43 The only other mention of the word describes the‘purification’of Orestes’madness as part of a
tragic plot. SeePoetics55b.
44 Nehamas (1992) and Else (1957) give different versions of this alternative reading.
45 Compare Golden (1973), Nehamas (1992) and Janko (1992) on this question.
46 Sometimes translated as‘in thePoetics’, for obvious reasons; seePoliticsVIII.7, 1431b, pp. 37–9.
See Halliwell (1986: 190) for discussion.
47 Compare e.g. Taplin (1995: 23) and Halliwell (1986: 200f).
48 A further option, endorsed by some of the French tragedians, was that either pity or fear
would do; Lessing argues strongly against this position. See Lessing (1962: Sections 75–6,
p. 182).
49 For a flavour of this, see Lessing (1962: Section 74–75, pp. 175–82) and (1962: Section 78,
pp. 191–2). Halliwell (2002: ch. 7) gives a detailed reading of Aristotle’s account of pity.
50 Recent scholarship, it is fair to say, favours a‘pity and fear only’solution; but see Schaper (1968:
136 – 7) and Janko (1992: 349–350), for an argument that‘a wider range of feelings’is invoked.
Lessing (1962: Sections 74–75, pp. 175–82) tries to reconcile both positions, by suggesting that
pity and fear accompany all the emotions that we feel for the characters; pity, in the sense of
feeling what the character feels, makes it possible to get (say) angry and our pity is related to the
fear that what happens to the character might happen to us.
51 Poetics53b.
52 PoliticsVIII.7, 1431b.
53 See Heath (1996).
54 See Chapter 2 for general discussion. Oncatharsisin particular, compare Halliwell (1986) with
Nehamas (1992).
55 See Nehamas (1992: 306).
56 Quoted in Halliwell (1986: 184).
57 See Halliwell (1986: 350–6).
58 See, e.g. the discussion of Aristotle on‘homeopathic’treatment in Halliwell (1986: 192–3). The
claim is that curing pity and fearusingpity and fear (following the medical‘purging’metaphor)
wouldn’t have made sense in the light of Aristotle’s own medical theory, even although others
frequently made use of it.
59 It is true, of course, that the metaphor of catharsis might somehow have been intended to
combine purging and purification: getting rid of some and purifying the rest. In the absence of a
compelling account of such a combination, I won’t pursue this here.
60 It is associated with the pioneering work of J. Bernays, discussed in Janko (1992).
61 Quoted in Balme (2008: 76).
62 E.g. Lennard and Luckhurst (2001: 62); Balme (2008: 72) (although Balme considers other
interpretations elsewhere).
63 Exceptions include Nehamas (1992) and Heath (1996).
64 Nietzsche, to be sure, thought that nineteenth-century Europe was, in general, suffering from
too much pity; he takes Aristotle to be offering a‘purging’account of catharsis and prescribing
tragedies precisely in order to curb the dangerous excesses of pity. See, e.g.Antichrist,
section 7.
65 See Aristotle’sNicomachean EthicsII.6 1106b, pp. 40–1.
66 Compare Heath (1996) with Lear (1992: 316–7) and Halliwell (1986: 191).
67 SeeRhetoric, 1382a–1383b.
68 Lear (1992: 317); for more general criticism of the‘purging’view, see Golden (1973).
69 D. H. Lawrence’sTouch and Go(III. i. 72). I feel as though I know exactly what he means, but it’s
not easy to explain.
70 See Aristotle’sNicomachean EthicsII.6 1106b, pp. 40–1.
71 Nussbaum (1992: 280–3). One could present‘moral education’interpretations, not as a species
of‘purification’, but under a heading of their own–and indeed, some do. But because‘catharsis’
doesn’t mean‘moral education’, interpreters who favour the latter as a kind of interpretation
tend to develop it out of the notion of‘purification’.
72 See Nehamas (1992: 303–4) for more on this problem, specifically in relation to Aristotle.158 From the Stage to the World