Aristotle's Conception of Tragic Catharsis

Q.    Aristotle's Conception of Tragic Catharsis:

Or

Aristotle's Views On The Function And Emotional Effects Of Tragedy

Ans. The term 'Catharsis' has been used only once in the course of the Poetics by Aristotle in the fourth chapter. Yet there is hardly any other term which has given rise to so many different interpretations and controversies but catharsis. The real difficulty arises out of the fact that Aristotle does not define or explain this term. Perhaps, he explained it in the second book of the Poetics, which is lost. The term has been interpreted by critics in the light of its use in Aristotle's other works, such as his the Politics and the Ethics. It has also been noted that the term 'Catharsis' has three meanings: it could mean "purgation" or "purification", or "clarification". Critics have interpreted Aristotle's views in the light of each of these three meanings but it has not done much to solve the difficulty. Only one thing has been agreed upon by the critics that tragedy arouses pity and fear. But still there is difference of opinion as to how the arousal of these emotions lead to 'tragic pleasure'.

The term 'Catharsis' occurs in Aristotle's definition of tragedy:

“Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper Katharsis, or purgation, of these emotions.”

We see that the term is also linked with the concept of pity and fear. It is, therefore, necessary to consider the meanings of pity and fear as connected with tragedy.

The terms, 'pity' and 'fear' are closely connected in Aristotelian theory of catharsis. There are different types of fear. Fear can be centred on an individual, in the form of some vague feeling of anxiety and insecurity. It could be the outcome of facing some inexplicable event, or some disastrous and awful incident. It may also arise out of the feeling of guilt, or rather recognition of this guilt in ourselves, when we see it portrayed in someone else. It is apparent that tragedy can easily encompass all these different forms of fear, either single or collective.

Aristotle says that pity is occasioned by undeserved misfortune on the hero, and fear by the misfortune of one like ourselves. Anything that causes fear in us if it happens to us, causes pity in us if it happens to others.

Pity and fear are two related emotions. We know that pity turns to fear when the object is so nearly related to us because in this way the suffering seems to be our own. Fear is derived from the feeling that similar suffering might befall us. It is because of that the tragic character is 'like ourselves' but at the same time slightly it is idealised. In such a case, we feel pity for the suffering of the innately good person, while having a sympathetic fear for one who is so like ourselves. Aristotle everywhere says that pity and fear are the characteristic and necessary tragic emotions.

The essential tragic effect depends on maintaining the intimate alliance between pity and fear. According to Aristotle, pity alone should not be evoked by tragedy; Butcher says that the requirement of Aristotle is a combination of pity and fear. Butcher also observes that the tragic fear is impersonal in the artistic sense. In reading or seeing a tragedy, one does not really fear that one would be placed in similar circumstances, or be overtaken by the same calamities that overtake the tragic hero. But there is a feeling of horror or of vague foreboding. The tension and excited expectation with which we wait for the catastrophe derives from our sympathy with the hero, with whom we tend to identify ourselves.

1- The term 'Catharsis' has been interpreted by some critics, in medical terms, meaning ‘purgation’. In medical terms purgation means the partial removal of excess of "humours". The health of the body depends upon the ideal a true balance of the humours. Thus purgation of the emotions of pity and fear does not mean the removal of these emotions, but to a healthy and balanced proportion. Catharsis in this sense, denotes a pathological effect on the soul which is comparable to the effect of medicine on the body.

i.          Like curing the like: Some critics who the medical sense of the term Catharsis, explain this process of purgation in the light of "homeopathic" treatment, in which a little substance of something the feelings of pity and fear in the drama cures the body of an excess of the same thing. The feelings of pity and fear in real life it is a case of the 'like curing the like'. A passage in the Politics explains this effect, where the effects of music on some morbid states of mind are healthy. Aristotle says that the emotions should not be repressed; they must be allowed an outlet, so that the mental equilibrium is maintained. In the Poetics, Aristotle refers to the curing of religious frenzy through catharsis. According to Plato, a crying child is rocked to sleep by singing a song. The outward restlessness allays or cures the inward restlessness, and brings about calm. Pity and fear are artificially produced in tragedy, and it expels the excess of these emotions lying in us. The stage, according to them, provided a harmless and pleasurable outlet for instincts which demand satisfaction, and which can be indulged here more fearlessly than in real life. And the pleasurable calm follows it when the passion is spent, and an emotional cure is felt by the spectator. Freud's theory of psychological cure of neurosis is similar to this, when he says that a neurotic can be cured when he is made to recall his painful childhood experiences.

ii.         Unlike curing the unlike: In the neo classical period, the medical interpretation of the term took on an "allopathic" treatment means unlike curs the unlike. The arousing of pity and fear, brought about a purgation or evacuation of unlike emotions e.g. anger and pride. The sight of the incidents aroused pity and fear the spectator is purged of those emotions which caused the incidents of suffering in the tragedy. If the suffering in the play is caused by anger or pride, the spectator is cured of these emotions.

