Talk:Metabasis paradox

Just for the record, contrary to Wikipedia's opinion this article is of Featured List quality, as it is quite complete and equal in quality to a professional article on its topic. Actually, it is even beyond that in quality. Wikipedia moderators don't seem to realize that this article satisfies the conditions of, "professional standard; it comprehensively covers the defined scope, usually providing a complete set of items, and has annotations that provide useful and appropriate information about those items." There is no reasonable argument to contradict this assessment.Cdg1072 (talk) 00:34, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

The Neidhardt- Butcher Solution

In Butcher's preface to the 1902 third edition of his 1895 text and translation he mentions a conjecture of one Neidhardt, whom I cannot trace, that makes the whole problem simply disappear, and all the wrestling with it over the centuries, otiose. He believes it to be correct, but does not put it in his text, merely writing "recte ut opinor" in his apparatus. The conjecture is to transpose the words kratiston and deuteron in 1454a 2 and 4, thus reversing Aristotle's presently perceived view of what is best and what is second best. The corruption which has caused so much trouble may have been caused by scribal error, for, as Housman says, scribes will miscopy anything anyhow, or it may have been the work of an interpolator. Scholars do not seem to have noticed this at all, and no doubt some would regard it as too bold a conjecture. If so, however, they should argue against it on that ground, not just ignore it.  For what very little my opinion is worth, I myself think it is right. On rereading Aristotle after many years I just could not believe he could have written the text as it stood. Esedowns (talk) 11:00, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

this one? - The Neidhardt is probably Emil Neidhardt, who performs the described emendation on page 36 of "On Euripides, the most tragic of poets" which appears to be his doctoral thesis. It's possibly worth mentioningonj in the article as a possible solution, but Butcher's reviewer was skeptical and no one else who cited Butcher seems to have even mentioned it. So unfortunately I think it's probably something to mention in passing if at all. It *would* make the whole problem a lot simpler, though! - car chasm (talk) 16:03, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Mant thanks for your amazingly quick response and information about Neidhardt. I will reply on the substance later. I am more of a Latinist than a Hellenist, but have known at least two great Hellenists, Lobel and Dover, the latter my tutor. Esedowns (talk) 23:01, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

I envy your access to documents, and your technical command of the net. I am often frustrated by lack of both, especially being unable to use Greek and Cyrillic characters. But, with great respect, I don't think you are a good judge of a conjecture. It hardly seems a possible scribal error, but one can well imagine an early interpolator getting muddled by the thought and thinking he was putting it right. Not everyone will be convinced, but if a fine scholar like Butcher was it is worth mentioning, especially as it might not otherwise come to attention. I don't know who the other commentators are whom you mention, but their lack of attention to this point is not evidence against it.

The title of the article is obscure, and should be replaced with intelligible English. Esedowns (talk) 18:17, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

I think I might have been unclear in my earlier reply. My concerns are less about whether or not it's true and more about what we can put in an encyclopedia article. I wish somebody had taken it up since Butcher and discussed it more in depth in a peer reviewed paper, so that we could summarize their conclusions. As it stands now though, if we were to give it equal time with something like Lessing's proposal, it would be WP:UNDUE, because the original paper is only a doctoral dissertation, even Butcher leaves the amendment out of his text, and his reviewer criticizes him for even mentioning it. We also couldn't add much more than a trivial mention of it without doing our own original research. This is less of a matter of if our arguments are convincing - as a tertiary source, wikipedia should only include what has already convinced others, it's not and shouldn't be a separate avenue for doing so.

I've been using Google Scholar to search citations of Butcher's work and found no further discussion of this. Given the publication date, I suppose it's possible that someone else mentioned it in some article that hasn't been digitized, but given that reputable scholars are still publishing books on Aristotle's Poetics within the past decade that mention the apparent paradox with no mention of Neidhardt's solution, it's safe to say that this theory has not convinced any specialists in the field yet.

