Dance Theory of Plato and Aristotle: 3 Essays

This book is for dance theorists, lovers of musical theater, classicists, historians of ideas, and specialists in Ancient Greek philosophy, Western aesthetics, or feminism. Knowledge of Ancient Greek is not required. Essay 1 is a simplified presentation of Scott’s earlier relevant material that was written for specialists in Ancient Greek philosophy, especially Aristotle on Dramatic Musical Composition: The Real Role of Literature, Catharsis, Music and Dance in the POETICS (2018). Essay 2 is a treatment of Plato’s Republic III 392c-401d, revealing that rhuthmos is not usually “rhythm” there but “ordered body movement” or “dance,” as in his Laws II 665a. Essay 3 is an evaluation of Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi’s “Aristotle’s Definition of Dance” (2017), which focuses on perhaps the most influential statement of Western theatrical dance throughout history from the Dramatics (also known as the Poetics). Scott demonstrates that Aristotle has a more expansive theory than what Peponi attributes to the Stagirite. Readers of Plato and Aristotle have thought for generations that, in the context of the arts, the two ancients cared only about literature and the mind or soul. This book reveals how important the body and body movement were to both of them, especially in the theater. The book also demonstrates how, in the context of aesthetics, Platonic specialists—including modern feminists—have ignored the wise woman Diotima’s explanation in Plato’s Symposium of the two senses of poiēsis, neither of which is “poetry.” Rather, she says, it means either (i) “making” of anything and everything, or, more properly, (ii) mousikē kai metra, which must mean there “music-dance and verse”; otherwise passages that have never been reasonably interpreted in the Platonic-Aristotelian corpus remain paradoxical. The standard translation of the term for Plato and Aristotle, i.e., “poetry,” was only coined by the sophist, Gorgias, around 415 BCE, when Plato was a teen. Diotima’s explanation has extreme ramifications not only for dance theory but for the foundation of Western aesthetics, which was largely set by the two great ancient thinkers. Finally, an extensive dialogue with the globally-recognized Dimitri Gutas is included, providing a paradigmatic example of how even superb scholars not only continue to use the Gorgian “poetry” for poiēsis (without considering the Diotiman meanings) but continue to eviscerate dance from Plato and Aristotle by insisting on “literary” senses for the related “musical” terms. Read more