Dryden in his preface to Troilus and Cressida, says: "it is not the abasement of pity and fear, but of such aggressive and evil emotions as pride and anger through the feeding and watering of the soft hearted emotions."

2. Some other critics have tried to give a psychological explanation to the term 'Catharsis'. Herbert Read considers it in the light of a safety valve. He thinks that the tragedy gives a free outlet to the emotions of pity and fear. The result is a feeling of emotional relief. This, one notes, is quite closely related to the purgation theory.

I. A. Richards puts forward an ingenious theory. He says that “the emotion of pity is an impulse to advance, while fear is an impulse to withdraw. In tragedy both these impulses are blended, harmonised into balance. Emotional excess is thus brought to a balance.” However, the theory holds good only for the emotions of pity and fear, and it restricts the range of tragic emotions to these.

Another important theory of the interpretation of catharsis is the ‘ethical interpretation of catharsis.’ The ethical interpretation of 'Cathar-sis' regards the tragic process as a lustration of the soul, which results in a more philosophical attitude to life and suffering. The spectator sees the largeness of suffering and disaster represented on stage and consequently realises that his personal emotions are insignificant in front of the sufferings of the hero. So, it brings him to a balanced view of things. Man sees himself in proportion to the large design of the universe.

Another group of critics regard that the effect of tragedy is to ‘harden’ or 'temper' the emotions. Just as soldiers become hardened against death after seeing it so many times on the battlefield, so our constant contact with tragedy on stage hardens us against pity and fear in real life. This idea is, undoubtedly, a bit far-fetched, if not totally absurd.

3- One meaning of Catharsis is 'purification'. Some critics have interpreted the term in the light of this meaning. These critics do not seem to be agreed with the interpretation of Catharsis in the light of medical terminology, so, they reject it for instance. Humphry House, says that Aristotle's concept of Catharsis was not as a medical term. He interprets the word to mean a kind of "moral conditioning", which the spectator undergoes. He comments that purgation means a kind of 'cleansing'. This cleansing may be a quantitative evacuation or a qualitative change in the body, in the restoration of the proper equilibrium of emotions. In this context he says:

"A tragedy arouses pity and fear through worthy and adequate stimuli; it controls them by directing them to the right objects in the right way; and exercises them, within the limits of the play, as the emotions of the good man would be exercised.……. they subside ……. again after the play is over, it is a more ‘trained’ ……… than before...Our responses are brought nearer to those of the good and wise man!"

Catharsis results in emotional health. Thus Catharsis is a moral conditioning. It is a purification of the excess and defect in our emotions, so that emotional equilibrium can be restored. According to Humphry House, Aristotle's whole doctrine of catharsis only makes sense if we realise that the proper development and balance of the emotions depend upon the habitual direction of them towards worthy objects.

Another important critic of Aristotle, Butcher, too, agrees with the purification theory. He observes that Catharsis involves "not only the idea of emotional relief, but also the further idea of purifying the emotions to be relieved." He says, that the poets have found out how the transport of human pity and human fear might, under the excitation of art, be dissolved in joy, and the pain escapes in the purified tide of human sympathy." Thus a tragic experience, on stage, purifies the feeling of pity and fear of its morbid content.

3- There are some other eminent critics who believe that the implications of Catharsis are to be found in the Poetics itself so there is no need to refer to the Politics or the Ethics they believe in the clarification theory of catharsis, they think that While writing about the imitative arts, Aristotle points out that the pleasure in the imitative arts is connected with learning and pleasure does not come from joy alone; even the pictures of dead bodies can give pleasure if well executed. This idea clearly shows that pleasure is linked with learning. It is a paradox that even the ugly and the repellent can and do give pleasure if well imitated and a similar paradox lies in tragedy. The incidents of tragedy are painful, they might present the horrible situations of a man blinding himself, or a woman killing her husband, or a mother killing her child. Though such events would horrify us and repel us in real life ; yet, in tragedy, they offer us a special kind of pleasure. And it is the pleasure peculiar to tragedy.

