ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the connection between the Poetics and contemporary aesthetics, noting both how the work has directly inspired discussions in philosophy of art, as well as considering how Aristotelian-inspired solutions to contemporary problems may shed a new light on these discussions. Samuel Johnson, in his 1765 Preface to the plays of Shakespeare, may have been the first to raise a paradox that has come to be known as 'the paradox of fiction'. The great eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher, David Hume, begins his essay, 'Of Tragedy', by noting a paradox that has puzzled philosophers of art since Aristotle: tragedies produce, and are made to produce, pleasure for the audience. Philosophers of art have been greatly interested in the specific responses of sympathy and empathy with characters. Cognitivism with respect to the arts is the view that art as a discipline belongs to the group of knowledge-conveying activities.
