HoP 496 He Unwilling, She Unwilling: Jean Racine

Peter Adamson· Host0:00

[classical music] Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of the Philosophy Department at King's College London and the LMU in Munich. Online at historyofphilosophy.net. Today's episode: "He Unwilling, She Unwilling: Jean Racine." There's an intriguing passage in Aristotle's Poetics, one I've had occasion to mention before, in which he says that poetry is closer to philosophy than history, and he doesn't mean in alphabetical order. His point is that poets, like philosophers, are interested in the universal, what persons of a given general type would do in a given situation, as opposed to what real particular individuals have chosen to do, which is the historian's remit. Aristotle adds that those poets who write tragedies nonetheless attach their universally resonant tales to particular names from the historical past. This is a good idea because the story being told on stage needs to be believable, and what could be more believable than something that actually happened? Still, the tragedian need not stick closely to actual events because historical accuracy is not his purpose. Aristotle is describing what we now call poetic license, the artist's freedom