suggested, along the lines that it offers a kind of moral training or edu-
cation, which makes your emotions–and therefore you, as a whole–
‘purer’ in that sense. This is given some plausibility by the fact that, for
Aristotle, virtue consists (at least to some degree) in having the right
kinds of emotional responses to the world: one shouldn’t be afraid of
everything; one shouldn’t be afraid of nothing, and so on.^70 Perhaps,
along these lines, we could imagine the spectator‘getting clearer’about
pity and fear, about the sufferings of others and so on.^71
However, what’s missing is an account (in Aristotle) of why tragedy
should in any way make our pity and our fear more appropriate, or in
what way it would morally educate. Because we have already discussed
the common but problematic view that theatre can train our moral sen-
timents, I shall not rehearse the general arguments here. Suffice to say,
it’s not clear just how it does so, nor why theatrical‘training’wouldfit
with the world of everyday experience–which they would have to, if the
‘education’is to be of any use.^72 So to those general concerns with theatre
as a school for the sentiments, I shall add some problems for this as an
interpretation of Aristotle. First, as with purification, there is the question
of whether virtuous people could experience catharsis. If so, and if the
virtuous man’s emotions are already in harmony, then he has no need of
catharsis in this sense. You don’t need to be taught what you already
know.^73 (As before, one can jettison the notion that the virtuous man
experiences catharsis. But then theatre–as moral education–becomes
something for the morally needy, not for the morally accomplished.)
Second, one of Aristotle’s other remarks on catharsis seems to tell against
this interpretation. When he discusses the effects of music, Aristotle
appears to distinguish clearly between music that is useful in ethical
training and music that causes catharsis. This is the same text in which
Aristotle tells us that catharsis is to be explained in relation to poetry.^74
If, in the case of music, catharsis and moral education are distinct, then
they are probably distinct in the case of poetry. To repeat: the word
‘catharsis’in no obvious waymeans‘moral education’. Given this, and the
clear distinction that Aristotle makes between catharsis and moral education
elsewhere, it seems to me that this interpretation is on tricky ground.^75
Conclusion
We have had the opportunity to investigate three problems, each of
which asks questions about how theatre moves us. It should be clear that
these problems may well be related. Some choose to explain the second
problem with reference to the third (tragic pleasure is the pleasure of
catharsis). More generally, how one approaches the problem of tragic
pleasure may depend on how one has answered the problem of how, in
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