Abstract

The parallel between art and history in Aristotle, demonstrates that history records what has happened while art represents what may happen or ought to happen. More than dealing with the real facts (as they have happened), poetry deals with the possible (with what could have happened). In the habit of the scientist thus, the poet necessarily lacks a recognizable concept of the ideal (of what the world is in itself). Thus epistemic access into the real essences of things is impossible. All historical succession obeys recurring images in bodily forms. Material reductionism is obvious here through the sentiment of a spiritual exaltation caused and materialised in infinity. This parallel confirms this succession as the transformation of the inner self into the social. Certainly, events must not fall within the domain of the accidental but must respond to the linear, scientific logic. However, Aristotle is well aware that even when one succeeds in identifying still more general laws in science, one will need an explanation in terms of something which does not itself require to be explained. According to Marx, human emancipation suggests the transformation of the material into the social. However, whatever advance made as regards any thesis about reality, is open to a «Why». One needs to introduce the logically impossible concept to the said end (dismissing «Why») as required by the explanation of a different order. Hence, we understand the scope their Works allow to attain knowledge of the Absolute as they attempt in vain to supply us with irrefutable propositions to help us attain this end.