepreneurial capitalism
to understanding her loss and her interac-
tions with those around her. At the begin-
ning of the play, Mother Courage curses the
war, and her hope is just that she, her daugh-
ter, and her two sons who have joined the
Army will survive through the war's end.
Then, in a turnaround, business is flourish-
ing, and she defends the war, worrying that it
might end. Significantly, she loses each child
to the war when she is away bartering over
money, showing the folly in thinking that she
could reap the economic benefits of war but
not suffer its losses.
The play does not attempt, however, to di-
minish Mother Courage's loss as due to
forces beyond her control, making her a vic-
tim, not an agent. Instead, the play reveals a
complex relationship in which the business
environment influences Mother Courage's
choices and relationships, and Mother Cour-
age manipulates her social environment to
survive by means of the war. We see that in
spite of her earlier denunciation of the war,
the success of her business clouds her judg-
ment about its benefits for her and her
family. Through these representations of
Mother Courage, the play enables the audi-
ence to reflect on Mother Courage's own
role in bringing about her loss and the ways
her loss could have been prevented. When,
in Scene Four, Mother Courage sings to a
young soldier, "Sell out, it is what God wants
from you,"26 the audience is prompted to
consider what the other options are, not just
for Mother Courage and the soldier, even
though at no point during the course of the
action of the play does a character explicitly
set out "solutions" to the problems of war
and capitalism the play examines.
It is well known that Brecht rewrote the
character of Mother Courage to make her a
less sympathetic character.27 Brecht's repre-
sentation of Mother Courage, nonetheless,
does allow the audience to sympathize with
Mother Courage, and revealing her thoughts
and feelings is an important aspect of the
play. But Brecht uses this feeling of sympa-
thy and empathy with Mother Courage as a
means for the audience to reflect further on
the specific social and economic factors that
brought about this loss and what might be
done to change it.
Two points emerge from this illustration.
First, that Brechtian theater employs prac-
tices that situate the actions of the protago-
nists as part of a larger social nexus. Second,
that Brecht uses the representations of the
protagonist's error and loss for very different
purposes than does Aristotle, using them as a
way of making clear the social dimension of
human suffering and the ways this suffering
might be changed.
Here we must consider an objection to
Brecht's criticisms of plots with agent error
at the center of the drama. It might seem that
Brecht's criticism, as I have reconstructed it,
relies on a faulty premise: if a play focuses on
tragedy due to individual error, it cannot
prompt reflection on the social causes of
human suffering.28But this is false, because a
play can be socially critical even if the plot
meets the requirement of misfortune due to
individual error of the protagonist himself. A
play might focus, for example, on the tragedy
that ensues when a benevolent king unwit-

tingly enacts economic policies that ruin the
economy. This play represents suffering
brought about by the king's unintentional
error, thereby meeting Aristotle's require-
ments on plot. Yet we could also learn much
from such a play about what sort of eco-
nomic policies are beneficial, the problems
with governance by a monarchy, and so on.
So, following Aristotle's guidelines, it is pos-
sible to construct a play that is socially criti-
cal, contrary to Brecht's claim otherwise.
How can Brecht reply? We can see from
Mother Courage that drama that shows the
mistakes made by individuals can also
prompt reflection on the social causes of
human suffering. But Brecht would resist the
idea that drama should represent the causes
of human suffering as reducible to human
error, but should instead reveal the ways in
which the protagonist's social role and social
relations are relevant to understanding the
tragedy that ensues from the character's ac-
tions. To achieve this kind of drama, there
needs to be some mechanism analogous to
Brecht's "social gest" that enables the audi-
ence to see the relation between the individ-
ual and the social. In the case of Mother
Courage, the play locates Mother Courage's
loss in the context of her role as a business-
woman supporting the war and the kind of
social relations she has in virtue of this occu-
pation. But there are no dramatic devices in
Aristotelian drama that link the individual
and the social. It follows concerning our
counterexample that Aristotelian aesthetic
practices, by themselves, are not sufficient to
prompt reflections on the social dimensions
of the king's error. To enable this kind of re-
flection Aristotle's aesthetic practices need
to be supplemented by Brechtian-like de-
vices that prompt reflection on the larger so-
cial context in which the individual error is
enacted.
Perhaps the most controversial parts of
Brecht's criticisms of Aristotelian theater
are his critique of empathy and his more
general views about the role of the emotions
in theater. Brecht's views on empathy in the-
ater changed throughout the course of his
career.29 What remains constant, however, is
the argument that empathy with characters
in drama leads to a kind of emotional clo-
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
sure, rather than paving the way for further
critical reflection. Brecht's central concern
about empathy is that by identifying with the
protagonist and sharing his feelings, the
viewer is locked into the perspective of the
character. He argues that use of empathy as
the dominant mode of engaging with charac-
ters does not provide the spectator the "free-
dom to consider" everything relevant to un-
derstanding the character's situation.30
However, Brecht does not crudely dismiss
empathy and the emotions from the theater
on the basis of untenable dualism between
reason and the emotions. as some critics
charge.31 It is more accurate to understand
Brecht as criticizing a certain mode of en-
gagement that limits the audience to sharing
the feelings and thoughts of the protagonist,
rather than encouraging spectators to reflect
critically on the broader social dimensions of
the drama.
Given this understanding of Brecht's cri-
tique of empathy, we can now relate Brecht's
criticisms to Aristotelian tragedy, more spe-
cifically to Aristotle's discussion of ideal
tragic protagonists. Recall that in Aristotle's
ideal tragedy, the tragic protagonist is a basi-
cally good person (a person "intermediate in
virtue" [1453a5-101) who errs and suffers as
a result. But his suffering is far greater than
any error the character might have commit-
ted, allowing us to feel pity and fear for him.
In addition, the tragic protagonist must be
"like us," for pity and fear are felt for some-
one like ourselves.
