Hamartia

There has been more scholarly blood shed over the meaning of
‘Hamartia’ in in Aristotle’s Poetics than over any other concept in the
history of literature. The term itself receives surprisingly little treatment
in the Poetics. It is introduced rather inconspicuously in Chapter 13
within a discussion of the sort of reversals that best arouse pity and
fear. Moreover, what is striking is that Aristotle offers no technical
definition of the term. In stark contrast to the renderings of reversal
and recognition in the chapters before, hamartia is slipped in without
technical coinage.

The senses of hamartia can be grouped in three main headings: to miss

the mark(literally); to fail in some objects or to make a mistake; and to
offend morally or to do wrong. In Homer the literal sense is much more
common than the others, but by the fifth century the literal sense had
gained much ground, and in tragedy is more frequent, though in
Herodotus and Thucydides the three senses are about equally
represented. However, Aristotle’s usage is rather conspicuous. Otto
Hey counts only six instances of the moral sense: one in the “Politics”;
two in the “Constitution of Athens”, which he discounts as a non-
philosophical work; and three in the Nicomachean Ethics. Bremer
reduces the figure to five disallowing the E.N. instances but allowing
two more in the Rhetoric disallowed by Hey. He counts total 139
instances. Bermer’s conclusion is that ‘from a mere statistical point of
view it is extremely probable’ that Hamartia means mistake. Even if it
were true that the word was used in a 'moral' sense by Aristotle only
once in twenty-five times, the argument is dubious. We may indeed
argue that if Aristotle has a strong preference for one sense of a word,
he would be careful to avoid ambiguity when using it in another. But
anyone familiar with Aristotle knows that he has no such consideration
for his readers, at least in the esoteric works.

However, it is very hard to be certain whether Aristotle meant by

hamartia- a mistake in moral sense or a mistake of fact. Adkins in his
article ‘Aristotle and the best kind of tragedy’ does a thorough analysis
of Poetics. In his treatment of ‘Hamartia’, he considers first Aristotle’s
general usage. ‘There are three main possibilities in which he could
apply the term Hamartia: moral depravity, in which a man does not
know how to behave; insobriety, in which a man knows what he should
do, but has not a stable moral character and so does not always do it;
and mistake of fact, in which a man does not know the minor premises
of practical syllogism’. In particular ignorance in the major premiss
resulting in wickedness and injustice can be called Hamartia. Hamartia
may also be opposed to malice, in this case it refers either to mistake of
fact or insobriety (which can be understood as tragic flaw. Aristotle
does apply sins to actions resulting from insobriety; but when
discussing insobriety itself he says “insobriety is censured not merely as
a hamartia but also a kind of wickedness” i.e. hamartia is contrasted
with malice. Adkins goes on “ though it does not itself prove that
hamartia in Poetics ch-13 means “mistake of fact”; the foregoing
passages … simply indicate that for Aristotle hamartia is not a technical
term for any one of the possible alternatives by which it is …rendered in
English”. Adkins goes on to prove that hamartia in poetics means
‘mistake of fact’ and claims that hamartia is implied in the ‘repulsive’
situation of the very good man coming to grief.
However, successive analysis by scholars such as T.C.W. Swinton has
opened a number of possible meanings for hamartia. Hamartia, does
not only mean ‘mistake of fact’ or ‘ignorance of fact’. It embraces a
wide range of meanings , from acts done by an agent and acts done
through insobriety(a kind of ignorance), to wrong acts done knowingly
for the sake of a greater good. What is common to all these is that the
agent has some excuse for his act, ranging from a complete defense to
various degrees of extenuating circumstances permitting a plea in
mitigation. Hamartia is a general term: it can mean specific acts,
specific decisions leading to acts, or dispositions, which may vary from
some kind of ignorance to some defect in character. The diminution of
indulgence which Aristotle regards as necessary if the agent’s downfall
is not to be flagitious is independent of hamartia but may coincide with
it. Poetics chapter 13 has always been rightly regarded along with
chapter 6, as embodying Aristotle’s most important perceptions in the
criticism of actual Greek tragedies.

In light of these chapters, the idea is clear enough that hamartia will
serve as the causal link that moves the protagonist from ignorance to
recognition, and from fortune to ruin. It is the mechanism that initiates
the movements of reversal and recognition. “Recognition is the
movement from ignorance to knowledge” whereby the protagonist
becomes aware of actual or prospective reversals. Hamartia triggers
the reversal which exposes the severity and calamity of the error. For
instance, in the Trachiniae, Deianeira’s error in mistaking a garment
soaked in poison for one soaked in a love charm, is exposed once her
unwitting choice (hamartia) brings about its disastrous consequences.