Week Two Lecture Notes

- Aristotle: Mr. Distinction

o Loves definitions
o Cataloguing the universe as experiencing it
o Writing style: textbook to beat all textbooks
o For his time: most intelligent
o Thought that the stars were eternal; didn’t know that they die or move; easy to
understand why he created this theory
o Arab scholars saved Aristotle’s writings
 Learned Greek so they could translate into Arabic since they were so
interested in what Aristotle was saying
o Was made into gospel
 Made it harder therefore for upcoming philosophers

- Imitate to learn
- Art comes from wanting to animate things that gives it life
o Children love this
 This is the artistic instinct

- Aristotle: thinks about what’s there

o Stories should be believable; must seem plausible
 Characters can be inconsistent, but consistently inconsistent
- Tragedy: many tragedies have people
o Tragic flaw