Further, Aristotle has very specific ideas
about which characters and situations' are
worthy of pity. Characters like Medea, who
perform morally questionable actions, are
not worthy of pity. Hence, these types of pro-
tagonists are eliminated from Aristotelian
drama. A character like Hecuba, whose
character erodes owing to the harsh circum-
stances in which she is placed, also fails to be
an appropriate protagonist for evoking our
pity and fear, according to Aristotle.32 In
Chapter 15, Aristotle draws on the class and
gender hierarchies of the Politics in stating
his requirements on tragic characters: the
goodness of a woman should be represented
as inferior; the sufferings of a slave are not
even worthy of representation (1454a20).33
Curran Brecht's Criticisms of Aristotle
This suggests that in Aristotelian drama, the
protagonists should be appropriate role
models for the audience in that they perform
actions that are morally admirable from an
Aristotelian per~pective.3~
What are Brecht's objections to this use of
characters in drama?
Brecht, as noted, is not opposed to the en-
gagement of the emotions of the audience
with a character. But he argues that to effect
social reflection, this kind of engagement
should be used in conjunction with dramatic
devices that reveal the connection between
individual action and social context. Brecht's
essential criticism of Aristotelian engage-
ment with characters is that the formallnar-
rative devices essential for going from empa-
thy with characters to reflection on the social
context in which the characters operate are
not available within Aristotelian aesthetic
practices.
Therefore, Brecht's objections regarding
empathy in Aristotelian drama come down
to the argument that (1)to facilitate a critical
perspective on the social relations repre-
sented in drama, drama should go beyond
revealing the thoughts and feelings of the
protagonist to consider the larger social net-
work in which the protagonist operates; (2)
Aristotelian aesthetic practices do not en-
able the viewer to move from the individual
perspective to the social perspective; (3)
therefore, Aristotelian theater's use of em-
pathy does not enable the audience to en-
gage in reflection on the social relations rep-
resented in the drama.
To see why this criticism holds, consider
the dramatic practices Aristotle focuses on
in his praise of Iphigenia in Tauris. This play
is about a young woman, Iphigenia, daughter
of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, who is
transported from her home to Tauris to offi-
ciate as the high priestess for foreign visitors
to Tauris who are captured and prepared for
sacrifice. Iphigenia's long-lost brother and
his friend come to the island and are cap-
tured. Not aware of their true identities,
Iphigenia prepares to help with their sacri-
fice. Brother and sister eventually recognize
each other at the last minute before the sac-
rifice. Iphigenia manages a ruse to save her
brother and his friend, and they escape in a
boat. Aristotle's account focuses on the
scenes of recognition and reversal, which are
key on his view to a good plot structure, and
on Iphigenia's error or hamartia in failing to
recognize her long-lost brother. Aristotle's
focus on these aspects of the play and his em-
phasis on the play as a family drama ignore
the social and political themes lurking just
below the surface of the action of the play. If
we consider Iphigenia's action more broadly
construed as the action of someone who
does not realize that in harming a "for-
eigner" she is harming herself and her own
human "kin," we can then see how the play
could be performed as a social commentary
on the blind way in which people go about
killing their human "brothers and sisters" in
war.35
To effect this kind of production of
Iphigenia, the drama needs to introduce dra-
matic practices that enable the audience to
understand the protagonist's ignorance as
part of a broader social context of xenopho-
bia. This production of Iphigenia as a social
critique of xenophobia is logically compati-
ble with an Aristotelian aesthetic frame-
work; that is, nothing in Aristotelian aes-
thetic practices is inconsistent with going
bevond the dramatic focus on immediate
fa&ily relationships and loss to reflect on the
wider social dimensions of the drama. But
reflection on the broader social implications
of the protagonist's action is detachable from
the basic elements of an Aristotelian aes-
thetic framework, and the practices of Aris-
totelian drama do not support this type of
critical reflection in the audience without
being supplemented by dramatic devices
that prompt this sort of wider reflection on
the play's significance.36
Now let us consider the most important
aspect of Brecht's critique. The central ad-
vantage that Brecht claims for his theater
over Aristotelian theater is that it allows the
audience to engage in critical reflection,
what Brecht refers to as "freedom of
thought." As Brecht says, in his plays, "the
object of performance is to make it easier to
give an opinion."37 His objections to the use
of empathy in drama are connected to the
goal of prompting freedom of thought in the
audience. Brecht makes this point, as already

noted, in advocating the "anti-method-act-
ing": [the actor's] feelings must not at bot-
tom be those of the character, so that the au-
dience's may not at bottom be those of the
character either. The audience must have
complete freedom here."38
Critical thinking in relation to dramatic
representations has several aspects, accord-
ing to Brecht.39 First, there is a cognitive as-
pect to critical thinking: The spectator must
reach her or his own independently justified
conclusions. Drama should, in other words,
enable the spectator to "give an opinion"
through a process that provides independent
justification for the conclusion reached.
Rather than holding back and not thinking,
the goal of Brecht's theater was to "force the
spectator to make a decisionn40in relation to
the depicted dramatic events. Active, inde-
pendent thinking in relation to characters
and events in drama was an essential goal for
Brecht's plays.
Second, as a Marxist, Brecht saw around
him the signs that people took for granted
certain basic precepts-e.g., that society is a
meritocracy in which individuals rise or fall
economically depending on how clever they
are or how hard they work-adherence to
which supported the political status quo, in
Brecht's time capitalism and Fascism. Brecht
wanted to get people to question what they
saw so that they would then be ready to go
from the theater to work to change their sit-
uation in society. This means that for Brecht,
critical thinking in relation to drama has an
important social and political aspect-it is
thinking that aims to understand the specifi-
cally social and political nature of human life
and the viewer's role in supporting and
changing social hierarchies.
It is clear why Brecht thinks that Aristote-
lian drama, with its focus on individual error
and character identification, is not suited to
effect critical thinking that is specifically
aimed at examining social hierarchies and
the social causes of suffering. But it could be
a more damaging criticism, from a
non-Marxist perspective, if it could be estab-
lished that Brecht was right in thinking Aris-
totelian drama does not encourage critical,
independent reflection whose content is not
specifically limited to examining the social
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
causes of human suffering. For this is a con-
cern not limited to Marxist aesthetics. Why
think that Aristotelian drama falls short of
this more general goal? My discussion fo-
cuses on three aspects of Aristotle's theory:
(1)Aristotle's restriction on the content and
characters appropriate for tragedy; (2) the
role that narrative plays in structuring audi-
ence response; (3) Aristotle's view that
tragic response involves the recognition of
universal truths about life and conduct.