If you want to add this theory, you should first convince a Hellenist to publish a paper on your arguments. Assuming that paper convinces enough other people that its conclusions are taken up by scholars who write works on the Poetics, then it can be included in an encyclopedia. - car chasm (talk) 20:31, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

I half understand, and may even try to interest someone. Meanwhile, it is nice to know that Aristotle didn't contradict himself. Esedowns (talk) 23:07, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

I considered more conventional titles before borrowing this one from Arata Takeda's book chapter, and I happen to like it. Something like "the Poetics Chapter 13 and 14 contradiction" would be more explicit, but less concise. That was a dilemma I considered when creating the article. After further reflection this afternoon, I'm not participating in change of the article's title.

Thanks for suggesting Neidhardt, I have no opinion as to whether it should be placed just as the others are, leaving this decision up to others. I used the Butcher translation to study the problem in 2017.

I do not endorse any of the solutions so far mentioned in this article. At the moment, I still adhere to the solution I suggested in 2017, which in 2022 I found to have been proposed by Daria Bertolaso in 2012. I was about to add it today, before noticing this thread. Of course, in 2017 I wanted to take credit for it and my paper was peer-reviewed by Chicago. This view, that I came up with almost immediately after studying the problem (and no less makes all the history look pretty "otiose"), holds that the "digression" on spectacle at the beginning of chapter 14 is not a digression. Instead, it would mean that Aristotle is now fulfilling the theater-based portion of what he had planned at 1449a9, ". . . to criticize [tragedy] both in itself (auto kath' hauto) and in relation to the stage. . . " (Bertolaso doesn't mention 1449a9). Accordingly, Bertolaso's solution, mostly like my own, is that in the four judgments at the end of chapter 14, Aristotle evaluates tragedy from the point of view of the theater (and for Bertolaso the theatrical competitions), and the quality with which the actions strike us visibly. The problem with this, which I still intend to solve, is that the criteria of judgment themselves might be connected to the theater and spectacle, though they might not be. But I remain convinced by the view. In mentioning all that, I want to avoid any impression of creating a forum about the topic--we all well know Wikipedia.Cdg1072 (talk) 23:18, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

I wish you would explain your explanation (thank you, my Lord Byron). Esedowns (talk) 17:29, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

You have a kind of intense manner. You may notice I mentioned trying to connect Aristotle's three comparative judgments in chapter 14 more entirely with spectacle. However, I have remembered my position that this is unnecessary.

Consider this distinction. Suppose you're asking one to explain the meaning of these propositions. The first is, as extreme as this appears, Aristotle, who considers tragic pathos as killing or mere intention, finds that it has essentially only theatrical appeal, not intellectual. In other words, he denies that one can fully appreciate this aspect of tragedy, death, intention to kill and so on, through reading, but only on the stage. And thus when he makes the three comparative judgments in chapter 14, he thinks he is concerned generally with something of only theatrical value--the pathos (not to be confused with miaron). But additionally, he ranks the different treatments of pathos according to some of the more intellectual or cognitive criteria he has previously presented. Consequently, his criteria here are not themselves limited to theatrical merit alone--rather only the pathos is so limited. I don't believe that these statements require much explanation.

Whereas, you could mean by "explain," to provide a reason why or even evidence that, Aristotle thinks the pathos he is referring to cannot itself affect us on a printed page in a way that rivals or equals the way we experience it in a theater. Or, you could be asking, what is the evidence that Aristotle's criteria in ranking the four treatments of pathos, are not themselves theatrical criteria. If these are your requests, then you're asking not so much for a clarification of meaning of the claims made above but evidence to support them. Here in this talk page, I will neither discuss further the clarification question as to what I mean, and especially not the request for support or evidence. It is a discussion that belongs elsewhere, if anywhere, and really belongs only in an article. Cdg1072 (talk) 19:57, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Butcher's reviewer misses the point completely. His alternative conjecture still leaves Aristotle saying that Iphigenia is more tragic than Oedipus. I now realise, what I did not when I was Esedowns, that he failed to notice the second of Neidhardt's changes, where Butcher also says "recte ut opinor". Truly scholarship and acumen are independent variables. Liscaraig (talk) 16:07, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

