Tragedy and comedy

According to Aristotle (Poetics, ch. 4), tragedy originated from the improvisations of the exarchontes (song leaders) of the dithyramb, while comedy originated with the leaders of the "phallic songs."

A dithyramb was a religious hymn in honor of Dionysus, and the Dionysiac origin of tragedy was in antiquity taken for granted, Dionysus being the god of theater as much as the god of wine, vegetation, and fertility.
However, tragedy lost its Dionysiac associations very early, and only one of the preserved plays, indeed the very last tragedy of Euripides, Bacchae, has a Dionysiac content, namely the myth of resistance to the introduction of Dionysus's cult to Thebes, and the god's devastating revenge upon the city. Dithyramb, too, gradually lost its religious connection to Dionysus and developed into choral poetry that drew its subjects from mythology (like tragedy).

Dithyrambs were also regularly performed in the Dionysiac festivals.


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Ideas are not transcendent substances

Natorp's interpretation of Plato's Ideas, far from being an uncritical projection of Kant back onto Plato, is a remarkable attempt to dissociate the theory of ideas from its Aristotelian reception, still dominant today, which sees the ideas as transcendent substances, and to argue that Plato's theory is basically a theory of explanation.

In particular, Natorp argues that Plato's ideas are simply explanations, or laws, rather than substances; and what the ideas explain is in the first instance the possibility and nature of thought and knowledge, and only as a consequence the nature of reality. Natorp emphasizes the broadly Kantian origins of his approach, but he takes issue with Kant on a number of crucial points, and this not least is what allows him to defend a transcendental interpretation of Plato's theory of ideas.

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Hypertextual imagery

Gregory Ulmer suggests that image category systems will provide the new logic under electracy and that each person must redefine Aristotle's commonplaces in light of their own experiences and the internet's support for images. Then we will be able to forge imagery that can support collective thinking.

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