First, consider again Aristotle's require-
ments for plots and characters. Aristotle has
very specific ideas about who and what kind
of suffering is worthy of pity. If a plot shows a
person of decent character going from good
luck to bad through no fault of her or his
own, the effect, Aristotle says, is "shocking"
(miaron), not pitiable, and similarly for a
plot that shows a protagonist deliberately
bringing harm to kin, as does Medea.41 Aris-
totelian drama eliminates scenarios that
might throw the spectator into what Aris-
totle supposes is moral confusion or "shock"
(miaron). Aristotelian drama functions,
therefore, as a set of positive images that se-
lects the sort of situations and characters the
audience should be contemplating. One con-
sequence is that following Aristotle's guide-
lines, a playwright cannot show the effects of
a faulty social environment on an individ-
ual's character, something that Aristotle ex-
plores in his ethical and political writings, but
is curiously absent in his recommendations
for drama.42 A playwright also cannot show
how people sometimes suffer through no
fault of their own, as in The Trojan Women.43
Because of its restrictions on characters and
situations represented, Brecht is right to con-
clude that Aristotelian theater does not
allow the viewer to consider the "entire
range of human behavior" essential for the
independence of thought Brecht aimed for
with his own theater.
Second, Aristotelian aesthetics empha-
sizes the important role that formal elements
such as narrative have in structuring an audi-
ence response. Aristotle's description of
tragedy does mention elements in the con-
text of performance and production, e.g., the
activity of the poet, acting, and the response
of the audience. But Aristotle generally
Curran Brecht's Criticisms of Aristotle
downgrades these elements in favor of an
emphasis on narrative as key to effecting ca-
tharsis.44 Aristotle's discussion also focuses
on other formal elements pertaining to nar-
rative structures-the unity of a plot line, its
formal organization of beginning, middle,
and end-as the key determinants of a dra-
matic text's effect.
Aristotle's emphasis on narrative in ef-
fecting catharsis suggests a model in which
pity and fear are triggered through the ap-
propriate use of plot and character, rather
than arrived at in conjunction with the
viewer's own independent reflection on the
characters and situations represented. In
contrast, Brecht's aesthetics emphasizes that
formal devices should be used to aid the
viewer in deliberately observing the action
and drawing her or his own conclusions from
the characters and events represented. To
this end, Brecht employed devices such as
montage to break up the story line and allow
room for the spectator to construct the sig-
nificance of the drama using her or his own
observations on the represented events as
her or his guide. Aristotle's omission of the
spectator's active contribution in effecting a
response to the characters and depicted
events is a crucial one if Aristotelian aesthet-
ics is to show how drama can encourage gen-
uine independent critical reflection in the
spectator.45
We can surmise the reason that Aristotle
omits discussion of the importance of the in-
dividual spectator's contribution to an aes-
thetic response. To react with a catharsis to
the depicted events, spectators must make
various judgments concerning the moral
character and worthiness of the characters
represented. Aristotle's account relies on a
view of human nature such that any human
being would find just the characters and situ-
ations worthy of pity and fear that Aristotle
outlines in his discussion of plot patterns. It is
understandable that Aristotle would fail to
mention the spectator's role in effecting ca-
tharsis of pity and fear, for Aristotle assumes
a spectator with a fixed human nature, whose
responses to the characters are scripted in
virtue of the spectator's ability as a human
being to be moved by the suffering repre-
sented. Brecht would fault Aristotle for this
assumption regarding the spectator, for this
means that the spectator drops out of the
picture as an active, variable element in ef-
fecting a response to the characters and situ-
ations represented.
Third, Aristotle's account of tragedy in-
cludes his view that tragedy represents uni-
versal or probabilistic generalizations re-
garding the connection between various
incidents in human life and conduct. In
Poetics 4, Aristotle says we learn from trag-
edy through the recognition of these gener-
alizations. When we clarify this idea, we see
that this account of how and what we learn
from tragedy falls short of what Brecht re-
gards as critical thinking in relation to
drama.
In Poetics 7, Aristotle extends the sugges-
tion in Chapter 4 that tragedy's imitations of
action and life impart pleasure because they
promote learning (1448b15-17). Poetry, of
which tragedy is a subcategory, stands be-
tween history and philosophy. It is closer to
philosophy than to history, because it deals
in universals rather than particulars, where a
universal is "the sort of thing[s] a certain
kind of person happens to do or say accord-
ing to likelihood or necessity" (1451b8-11).
Plot, which is a representation of human ac-
tion, must proceed according to probability,
showing the probable or necessary connec-
tions in its incidents (1451a37). Hence po-
etry, and therefore tragedy, as a subgenre of
poetry, is based on knowledge of human ac-
tions and their connections. Pity and fear for
the characters involves the recognition of
these universal or probabilistic connections
between human actions. Hence the pleasures
of tragedy, on Aristotle's account, involve
some kind of pleasurable learning.
There is a scholarly debate regarding
what, if anything, Aristotle supposes we
learn from tragedy. Some attribute to Aris-
totle the view that tragic response involves
the recognition and "clarification" of univer-
sal moral truths concerning human life and
conduct (call this the "stronger thesis"). Oth-
ers suggest another view: The viewer's mind
is not numb in response to a tragedy. She or
he must actively follow the plot and make
connections among its various elements. But
the viewer does not "learn" or come to un-

derstand moral truths as a result of watching
the represented events (call this the "weaker
thesisn).46 Could either of these inter~reta-
tions, if true, show that critical thinking' is in-
cluded in our response to tragedy's narra-
tives on Aristotle's view? I do not think so.
It should be obvious why the weaker the-
sis does not support this view of critical
thinking as central to aesthetic response, for
the presence of cognitive activity in relation
to tragedy's narratives (the weaker thesis)
does not suggest a critical attitude on the
part of the viewer to the events she or he wit-
nesses on stage. More needs to be said, how-
ever, to show why the stronger reading of
Aristotle does not imply critical thinking on
the part of the spectator.