.Car Chasm

Neidhardt's work no longer comes up. Please could you replace it, as it is extremely fugitive, and almost nobody can find it except here? It didn't go to the copyright libraries, not being a book. 86.160.181.7 (talk) 16:05, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Italian words

The four Italian words quoted under Castelvetro were all incorrect, I think. I have put two of them right, but the other two beat me. Can anyone help? Esedowns (talk) 14:14, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for asking, I'll look for this. The cause of the error is that Arata Takeda made the quotations. And since he misread Dacier, I should have gone to the Castelvetro text to check on that as well. Takeda described Dacier's view as almost identical to Lessing's, whom he omitted entirely except for a footnote.Cdg1072 (talk) 00:08, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Daria Bertolaso

Since others are involved in this discussion, I defer to you before adding Daria Bertolaso. Her article in ResearchGate (her own translation into English from her Italian version) remains unpublished after over ten years now. So I consulted with the Wikipedia Help Desk today about including the view, and they pretty much approved. I also produced the same theory independently in 2017, as mentioned above, and had been beaten to it. But I find it sufficiently different from that of Bouchard, to merit its own section as the others have. Bertolaso proposed a distinct view based on opsis, despite the similarity of "theater" with Bouchard's reading concerning "popular audience." There is only a very small overlap, that opposite both spectacle and popular sentiment--are the intellectual criteria of chapter 13.Cdg1072 (talk) 00:28, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

What I meant was that I found your writing cryptic in places, and though I now understand you more there are also some difficult sentences in your latest piece.

As to your idea, I don't see that A in 1449a9 says that he plans to deal with the "allos logos" (sorry, no Greek letters). He just says "there is another story", like a famous English writer's catchword. Also, it is a corrupt place, one can't be certain what he said. (I only have Butcher's apparatus, my Bywater is tucked away.}

It seems to me that there are three basic approaches. The first is to go along with Neidhardt, who on pp.36 and 37 makes an excellent case that an interpolator switched the words, having misunderstood Aristotle's demanding way of writing, and thinking he was putting an error right. You then get a truly Aristotelian Aristotle, penetrating and consistent throughout 13 and 14, but requiring to be read with diligence, as N says. Or you can write it off as a mental lapse on A's part. Or you can struggle to find a reason for Aristotle to say why a lightish-weight play like Iphigenia (the first tragedy I ever had to read, back in 1943), of an apathes type which he has just described as not tragic, and where there is a minimum of the pity and fear that he values so highly, is superior, or could somehow, or at some times, or from some points of view, be worthy of being called superior, to Oedipus, Medea or The Bacchae. Butcher seems to have been the only scholar to have mentioned Neidhardt, and he agreed with him. The sort of scholarship which I am used to would expect those who wish to discourse on this subject to be aware of the conjecture and explain why they do not accept it, but unfortunately it is in a recondite source. Yet, though not a scholar at all, I nevertheless picked up the reference. Now it is on the internet people really ought to deal with it.

Meanwhile, I enjoy reading their efforts, "quibus ipse malis careas quia cernere suave est". Esedowns (talk) 23:14, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Maybe we'll never agree on clarity, but in my opinion there's not a clarity issue here or a writing issue on this end. I will cut you some slack, if Neidhardt might even be the more complex, so that you may have to speak of it somewhat cursorily, as you did. But here you also describe three "basic approaches." And one of these is to acknowledge the entire problem and just wonder about it. It's like the very problem itself, is its "approach." At that comment, I'm perhaps a bit more dumbfounded than I am amused. In terms of being unclear, well, it's off the charts.

I'd like to respond on allos logos (in a search for it, it appears unusual). Here I don't think it necessarily refers to a matter to be omitted, as it does in Apology 34e "whether I fear death or not is another matter" etc. There are a few reasons for this. Even if the phrase in 1449a does mean, "another matter," nevertheless, the mention of a topic could mean simply that the topic comes later in the book. For he eventually addresses everything mentioned in the sentence.

