CR: T.S. Eliot on Aristotle -- an excerpt Interesting, isn't it?
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Actually, no. The statement is utterly fatuous.
Carrol
The text quoted:
In today's excerpt - T.S. Eliot on Aristotle. Eliot, one of the towering
poets and literary critics of the 20th century, is discussing the nature of
Aristotle's genius in his article, 'The Perfect Critic'. The importance of
the statement here is his assertion that great analysis is not the outcome
of some repeatable process or method but instead comes from intelligence
alone:
"Aristotle is a person who has suffered from the adherence of persons who
must be regarded less as his disciples than as his sectaries. One must be
firmly distrustful of accepting Aristotle in a canonical spirit; this is to
lose the whole living force of him. He was primarily a man of not only
remarkable but universal intelligence. ...
"... in his short and broken treatise he provides an eternal example-not of
laws, or even of method, for there is no method except to be very
intelligent, but of intelligence itself swiftly operating the analysis of
sensation to the point of principle and definition."
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