~ i r s tthere
, is a problem of reconciling the
stronger interpretation of Aristotelian ca-
tharsis as clarification with Aristotle's re-
strictions on the plots and characters appro-
priate for tragedy. Nussbaum's own readings
of ancient Greek tragedy suggest that we
learn from tragedy because it stimulates us
to a general independent reflection on im-
portant moral and political questions. Aris-
totle's recommendations for plot and char-
acter, however, suggest another view-that
tragedy should direct the viewer's attention
to a much narrower set of issues and charac-
ters, the ones that Aristotle finds appropriate
to eliciting pity and fear in the audience.47
This means, I believe, that Aristotle's text
does not support the reading of catharsis
Nussbaum gives in her reconstruction of Ar-
istotelian aesthetics.
Second, Nussbaum's account of catharsis
as clarification emphasizes the role of the
emotions in "getting clear" on important
moral and political issues. But for the emo-
tions of pity and fear to be incorporated as
part of a critical reflective response to char-
acters in tragedy, these responses must be
subject to further critical scrutiny-in just
the way that our intellectual judgments
about those characters should be subjected
to the same scrutiny. If Euripides moves me
to pity Medea, for example, he can thereby
enable me to revise my view about who and
what is worthy of pity. But this response of
pity must itself be subject to further reflec-
tion and justification if the spectator can use
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
this as part of a critical reflection on the
characters in the drama. Nussbaum's de-
scription of catharsis suggests that we take
our emotional responses to characters in
tragedy at face value and then use them to
"clarify" what it is we value.48 In contrast,
Brecht argues that critical thinking in re-
sponse to characters in drama requires that
we must subject our emotional responses to
characters in drama to the same kind of scru-
tiny we give to our judgments and convic-
tions-something Brecht gets at when he
says that the spectator must learn to "adopt
a critical approach to his emotions, just as
[he] does to his ideas."49 This suggests that
the stronger reading of catharsis as clarifica-
tion, even if correct as an interpretation of
Aristotle, falls short of Brecht's goal of ex-
plaining how to incorporate the emotions as
part of our critical reflections to characters
in drama.
In this section, I have identified three as-
pects of Aristotle's account of tragedy-his
restrictions on content, his emphasis on pro-
ducing a structured response through narra-
tive, and his idea of how we learn from trag-
edy-that suggest that Aristotelian drama
falls short of encouraging independent, criti-
cal reflection in the viewer. It is clear why, as
a Marxist playwright and critic, Brecht
would assign a central role to critical viewing
in his aesthetics of drama. For critical think-
ing in relation to drama can be a valuable
tool in challenging the status quo. As a
Marxist playwright, Brecht's drama may it-
self be criticized as political dogma that does
not leave the spectator "free to think" what-
ever she or he wants. It is this objection to
Brecht's aesthetics that I turn to in the last
section.
The argument of this paper has been that
Brecht is essentially right to criticize Aristo-
telian aesthetics for ignoring the importance
of the viewer's critical response to the events
and characters represented in tragedy.
Brecht himself would put this point by say-
ing that Aristotle emphasizes an emotional
response to tragedy over a critical, intellec-
tual response. This way of criticizing Aris-
totle, however, leaves Brecht open to the
charge that he has failed to understand how
the emotions can be part of a critical re-
Curran Brecht's Criticisms of Aristotle
sponse to drama, something that Brecht him-
self did not explicate clearly enough. Re-
phrasing Brecht, we can say that Aristotle's
account fails to show how drama can engage
the viewer's critical faculties, where these
faculties are understood to involve both cog-
nitive and affective states of the viewer.
Even if this is acknowledged as a weakness
in Aristotle's aesthetics, it might be argued
that Brecht's aesthetics fails to provide an
account of critical viewing as well.
First, it might be charged that Brecht's
overt political agenda for drama is incom-
patible with the "freedom of thought" that
Brecht claims to value in response to
drama.50 Brecht does argue that drama
should aim to "arouse or to reinforce" the
"sense of justice, the urge to freedom, and
righteous anger."sl This aim is not incompat-
ible, however, with his goal of complete free-
dom of thought for the audience. Brecht
does confirm in conversation with play-
wright Friedrich Wolf that his goal is to
arouse "the audience to a clear recognition
of the relationships in actual and possible sit-
uations (social conditions), and so lead it to
correct conclusions and decisions."52 But
these conclusions are among many possible
ones that the viewer may draw, and Brecht's
goal (to be elaborated below) is not to dic-
tate but merely to suggest and to leave for
the viewer's further justification which re-
sponses are appropriate to the injustices she
or he has seen dramatized. Some critics won-
dered, for example, why Brecht ends Mother
Courage with the tragedy of Mother Cour-
age losing her children without suggesting
some positive direction for change.53 A more
didactic sort of playwright would have given
Mother Courage or another character in the
play the effective critique of war and capital-
ism that Brecht hoped to engender in the au-
dience. Brecht stops short of this sort of mo-
rality play, showing that his goal is to
challenge the audience to think, not to make
the audience draw the "correct" conclusions.
Second, it might be objected that Brecht's
aesthetics makes the critical viewer an effect
of the dramatic or film text and/or elements
of its performance: understanding the viewer
as "produced" through the dramatic
text/performance contradicts Brecht's idea
that critical viewing involves the "freedom
of thought" Brecht claims to value in his dra-
matic productions.54 Put otherwise, Brecht-
ian theater cannot "prompt" or encourage
critical viewing in the spectator through the
use of "epic theatre's" dramatic practices, for
this makes the critical viewer a mere product
of these practices, contradicting Brecht's
claim that critical viewing requires "freedom
of thought."
Of course, it is true that Brecht wants his
drama to prompt critical reflection and chal-
lenge the viewer's acceptance of many things
she or he takes for granted. This means he
constructed his drama with the goal of en-
gendering this type of response in the audi-
ence. But Brecht aimed to do this in a way
that requires the viewer's own active contri-
bution in coming to these conclusions.Hence
his aim of eliciting critical thinking in the au-
dience is not incompatible with giving the
audience "freedom of thought." More tech-
nically, we can say that Brechtian dramatic
practices enable critical viewing, but these
dramatic practices do not cause the viewer to
adopt a specific stance toward the events
represented.55
We can draw on some work by Noel
Carroll to help elucidate this distinction.