Aristotle himself explains that tragedy has its own kind of pleasure, and we must seek from it only "the pleasure proper to it". So, the function of tragedy is to provide the pleasure peculiar to it. This pleasure involves the presentation of events which arouse pity and fear. According to this theory, Catharsis becomes an indication of the function of tragedy, and not of its emotional effects on the audience. Catharsis is related to the incidents of the tragedy, not to the emotions of pity and fear evoked in the audience.

Tragic pleasure rises from the fact that the art of imitation produces the sort of pleasure which comes from learning. This learning comes from our discovery of a certain relationship between the particular events presented in the imitation and certain universal elements embodied in it. For this purpose the poet selects and orders his material according to the laws of probability and necessity. He presents "what might be", more than "what is". This is what makes a poet more philosophical than a historian, for he makes the particular into the general: he deals with the universal. The events are presented as free of all accidentals, transients, and chances, otherwise, it might obscure their true significance. Hence, tragedy brings a better understanding; it brings the spectator "face to face with the universal law".

The tragic poet selects incidents embodying pity and fear and then "presents them in such a way as to bring out the probable or necessary principles that unite them in a single action and determine their relation to this action as it proceeds from its beginning to its end. When the spectator has witnessed a tragedy of this type, he will have learned something; the incidents will be clarified in the sense that their relation, in terms of universals, will have become manifest and the act of learning will be enjoyable."

In the light of this theory we can say that, Catharsis refers to the incidents of the tragedy rather than to the psychology of the audience. Catharsis is not purgation of emotions, nor is it a purification of emotions. It refers to the way in which the poet has presented his incidents of pity and fear, to rise from the particular to the universal. Catharsis is not the catharsis of the audience; it is the catharsis of pity and fear themselves. Indeed, Aristotle does not refer to the audience in the definition of tragedy. It becomes inevitable that he is talking of the work of tragedy itself. Of tragedy Aristotle says: "We must not demand of tragedy any and every kind of pleasure, but only that which is proper to it.” Thus the pleasure peculiar to tragedy comes from pity and fear. And the problem of any writer is to suitably formulate the pleasure peculiar to each genre of poetry. It leads to an understanding of the universal law governing the universe, and produces the pleasure peculiar to tragedy. In this way, Catharsis takes on an intellectual tone, rather than a medical or religious tone.

The purgation theory and the purification theory of Catharsis have their obvious limitations. They cannot explain the whole process involved in Catharsis. A fundamental drawback of these theories is that these theories are concerned with the effect of tragedy on the audience, ' i. e., with the psychology of the audience. Both views concentrate not on what tragedy says but what tragedy may do to us. They treat "pity and fear" as a reference to something in the audience rather than to something (scenes and elements) in the play. In actuality, Aristotle was writing a treatise on the art of poetry, and was concerned more with the technique of writing poetry than with audience psychology. As theories of psychology, the two theories are not bad in themselves, but it is doubtful if it explains the term as Aristotle intended it to mean.

Modern critics advocate the clarification theory. This theory refers to the incidents of tragedy rather than to the reaction of the audience It is more concerned with what tragedy is; i.e., with the nature of tragedy. According to this theory, purgation or purification is only incidental to the pleasure of tragedy. But comprehension of the relation of the particular to the universal, as embodied in tragedy, brings about a peculiar pleasure. It is an intellectual pleasure which lies in realising the relationship between the hamartia of the hero and the suffering which results, the relationship between character and destiny. There is design incorporated into the tragedy. The alleviation of pity and fear is a 'by product' of the learning process, not the chief object of tragedy.

After the above conclusion, We come to conclusion that no doubt Aristotle is a great critic, and what he said centuries ago will continue to influence thinking as it has been doing all this time. It is unfortunate that he has not explained some of the terms which seem very significant to his central thesis. The term 'Catharsis,' for instance, has been interpreted so variously, by the critics that it is difficult to come to an agreement as to what Aristotle really meant. Of the theories advanced to explain Catharsis, the clarification theory appears to be the most acceptable, perhaps, for it tends to relate Catharsis to the work rather than to the psychology of the audience. And, after all, Aristotle was writing on the art of poetry, not about the effect of poetry. But all the same, the last word on Catharsis has not yet been said.

Points to Remember:

1.                  Introduction.

2.                  Different interpretation and controversies.

3.                  Tragedy arouses pity and fear.

4.                  Theory of purgation.

5.                  Purification theory.

6.                  Psychological theory.

7.                  Clarification theory.

8.                  Modern critics.

9.                  Conclusion. 

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