However, Aristotle partly answers the question of evolution in the same paragraph at 1449: The finished development of the tragedy genre is described in "ten hautes phusin." Could it be "another matter" to be omitted, if he addresses part of it in the same paragraph? He more fully answers the question later, because it also refers to a difference in styles or types of tragedy. Given these considerations, "allos logos" could mean to add a final distinction that, "there is a difference of principle" (or theory, or understanding). That is to say, Aristotle means that, in addition to the general idea of tragedy and the different styles, there is a difference of perspective. He uses allos logos in a similar way, here in Metaphysics 8, 1044b (Tredennick):

Thus as regards generable natural substances we must proceed in this manner, if we are to proceed correctly; that is, if the causes are these and of this number, and it is necessary to know the causes. But in the case of substances which though natural are eternal the principle is different.Cdg1072 (talk) 03:33, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

I want to add that, since there is a paper extant by Bertolaso on her view, I might add the topic, yet after your next comment I probably shouldn't respond in view of Wikipedia. You'll have the last word.

I probably couldn't add the idea under my own name because of 1. the conflict of interest issue, and 2. Bertolaso's entire essay is available, whereas I no longer have any finished paper on the same opinion, and it was never placed online. Cdg1072 (talk) 14:11, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

To expand on Neidhardt a bit, what he says is that a scribe/interpolator found kratiston where deuteron now is and vice versa, and didn't properly understand. He thought he had put matters right by changing the two words round. N sets it out all very clearly, how the interpolator's mind could have worked. You can get there by using the call-up in car chasm's note above. (It also makes sense of A's remark towards the end of 14 that "they" -Butcher supplies "poets"- had to look for families with pathos in their story, which is odd if you think he has just said plays without pathos, like Iphigenia, are best.)

On what I called the second approach, what I meant was that one might just conclude that A had blundered, forgetting what he had said himself, and that there was no great point in trying to find much useful meaning there. I did not say one ought to take this approach, but I could sympathise with a person who did!

All I really want to do is to get Neidhardt out into the open, for the sake of future students. But good luck to your efforts, especially if you explain why you reject N's argument. Esedowns (talk) 20:28, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. Since probably no one else will, I'll put Neidhardt in the article in a section under his name like the others. I propose placing him in historical order between Lessing and Bywater. I think it's a great idea, and have always preferred the piece to be all-inclusive. To prepare, I'm going to read and/or make a translation of those Latin pages from his dissertation, 36 and 37 as you said and whatever's necessary. Yesterday and today I viewed those passages in Google books and saw the points you are alluding to.

Then I'll place Daria Bertolaso near the end.

Your second approach is similar to Castelvetro in general idea, minus his details.

Please could you clarify the bit about Lessing? I can't understand his argument from what is written here. Can it be spelt out more fully? Esedowns (talk) 14:21, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

I was going to put the clarification here, but then decided to simply edit that section on Lessing. I believe that you're right, in this case that I tried to be so concise that there was not a sufficient description of Lessing, unless there is something else that is still unclear to you. Is it possible that you find Lessing's view puzzling, because you are not sure how he can call the "best scene of pathos" a scene where the physical pathos does not take place? But this could be only a question of word choice on Lessing's part. If you find that Lessing is misusing the term pathos, your reaction would appear understandable coming from someone who sympathizes with Neidhardt, because Neidhardt does not acknowledge that even the intention alone, without the action fulfilled--ἀποκτείνῃ ἢ μέλλῃ--(Poetics 1453b21) counts as "terrible and pitiable" for Aristotle.Cdg1072 (talk) 23:57, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

Let me know if that edit improved the explanation of Lessing in the article, and if not then we'll work on it more.

