Yet again, Aristotle exhibits his rather linear look at the world by his analysis of the distinctions that come with age. He identifies the stages of life—youth, prime of life, and old age—and generalizes that there are common virtues and vices held at each of these stages. Several questions arise with this over-simplified categorization of humanity.
First, how do we apply these three stages to the human race? They might make sense conceptually, but in practice, who is truly young—a person who has been alive for less than 2/3 of life expectancy?
Along these same lines, what brings a person from one stage of life to the next? Is it simply the passage of time? Or do life experience, personality, and upbringing also contribute to these advances? And, are these truly set stages of life in which, once people advance to one stage, they fully and absolutely leave the previous stage behind? Or could people, perhaps, begin to enter “old age” and either relapse into the prime of life (e.g. a mid-life crisis) or decide after a time that this is not an enjoyable way to live and return to youth? And this begs the question, does human agency have any impact on the transitions between these stages or is a progression (or regression) through these stages simply inevitable?
In additon, could these “stages” in fact be mindsets that may tend to occur at certain stages of life but actually could occur at any age? If so, could it be that these mindsets are actually not so absolutely defined but vary based on societal, economic, cultural, racial, physiological and familial factors? Or are they really based purely on age?
And if this is the case, isn’t Aristotle’s explication rather incomplete? Can human life, like human emotion, really be placed neatly into boxes for observation? And in so doing, don’t we over-simplify realities about humanity that are far more complex and involved and thereby ignore vast amounts of information that are necessary in truly understanding, and persuading, human beings?
I think so.
I think your idea here is a very good one, but maybe an apologetic one. That being said, I think what you describe is a much more useful way to think about the groupings Aristotle sets out. The way you have it, he is describing a progression of the mind that is not dependent upon age, allowing for 25-year-old "old souls" and what not.
ReplyDeleteBut are they necessarily progressive? Since they are not dependent on age are they still linear? Does a person have to go from the young mindset to the prime to the elderly, or can they fluctuate? Can they embody the same stage twice? I would be interested to see this idea fleshed out, even in an over-simplified way, that describes a non-linear set of stages a person could be at during any point in time.
I have to agree. Aristotle tends to categorize and generalize things without really saying his purpose for doing so. I always feel as though the topics Aristotle discusses are too complex for generalizations. In these chapters, Aristotle fails to give guidelines for what classifies as young and old as you have said. Aristotle, however, does specify what he considers to be someone’s prime of life. On page 87, he states “the body is in its prime from thirty to five-and-thirty; the mind about forty-nine.” Maybe readers are supposed to assume from this specific information that anyone younger than these ages are young and anyone older than these ages are old. This could be the case, but you have also discussed life expectancy which conflicts with what I have just said as life expectancy has grown dramatically since Aristotle’s time. What was considered to be someone’s prime of life back then may not be the same as what’s considered to be someone’s prime of life today. In addition, you discuss whether these stages of life are in a set order or whether we can move freely through these stages throughout life. In these chapters, I feel as though Aristotle is just trying to generalize the group of people in each stage of life. The actual act of growing through these stages is something different that I think Aristotle did not intend to discuss.
ReplyDeleteI think that Aristotle tends to speak in a much more grand nature than his content actually provides for. All the questions you beg are valid, and the best answer I can provide is that most of his insight on emotion and age should be interpreted as a general means of understanding an audience. There is no legitimate way to categorize the process of aging or emotion in a way we would all be able to agree upon. Each individual is going to believe, and is entitled to believe, that they are having a unique human experience. In reality there is a lot of room for generalization, I think this is evident in things such as personality tests; they provide a GENERAL,testable function of our categorical similarities. To an extent, we are variations of the same thing, experiencing the same thing. But in no way can we lay concrete claims to a notion of factual categorization. Part of you may be the results of your personality test, but it in no way is a full categorization of you as an individual. We go through life, and in a sort of statistical, trend defining way experience similar periods or eras of maturation. I believe Aristotle provides something that can be used to manipulate and appeal to these generalizations, but he definitely does not debunk some all encompassing definition of human life. I would hope that Aristotle would agree with my claims about the applicability of this particular body of his work.
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