get from a particular tragedy may require self-examination, or perhaps
literary criticism and analysis of the tragedy in question.^42
Catharsis
What I termed‘the problem of catharsis’at the start of this chapter is, it
must be said, a different kind of problem from the other two addressed so far.
In the other two cases, we were investigating concerns that are relatively easy
to grasp, independently of the writings of particular philosophers. We
feel sorry for people who don’t exist: how strange! We seem to enjoy
feeling bad: why? However, in the case of catharsis, the main question is:
what did Aristotle mean by‘catharsis’? To state the obvious: we are not
talking about an independent problem, which would have arisen had
Aristotle’sPoeticsnever been written; we are talking about a problem of
interpretation.
To make matters worse, we are talking about a problem of interpretation
which, most writers agree, can never be resolved to anyone’s satisfaction.
The reasons for this are relatively simple. First, although the word‘catharsis’
appears in Aristotle’sdefinition of tragedy (see above), that is the only
place it appears, when used in this way, in the whole of thePoetics.^43
Not only is it not defined or explained; it isn’t even mentioned, except in
that one lonely sub-clause. And although it is standard to translate the
relevant clause as saying that tragedy effects‘through pity and fear the
catharsis of such emotions’–thus implying that catharsis is something
that affects the spectators–a number of commentators have either chal-
lenged this translation or interpretation, arguing that the catharsis is some-
thing that happens not to the spectators at all, but rather something that
applies to the tragic events or action.^44 The remainder of my discussion
assumes that it is the spectators who experience catharsis, but the alter-
native views show the range of interpretations available.
Second, although Aristotle writes about catharsis in other works, he
doesn’t treat it in any detail and it’s an open question whether the kind of
catharsis that he is writing about in other places is the same as the one
that he associates with tragedy. How helpful, for example, is his brief dis-
cussion, in thePolitics, of the catharsis brought about bymusic? Tragedy,
after all, had musical elements; but, in his discussion of catharsis and
music, Aristotle looks to be talking about specific kinds of ritualistic
singing in response to cripplingly ecstatic emotional outbursts.^45 Indeed,
in thePoliticshe writes that he won’t say anything more about catharsis,
because it will be given a fuller treatment‘when we speak of poetry’.^46 If
‘when we speak of poetry’indicates the text we call thePoetics, then either
the fuller discussion of catharsis didn’t survive, or he never wrote it (or,
given that thePoeticsis thought to be teaching material, perhaps he never
Emotions 149