Beware of Imitations! - Aristotle and the Paradox of Fiction

Why doesn’t Aristotle face a ‘paradox of fiction’? Standard, plausible interpretations of his views on emotions generate an especially tricky ‘paradox of fiction’, because he holds that emotions should fit reality (not merely match the subject’s beliefs). Paradox is avoided by his recognition of supposition-based human responses to mimetic works, where, for the purposes of appreciation, audiences accept things as being the way the work represents them. Operating within this supposition-generated perspective, tragic audiences’ pity and fear can be vindicated as sensitive to fittingness. Adopting such a perspective can be justified by its benefits – pleasure, learning, and the development of transferable dispositions to respond emotionally in discriminating ways, inside and outside the theatre. Aristotle’s position is of especial philosophical interest for avoiding a more troublesome paradox with simpler and more powerful resources than many more recent philosophical rivals.