The confusion between moral and aesthetic ideas in Greek literary criticism and philosophy

Abstract

After a 'brief introduction on the nature of aesthetic and moralistic criticism, the development of Greek literary criticism has been traced from its earliest beginnings in the invective of Xenophanes and Heraclitus as far as the age of Plotinus. The attempt has been made to show how philosophers, grammarians and poets all made their individual contributions towards the development of the science of literary criticism as the modern world knows it, and the progress has been viewed in the light of the gradual weakening of the hold of the moralistic attitude which informed the criticism of the early philosophers. After the criticism of the early philosophic schools, the contributions of the Sophists towards literary studies and the criticism of Aristophanes and the Old Comedy have been briefly reviewed. The next two sections are devoted to the aesthetic theories of Plato and Aristotle respectively, and the last deals briefly with the later Peripatetics, the Alexandrian scholars, the Stoics and Epicureans, Longinus, and finally the Neo- Platonists.