Carroll notes that narrative films convey
"ideology," or a distorted belief that is false
and epistemically faulty, by cuing viewers to
supply missing premises to make sense of
gaps in the narrative.56 Using this idea, we
can say that an audience is caused to have a
certain response, "p," when, in virtue of the
narrative structure of a drama, the audience
cannot make sense of the action of the
drama without concluding that "p." This is
what happens in D. W. Griffith's classic film,
The Birth of a Nation (1915).The film effects
the affirmation in the spectator of the ideol-
ogy that miscegenation, i.e., interracial sex-
ual union, is wrong. Its narrative culminates
in the dramatic suicide of a young white girl
to avoid the sexual advances of an evil
"mixed race" man, Gus. The African-Ameri-
can slaves are represented as "faithful souls"
who are content with their roles as slaves;the
"mulatto" mixed race characters are repre-
sented as evil agitators for social unrest. To
make sense of the story, the spectator is

prompted to supply the missing premise,
"miscegenation is evil," to account for why
bad things happen as a result of the workings
of the "mixed race" characters. Of course,
viewers can "resist" accepting the film's ide-
ology. But viewers who engage in this type of
response produce a meaning that is contrary
to that presented in the film's narrative. Grif-
fith uses the film's narrative devices as a way
to ~ r o m o t ehis own views on race relations.
bas'ed on racist stereotypes of ~ f r i c a n
Americans. We can see, then, that causing a
response in an audience is, in effect, a way of
manipulating the audience into accepting an
ideology, or a distorted viewpoint.
In contrast, Brecht wanted to set the spec-
tator's thought in motion through drama
that appeals to the capacity of the audience
to make critical comparisons. Brecht was es-
pecially concerned to challenge the audience
in its acceptance of commonplace morality
and faith in a capitalistic economy. Rather
than forcing conclusions on the spectator the
way Griffith's film does, Brecht gives the au-
dience the basic elements that can be used to
construct these critiques in a way that re-
quires independent thought from the audi-
ence. More technically, we can say that
Brechtian drama enables or encourages a re-
sponse, "p," from the audience when the
basic premises for drawing the conclusion,
"p," are presented as elements in the drama's
story, but the conclusion, "p," is not required
to make sense of the action of the play. In
this way, Brechtian devices for enabling or
cncouraging a response are consistent with
independence of thought, for this response is
not guaranteed as a condition of making
sense of the narrative, but must be reached
through the viewer's own process of inde-
pendent reasoning.
Mother Courage is a good example of a
drama that encourages the spectator to be
critical of war, capitalism, and commonsense
morality, but does not manipulate the specta-
tor into accepting Brecht's own views on
these topics. Comparisons and contradic-
tions are set up to encourage the spectator's
critical reflections on these issues. Each
scene is preceded by a "table of contents"
that provides a hackneyed or overly general
summary of the scene, which is frequently at
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
odds with the way the scene truly unfolds.
This prompts the viewer to consider the ways
in which history, as traditionally told, omits
the material details of the lives of those who
suffer, without explicitly presenting this cri-
tique. Mother Courage does curse the war at
the end of Scene 4, and she expresses a dis-
dain for those running the war who profit
while the small people suffer. But in the
opening of the next scene, another viewpoint
is presented when she says she is doing well
and that things are going well with the war
and her business. With the two viewpoints
presented, the viewer must consider the rele-
vance of the background conditions for
Mother Courage's change of heart.
Brecht sets up the basic contradictions
that he wishes the viewer to consider: can
one be a "mother-merchant" and use busi-
ness as a means but not the purpose of sur-
vival in a society structured around greed
and individual profit? In places the drama
points to possible solutions or alternatives to
accepting the status quo, without directly
spelling this out. In Scene 4, Mother Cour-
age's "The Song of Great Capitulation"
points to the use of "great anger" as a way to
find a life beyond social oppression, but
achieves this effect by having Mother Cour-
age state the opposite viewpoint, that it is
better to settle for a "small anger" and give
in. At the same time, the song challenges the
viewpoint of the petty bourgeoisie that many
audience members are inclined to accept un-
critically by undermining the ideology that
"where there is a will there is a way." The
song suggests instead that no one in fact be-
lieves this, but rather thinks it is better just to
quit and "give in." This is a challenge both to
the philosophy of capitalism as a meritoc-
racy, as well as to the viewer's inclination to
think that political action cannot effect a
change for the better.
In this way, Brecht gets the viewer to chal-
lenge her or his own acceptance of "capitula-
tion" as a strategy for survival, and to con-
sider what the other options are without
spelling them out. Brecht's insight was to
recognize that effective drama can never in-
struct by forcing specific conclusions on the
viewer. But Brecht brings a different per-
spective to critical spectatorship than that of
Curran Brecht's Criticisms of Aristotle
cultural studies, which for the most part sug-
gests that dramatic forms such as film and
theater can be critical if the viewer takes
them to be.57 Brecht recognizes instead that
critical viewing is something that playwrights
can encourage or enable through the use of
techniques that challenge the viewer to re-
think the basic assumptions she or he uses to
make sense of the drama.
111.CONCLUSION
What, then, can we learn from Brecht's criti-
cisms of Aristotle? First, Brecht's criticisms
suggest that Aristotelian drama instructs
through the examples of sympathetic role
models, but does not challenge the viewer to
provide independent justification for the
conclusions she or he draws from the charac-
ter's situation. Aristotle's analysis of aes-
thetic response and catharsis reveals that he
understands the ways in which drama can
engage both the emotions and cognition. But
there is an important distinction, pointed out
by Brecht's critique, between the exercise of
our cognitive faculties in response to drama
and genuine, critical reflection as a response
to the characters and situations in the drama.
