Basics of Aristotle
What might be said of individual identity from Aristotle’s perspective? He answers this question most thoroughly in his theory of narrative production.
In the first three chapters of Aristotle’s Metaphysics a quaternary model is outlined (with a rationale of four causes: the material, formal, efficient, and final) which obtains as well in The Poetics. In Aristotle’s view the literary text is the production of an imitation in language of event(s), specifically ordered, in which the imitative aspect serves also as a frame. As a boundary between the representation (’imitation’) and its referent (actual or analogous true events), the frame is recognized, and facilitates the enjoyment of the work by the audience.
If we imagine ourselves able to walk through the ‘virtual’ 3-dimensional grid which any story-world (consistent within a specific culture) would be built within. We have entered. Here on the inside we notice that the very process of story construction, embedded in time, is being projected on the shifting surfaces and planes before us. What is occurring? Specific events are in the process of being selected and sequenced to depict an implied world. Who I am is occurring at that very moment. The world is within the observer. I do not mean here that a world-as-representation is within the observer, I mean the world itself.
Let us now direct our attention through what might be termed Aristotle’s six lenses of literary production (poietikes). First, the medium of language used fulfills the text’s material cause; second, the object being imitated (the real world referent) and the thought behind its presence within this story world each work to fulfill the text’s formal cause; third, the manner in which the object is represented, with plot and character, fulfill the text’s efficient cause; fourth, the effect produced in the audience (i.e. fear, pity, catharsis) fulfills the story world’s final cause. Is this litany of production framing important? I believe it is, for Aristotle’s decision to define the components of narrative production in terms of the metaphysical causes by which all phenomena are (for him) rendered intelligible, demonstrates he did not trivialize the role narrative (especially tragedy) was believed to play in maintaining identity. One cannot help but be moved, whatever one’s theoretical position, by the emotional vitality and intellectual rigor and integrity of the Aristotelian theory of narrative production, and the respect he
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