Also, while I've responded on Lessing, I meant to ask you the following about Neidhardt. I finished a translation of all those relevant pages, 33-38. That all went well except for one sentence, where the translation seems okay except what "quae" is referring to exactly. I'm not saying this affects much my understanding of Neidhardt's position. I think I'll be able to present a summary of him in the article. I'm just asking for this one point, that does have some bearing on the rest of the pages. It is the sentence on 34/35, "nam quae Aristoteles ut in componendo aut vitent aut expetant hoc ipso capite suadet poetis, ea et desunt et adsunt, ut debent, tertiae illi formae, qua consanguinei caede perpetrata agnoscuntur." My question is, does Neidhardt's "quae," or "what" in "what Aristotle exhorts poets in this very chapter to either avoid or seek" refer to the pathos? I thought that is what Neidhardt means.Cdg1072 (talk) 00:09, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

From what car chasm says above it seems that Neidhardt can only be mentioned in passing, because Butcher's third edition, which was the first to mention him, did not cause a stir in academia and he himself did not print or translate the conjecture he thought was right (I suspect perhaps Macmillan, who had previously rejected Housman's probably very radical Propertius, had been advised by a consultant that it was too bold). Still less does it seem that your original work could appear. However, to answer your question, I think the plural quae probably refers to various things, pathos and to miaron among them. Without pathos a plot is not tragic, A says at one place.

It seems ok to discuss Lessing because that is a way to improve the article. I'll come back on this. What I think he means seems utterly weird to me, but I'll think some more. Esedowns (talk) 12:12, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Again, the theory that Aristotle means that recognizing and not killing is best from the point of view of the theater and opsis -- cannot entirely, really cannot at all, be attributed to me. So if I may ask, why do you refer to it as my work? Bertolaso was first with this breakthrough. Also, you might not be able to exclude Bertolaso's version from this article, as someone with some authority at Wikipedia said, as I mentioned, that despite being not published in a journal there is not an objection to including it. But if you believe there's an issue, then together we can inquire of them and get a second opinion, and maybe you win.

Moreover, the classical scholars who work on the problem have learned of this position from me in 2017, when I naively thought it was original, and when I was convinced it ought to make such a stir as you refer to. Among these are the editors of Classical Philology at the University of Chicago who gave it a peer-review -- a prestigious school where I hold a master's degree in the Humanities. Other scholars who know of this idea from me include Stephen Halliwell, Richard Janko, Malcolm Heath, Elsa Bouchard, and Andrew Ford.

There's a simple reason that there remains not much formal writing by me on this solution and only a mass of notes. That is, a few years after the peer review I abandoned it. Only more recently has it seemed obvious again to me that it was correct. It would also be odd not to include Bertolaso, because it is slightly similar to Bouchard -- and Andrew Ford has praised Bouchard's idea very highly. Cdg1072 (talk) 14:32, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Honestly, I did not refer to that or any other theory as your work, and I did not mention Bertolaso at all. I haven't the slightest wish to keep anything out of WP. I thought I was only repeating what car chasm says in his/her remarks of early June above, that for something to get into WP it first has to be published elsewhere, and then it has to be shown that it

has convinced others. According to the rules you can't use WP, which is a tertiary source, as the place to propose a theory, car chasm says, and also regrets that Butcher's view was not taken up and discussed, producing material for WP. Good luck to you if you can get more in. I certainly don't want to stop anything. Esedowns (talk) 17:45, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. I think that by dint of historical age, Neidhardt even has an edge over Bertolaso. I might not add him, but would be inclined to. But between Bertolaso and myself, there is a small consensus--the two of us. I was responsible for adding Murnaghan, for her well-written article and prestigious career, yet one might not find many Murnaghan adherents. I'd suggest to you today my thoughts on why Lessing is wrong, but it would be to get into discussion. If it's worth it a discussion place could be created elsewhere.Cdg1072 (talk) 18:28, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

The page seems satisfactory now, except for two mutilated Italian words. The two Greek verbs you quote above are indicative in Butcher's text, I don't see why subjunctive here. Esedowns (talk) 22:41, 24 July 2023 (UTC)