We learn from Brecht how Aristotle's aes-
thetics fails to incorporate critical thinking in
relation to characters as an important way in
which we learn from tragedy. This lesson is
valuable for anyone who is interested in un-
derstanding how drama and art can enlarge
the viewer's understanding of the world.58
Second, from Brecht we learn how Aris-
totle's focus on individual error and identifi-
cation with a tragic figure does not enable
the viewer to see the broader social issues at
stake, even when these themes lie just below
the surface of the drama. Brecht's criticisms
point to the importance of dramatic prac-
tices that permit the viewer to relate the ac-
tion of the protagonist to a larger social con-
text, rather than directing the viewer's
attention to individual error as the cause of
tragic misfortune for the characters.
Third, Brecht's criticisms of empathy
make us consider whether Aristotle's use of
empathy with characters can be an effective
way of encouraging reflection on the social
causes of human misfortune. As I read
Brecht, his primary concern is with a particu-
lar use of empathy that locks the viewer into
the perspective of the character and does not
enable her or him to consider the action
from a wider social perspective. Brecht's
own works show that engaging with charac-
ters can be useful for reflecting on the social
causes of suffering. Yet if Aristotelian drama
is to be used for this purpose, it needs to be
supplemented with other dramatic devices
that enable the viewer to consider the char-
acter's actions and thoughts as part of a
larger social nexus.
All three of these criticisms are related to
the adequacy of Aristotle's conceptualiza-
tion of tragedy itself. So in conclusion, let me
briefly reflect on what Brecht's criticisms
show about this. Some might find fault with
Aristotle's metaphysical assumption that
tragedy has an essence and a goal as a liter-
ary genre. This route would not be open to
Brecht, however, for Brecht in his own way
offers an essentialist account of drama, pro-
posing that drama should and does have a
certain social and pragmatic function, i.e., to
effect social criticism and political change.
On the other hand, Aristotle's account of
the essence of tragedy involves his views that
tragedy must be a representation of certain
kinds of actions and passions. These ideas
are presented in his specific recommenda-
tions for plot construction and for the repre-
sentation of characters. We have seen that
these recommendations essentially ignored
ways in which ancient Greek tragedy can
function as social critique. Further, we can-
not use an Aristotelian aesthetics as an inter-
pretive framework for making salient the so-
cial and political themes implicitly present in
many ancient Greek tragedies. This means
that if we are interested in seeing how trag-
edy can function as social criticism, we need
to supplement the practices of Aristotle's
aesthetic framework with those recom-
mended by Brecht, who proposes useful dra-
matic devices for revealing the relationship
between the individual protagonist and the
social environment in which she or he acts.
Therefore, we need not necessarily fault
Aristotle for supposing that tragedy has an
essence; however, we can criticize his specific
account of the essence of tragedy for failing

to consider tragedy as a socially grounded
civic production that explores a number of
pressing political and social issues, including
the relationship between civic and family
life, gender roles in a Greek patriarchy, and
the role of the aristocracy in a ~ o c i e t ~ m o v -
ing toward democracy. Somewhat paradoxi-
cally, if we wish to see how tragedy can func-
tion as social criticism, we might do better to
turn to Brecht's own ideas on drama as a
model for this function of tragedy.
Brecht's account of critical thinking in re-
lation to drama is an especially useful correc-
tive to Aristotelian aesthetics' neglect of this
subject. Aristotle's legacy is an account of
aesthetic response to drama as structured by
narrative, leaving little room for an active,
socially and historically situated spectator to
construct a response deliberately and inde-
~endentlvto what she or he sees. On the
&her haAd, in Aristotle we find a more so-
phisticated account of the emotions as con-
stituted by judgments. This enables us to see
how our emotions can be subject to the same
kind of critical scrutiny as our judgments,
something that is central to understanding
the role that emotions play in our critical re-
flections about charactkrs in art. By combin-
ing these different aspects of Brechtian and
Aristotelian aesthetic frameworks, we can
begin to develop a new framework for un-
derstanding how engaging with characters in
drama can engender a critical perspective on
the world.59
ANGELACURRAN
D e p a r t m e n t of Philosophy
M o u n t Holyoke College
S o u t h Hadley, Massachusetts 01075
1. An earlier version of this paper was read at the
American Society for Aesthetics, October 1997; the
American Philosophical Association, December 1997;
and at Mount Holyoke College. My thanks to the partic-
ipants at these presentations for their valuable com-
ments and questions. I am especially grateful for very
helpful comments presented at the APA session by
Noel Carroll and Daniel Jacobson. I also thank Horst
Lange and Tom Wartenberg for valuable discussions on
Aristotle and Brecht, and Cynthia Freeland for prompt-
ing me to delve into the Brecht-Aristotle debate and for
her help in sorting out my ideas on this topic. Finally, my
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
special thanks to an anonymous referee for this journal
for detailed and constructive critical remarks that
helped me improve the argument of the paper.
2. Martha C. Nussbaum, "Tragedy and Self-Suffi-
ciency: Plato and Aristotle on Fear and Pity," and Ste-
phen Halliwell, "Pleasure, Understanding, and Emotion
in Aristotle's Poetics," both in Essays on Aristotle's
Poetics, ed. AmClie Oskenberg Rorty (Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1992),pp. 261-290 and pp. 241-260, respec-
tively.
3. See his essay, "A Short Organum for the Theatre,"
in Brecht on Theatre, ed. and trans. John Willett (New
York: Hill and Wang, 1964), p. 181, as well as his essay,
"The Modern Theatre Is the Dramatic Theatre (Notes
to the opera Aufstiegund Fall der Stadt Mahagonny)," in
Brecht on Theatre.
4. See the table on page 37 in Willett, ed., Brecht on
Theatre,where Brecht contrasts theater that emphasizes
emotion (Aristotelian "dramatic" theater) with Brecht's
"epic theatre," which is said to emphasize reason over
feeling. Note, however, that Brecht suggests the contrast
between reason and emotion is a question of emphasis,
not an absolute distinction or dichotomy.
5. See Murray Smith, "The Logic and Legacy of
Brechtianism," in Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film
Studies, ed. David Bordwell and Noel Carroll (Univer-
sity of Wisconsin Press, 1997), pp. 130-148; and Carl
Plantinga, "Notes on Spectator Emotion and Ideologi-
cal Film Criticism," in Film Theory and Philosophy, ed.
