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I usually ask questions like this on Christianity.SE, but I've got a feeling it's better suited here. And just to be clear, I want only Natural Law (Aristotle, Aquinas, etc) answers pointing to objective truth.

Poetry has gone through many phases and fads over the centuries, but most of it, I believe has rhymed. I think that the rhyming has something to do with memorization of the poems, but I'd imagine one could get the same effect through tropes, meter and other cues.

Still, a vast majority of human poetry has rhymed. So it is possible that not only does good poetry ryhme, but good poetry should rhyme?

Peter Turner
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    This question seems more appropriate for the [English SE](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/poetry). – Geremia Jul 21 '15 at 08:13
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    @ger I don't think they answer Natural Law questions over there. Also, why is there no Natural Law tag, this is really a philosophy site, right? – Peter Turner Jul 21 '15 at 12:15
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    Why would rhyming have anything to do with natural law??? – virmaior Jul 21 '15 at 12:37
  • @virmaior because it deals with form and purpose? Whether it is in the nature of poetry to be rhyming or whether the highest quality of poetry is that it rhymes. – Peter Turner Jul 21 '15 at 12:39
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    What leads you to believe rhyming is the essence of poetry as informed by nature? Rhyming is very easy in Japanese but not a major part of poetry. Plenty of western poetry is not based on rhymes... – virmaior Jul 21 '15 at 13:33
  • @virmaior There's a poem by G.K. Chesteron, I believe (at least I read it in Gilbert magazine) called "The Poetry Should Rhyme" I don't remember most of it and I can't find it right now, but I want to know if the word "Should" in this case indicates an objective moral truth. – Peter Turner Jul 21 '15 at 14:00
  • I thought Aquinas framework of thought is called Thomism rather than Natural Law? – Mozibur Ullah Jul 21 '15 at 23:24
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    @MoziburUllah Aquinas's framework = Thomism (except thomism maybe broader for important reasons). But there are a lot of species of natural law that aren't necessarily Aquinas's or brands of Thomism. Natural law is partially an opposite of positive law and partially an idea about how we can infer elements of morality from nature's organizational structure. – virmaior Jul 22 '15 at 15:54
  • So....the idea going to the linguistic site did not come to your mind before you come to this philosophy site...Whatever the language is, for example Russians or Chinese, English, it goes out without saying, the poems with good rhyme sound very good to me. I'm sorry it seems I get lost by your intention.... –  Jul 22 '15 at 16:00
  • @vir that's a good assessment, Aristotle noted that laws were "part political and part natural". My questions is whether poetry is "part words and part natural". – Peter Turner Jul 22 '15 at 16:04
  • @ken the question is about whether the philosophy Natural Law applied to poetry. I think this would closed as a subjective question on language sites. – Peter Turner Jul 22 '15 at 16:06
  • So I tried to say softly **I have no idea if the -- Natural Law -- thing - has anything to do with the poetry rhyme --**. And you are just talking about only the poetry rhyme. Is a song with good rhyme against the -- Natural Law ---?? –  Jul 22 '15 at 16:12
  • I'm asking, "do poems work best if they rhyme" and the philosophical framework I'd want an answer to be would be in the Natural Law. And I think most people would most songs to be poetry if their dividing line is "prose" vs "poetry". – Peter Turner Jul 22 '15 at 16:36
  • Natural law in its original form due to Aristotle, Acquinas, etc. is a fallacious doctrine, as Hume pointed out, because there is no valid path from is to ought http://www.firstthings.com/article/2013/03/is-ought-and-natures-laws To make the discussion meaningful we need a more modern school of thought that postulates some specific nexus between "nature" and "law", that addresses the Humean objection. – Conifold Jul 22 '15 at 21:51

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I'm not an Aristotle expert, but according to Wikipedia, he did discuss rhyme in his book Rhetoric.

The problem with a general law like the one you mention, is that, unlike Aristotle, who referenced everything to the culture of Athens, we live in a global and aesthetically diverse world, which includes any number of non-rhyming poetic traditions in a variety of different languages.

If you wanted a properly Aristotelian account, you'd need to elaborate on the function of poetry, and draw a link between rhyme and that function (which it seems you've made a stab at with the idea of memorability). You might also consider making it more general and generalizable --perhaps dealing with the overall idea of structure rather than rhyme in particular.

Chris Sunami
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  • That's kind of where I was going with it, wondering if it could be proven that in cultures that have poetic traditions, the best ones (i.e. the ones that manage to preserve themselves, not the most beautiful) have a tendency to rhyme, and if that has something to do with a the Natural Law. – Peter Turner Jul 21 '15 at 15:07
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    I'm in sympathy with your inclinations --I personally perceive a moral component to aesthetics --but you're not going to find much consensus on aesthetic rules in the philosophical tradition. – Chris Sunami Jul 22 '15 at 16:57
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Since your question is inspired by what Chesterton thinks about poetry, lets look at what Chesterton says about poetry in Everlasting Man:

It is even more like saying that the thing we call poetry arose as the result of certain customs; such as that of an ode being officially composed to celebrate the advent of spring; or that of a young man rising at a regular hour to listen to the skylark and then writing his report on a piece of paper. It is quite true that young men often become poets in the spring; and it is quite true that when once there are poets, no mortal power can restrain them from writing about the skylark. But the poems did not exist before the poets. The poetry did not arise out of the poetic forms. In other words, it is hardly an adequate explanation of how a thing appeared for the first time to say it existed already.

(Emphasis added)

From this quote, it seems that Chesterton thinks that the order is:

  1. People felt inspired
  2. People, being inspired, wrote in language that was appropriate for their inspiration. This sort of writing became known as poetry.
  3. We extracted poetic forms (such as rhyming and meter schemes) from what poetry was successful.

I couldn't find the poem to which you referred either, but from this it seems that first we have some notion of poems being good, incidentally some might rhyme.

James Kingsbery
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In regards to your post, I'll try to go through it piecemeal and hopefully answer your question and clarify any potential misconceptions you might have.

The first part:

I want only Natural Law (Aristotle, Aquinas, etc) answers pointing to objective truth.

The statement above is a little bit "mixed mode," though easy enough to determine what was intended.

It's still very much a debate whether or not Aquinas' interpretation of Aristotle's natural law theory is accurate, but certainly both theories of natural law are theories of ethics. And, in that context, I'm understanding you use 'objective' in the term objective truth to be "morally objective" (eg "murder" is wrong.") Out of context, in a conversation about philosophy, if you used the term "objective truth" I would think you meant "there are no squared circles" or something along those lines.

Your comment clarifies this a bit:

There's a poem by G.K. Chesteron, I believe (at least I read it in Gilbert magazine) called "The Poetry Should Rhyme" I don't remember most of it and I can't find it right now, but I want to know if the word "Should" in this case indicates an objective moral truth

In common language, people use the word 'should' in many circumstances to indicate just the opposite of objectivity - moral or otherwise.. When you want an audience to know you mean "morally/dutifully obligated" you'd use "ought."

If Chesteron did mean "ought" instead of "should", I think he'd have a hard time rationalizing this standpoint under any normative moral framework, primarily because he'd have to:

  1. Prove that poetry (or the process of creating poetry?) was a moral object/activity - i.e. "a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons."
  2. That in order for poetry to be moral (and not immoral) it must rhyme.

Otherwise, the statement is essentially meaningless from a moral standpoint; no different from "tables ought have legs."

Sampark Sharma
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wahwahwah
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