Murray Smith and Richard Allen (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1997), pp. 372-393. Although both Smith and
Plantinga are critical of Brechtian aesthetics, I find that
Plantinga's critique is more measured. Plantinga pays
closer attention to Brecht's remarks in a wider range of
places and is more cautious in his conclusions. For ex-
ample, he suggests that in Brecht's "better moments"
Brecht recognizes that a dichotomy between reason and
the emotions is "superficial" (p. 374). Plantinga notes
that Brecht's goal was to encourage the spectator to
"adopt a critical approach to his emotions, just as [he]
does to his ideas" (p. 374), but suggests that Brecht fails
to describe this critical approach in any detail. I disagree
with this last claim, and in what follows I reconstruct the
theory of critical viewing implicit in Brecht's writings on
theater and in his plays.
6. All references to the Poetics are from Richard
Janko, trans., Poetics I/Aristotle (Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing Company, 1987) unless otherwise noted, and
further references will be cited in the text.
7. See Nussbaum, "Tragedy and Self-Sufficiency," in
Rorty, ed., Essays on Aristotle's Poetics; and The Fragil-
ity of Goodness (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, l986), esp. pp. 388-390.
8. See Halliwell, "Pleasure, Understanding, and Emo-
tion in Aristotle's Poetics," in Rorty, ed., Essays on Aris-
totle's Poetics.
9. See Jonathan Lear, "Katharsis," in Rorty, ed., Es-
says on Aristotle's Poetics, pp. 315-340.
10. I borrow the terminology "norm-defect" from
Gareth Matthews. See his "Gender and Essence in Aris-
totle," Australasian Journal of Philosophy 64 (1986):
16-25.
11. Although Aristotle's aesthetics is presented as a
Curran Brecht's Criticisms of Aristotle
poetics, that is, as a set of recommendations for how to
construct tragedy, it has also been widely interpreted as
a hermeneutics, that is, a framework for how to go about
interpreting and evaluating Greek tragedy. See, for ex-
ample, Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness.
12. For a different account of this section, see
Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness, p. 388, arguing
that the tragic character's hamartia does not explain his
fall to misfortune, but is instead a means to enhance
identification with the tragic protagonist.
The meaning of hamartia has been the subject of hot
debate among scholars. Commentators have suggested
that by "hamartia," Aristotle means "character flaw,"
"mistake of fact," or a range of error that includes moral
failure as well as mistake of fact. For the purposes of un-
derstanding Brecht's criticisms, it does not matter
whether hamartia is read broadly, so as to include moral
failure as well as mistake of fact, or whether it is under-
stood to have a more restricted meaning.
13. Note here I am claiming that the requirements on
plot serve as necessary conditions for a play to be truly
tragic, rather than merely "recommendations" or pref-
erences. For another suggestion that these requirements
on plot are necessary conditions on tragedy, see Cynthia
A. Freeland, "Plot Imitates Action: Aesthetic Evalua-
tion and Moral Realism in Aristotle's Poetics," in Rorty,
ed., Essays on Aristotle's Poetics, pp. 111-132; and Jona-
than Lear, Open Minded: Working Out the Logic of the
Soul (Harvard University Press, 1998), p. 183.
14. The Trojan Women meets the first plot structure
noted in Chapter 13: good people going from good to
bad fortune through no fault of their own. Aristotle tells
us that tragedies with this plot structure are neither
"fearful nor pitiful but repulsive" (1452b35-37), sug-
gesting that because this kind of plot fails to elicit the
appropriate response of effecting a catharsis of pity and
fear, it should not count as a tragedy, on the basis of the
criteria for ideal plot structure set out in Chapter 13. In
Chapter 14 Aristotle says that a plot in which the tragic
protagonist, in full knowledge, is on the point of bring-
ing harm to a loved one yet fails to do so is morally re-
pulsive (miaron), not pitiable (1454a1-5). The plot
structure for Medea, in which Medea knowingly brings
harms to her loved ones (philia),also fails to evoke pity
and fear for its central protagonist, since Medea's act of
killing her children is repulsive, not pitiable, on Aris-
totle's view.
15. Brecht's target is "dramatic theatre," which he
takes to be the dramatic tradition initiated by Aris-
totle's Poetics and continuing on through the drama as-
sociated with the Wagnerian operas used by the Nazis as
part of their propaganda campaign in Germany in the
1930s and 1940s. See Willett, ed., Brecht on Theatre, p.
71.
16. Ibid., p. 87.
17. Ibid., pp. 193-194. Thanks to Daniel Jacobson for
drawing my attention to this passage.
18. Paul Woodruff, "Engaging Emotion in Theatre: A
Brechtian Model in Theater History," The Monist 71
(1988): 235-257. Woodruff's study of Brecht has been
very valuable for aiding my understanding of Brecht's
theory.
19. Willett, ed., Brecht on Theatre, pp. 19,28, and 182.
20. Thanks to Noel Carroll for posing this objection.
21. Aristotle, On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Dis-
course, trans. George A. Kennedy (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1991), 1386a13.
22. Willett, ed., Brecht on Theatre, p. 189.
23. See his discussion of the different performance
techniques involved in his production of Antigone, 1948.
Brecht even recognized that the device of the Chorus,
employed in Greek dramaturgy, could function as an an-
alogue to his "alienation techniques," serving to provide
the audience with a critical distance on the action of the
drama. See Willett, ed., Brecht on Theatre, p. 210.
24. Ibid., pp. 104-105.
25. Ibid., p. 86.
26.Bertolt Brecht, Mother Courage and Her
Children, ed. David Hare (New York: Arcade Pub-
lishing, 1996), p. 49.
27. Willett, ed., Brecht on Theatre, pp. 22&221.
28. Thanks to Noel Carroll for raising this objection.
29. In his earlier writings, he suggests that empathy
should have no place in the theater (Willett, ed., Brecht
on Theatre, p. 15) and that his theater emphasizes rea-
son, not feeling (ibid., p. 37). In his later writings on the-
ater, Brecht modifies his views to allow for a restricted
use of emotion and empathy in theater (ibid., p. 271).
Brecht's drama also reflected his changing views on em-
pathy, with an early work such as The Threepenny
Opera rejecting the use of empathy with characters in
favor of a representation of the social relations among
people, and later works such as Galileo presenting char-
acters with whom the audience could at least partially
empathize.
30. Willett, ed., Brecht on Theatre, pp. 193-194.
31. For this argument, see Murray Smith, "The Logic
and Legacy of Brechtianism," in Bordwell and Carroll,
eds., Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies.
32. See note 14.
33. See Elizabeth V. Spelman, "Slavery and Tragedy,"
in Radical Philosophy: Tradition, Counter-tradition, Pol-
itics, ed. Roger S. Gottlieb (Temple University Press,
1993), pp. 223-244, for the significance of Aristotle's ex-
clusion of the suffering of slaves from tragedy's repre-
sentations.
34. For more discussion of the ethical aspect of Aris-
totle's discussion of plot and character, see Freeland,
"Plot Imitates Action," in Rorty, ed., Essays on Aris-
totle's Poetics.
35. For an interesting discussion of the political impli-
cations of Aristotle's stress on recognition in tragedy's
narratives, see Barbara Koziak, "Tragedy, Citizens, and
Strangers: The Configuration of Aristotelian Political
Emotion," in Feminist Interpretations of Aristotle, ed.
Cynthia A. Freeland (Pennsylvania State University
Press, 1998), pp. 260-288. I believe, however, that Aris-
totle's discussion of dramatic practices omits consider-
ation of the political implications of tragedy that Koziak
wishes to highlight in her reading of Iphigenia.
36. A further piece of evidence for this conclusion
comes from considering Aristotle's remarks on the
Chorus. Aristotle does not address as significant the
thought of the Chorus at all. Instead, when he does dis-
cuss the Chorus, he considers it only under the heading
"musical composition," which he says is "the greatest of

the sensuous attractions" (1450b16). See Gerald E Else,
Aristotle's Poetics: The Argument (University of Michi-
gan Press, 1978), pp. 105-106.
37. Willett, ed., Brecht on Theatre, p. 128.
38. Ibid., pp. 193-194.
39. Thanks to Daniel Jacobson for stressing that I
need to separate these two different aspects of critical
thinking in Brecht.
40. Willett, ed., Brecht on Theater,p. 37.
41. Here it might be said that Aristotle's criteria for
plots are based on his assessment of what sorts of char-
acters and situations the Greek audience would, as a
matter of fact, find pitiable. As Bernard Knox has dis-
cussed, however, ancient Greek audiences could find
Medea worthy of pity and admiration. See his "The
Medea of Euripides," in Word and Action: Essays on the
Ancient Theater (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979),
pp. 295-322. So in ranking plots and characters, Aris-
totle must be outlining what sorts of situations and char-
acters the audience should find worthy of pity.
42. Here I have in mind in particular Aristotle's dis-
cussion in Nichomachaen Ethics I of the necessity of ex-
ternal goods for the active development and mainte-
nance of virtue, and his stress in the Politics on the
importance of community for moral development and
human flourishing.
43. For a discussion of this point, see Freeland, "Plot
Imitates Action," in Rorty, ed., Essays on Aristotle's
Poetics.
44. "Now it is possible for the fearful or pathetic ef-
fect to come from the actor's appearance, but it is also
possible for it to arise from the very structure of the
events, and this is closer to the mark and characteristic
of a better poet. Namely the plot must be so structured,
even without benefit of any visual effect, that the one
who is hearing the events unroll shudders with fear and
pity at what happens: which is what one would experi-
ence on hearing the plot of the Oedipus" (1453bl).
45. Willett, ed., Brecht on Theatre, pp. 37-38.
46. For the assertion of the stronger thesis, see
Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness, pp. 378-390; for
the weaker thesis, see Andrew Ford, "Katharsis: The
Ancient Problem," in Performativity and Performance,
ed. Andrew Parker and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (New
York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 109-132.
47. For this account of Aristotle's Poetics, see
Freeland, "Plot Imitates Action," in Rorty, ed., Essays
on Aristotle's Poetics.
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
48. "For Aristotle, pity and fear will be sources of il-
lumination or clarification, as the agent, responding and
attending to his or her responses, develops a richer
self-understanding, concerning the attachments and val-
ues that support these responses," Nussbaum, The Fra-
gility of Goodness, p. 388.
49. Willett, ed., Brecht on Theatre, p. 101. Quoted by
Carl Plantinga, "Notes on Spectator Emotion and Ideo-
logical Film Criticism," in Smith and Allen, eds., Film
Theory and Philosophy, p. 374.
50. I owe this objection to Daniel Jacobson.
51. Willett, ed., Brecht on Theatre, p. 227.
52. Ibid.
53. See the exchange between Friedrich Wolf and
Brecht on this point. Ibid., pp. 228-229.
54. Of all the objections Murray Smith poses to
Brecht, this is the most intriguing. Murray Smith, "The
Logic and Legacy of Brechtianism," in Bordwell and
Carroll, eds., Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies,
p. 139.
55. Thanks to the suggestion by an anonymous reader
that I elaborate on this distinction.
56. Noel Carroll, "Film, Rhetoric and Ideology," in his
Theorizing the Moving Image (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996), pp. 275-289.
57. This approach is called "reading against the
grain" and is a dominant trend in film studies. See, for
example, bell hooks, "The Oppositional Gaze: Black Fe-
male Spectators," in Black American Cinema, ed.
Manthia Diawara (New York: Routledge, 1993), pp.
288-302. While this approach is valuable, its adoption
can also lead critics to ignore the ways in which formal
and contextual elements are both important in produc-
ing an interpretation of a work.
58. I believe that Brecht's criticisms of Aristotelian
aesthetics can also be brought to bear to show that cur-
rent discussions of the cognitive value of art and film
frequently omit consideration of the role of critical
thinking in aesthetic response, but this is the subject for
another discussion.
59. For the presentation of a feminist aesthetic frame-
work for reading ancient Greek tragedy that combines
aspects of Aristotle's and Brecht's aesthetics, see my
"Feminism and the Narrative Structures of the Poetics,"
in Freeland, ed., Feminist Interpretations of Aristotle, pp.
289-326.