A rchive Date
[ 20-11-2005 ]
Category
[ Philosophy ]
sub-Categoy
[ Greek ]
|
[http://www-students.biola.edu/~joe/catharsis.html
Aristotle: Catharsis
The orator of the greatest military conquest in history was tutored by a genius. Do we then concentrate on the written works of Alexander the Great, or do we investigate the written sources from which he studied? The Lyceum which became more popular than his teacher’s school, Plato’s Academy, is evidence for why Aristotle is considered by many to be the greatest of philosophers (Turner 1). What did Aristotle mean by purgation (or catharsis), was it that after witnessing a tragedy we feel relief, having released our suppressed emotions?
The scope of Aristotle’s influence and its worthiness for study encompasses many areas. Since Alexander was only 13 when he was first tutored by Aristotle, he must owe his success to the material that Aristotle gave him (Magill 81 and Taran 380). Jesus gives distinction teacher and student relationships: "A student is not above his teacher… it is enough for the student to be like his teacher…" (Matthew 10:24-25).
Alexander’s military conquests impacted what would become the intertestimonial period, out of which Christianity spawned (Magill 81). Marcus Aurelius ordered Polyaenus to consult Alexander’s strategies before Rome’s campaign against the Parthians (Hammond 23). After analysis, a modern reader can also benefit from what Alexander learned, despite the effort of modern scholars suggesting that Aristotle was only one of many tutors which influenced Alexander (Enos 27).
If we then credit Aristotle for Alexander’s achievements, then on the basis stated above, it would seem logical to credit Plato for Aristotle, and Socrates for Plato, ad infintum. Are there things found in Aristotle’s writings which contrast Plato? Aristotle has been thought by some to be critical of some of Plato’s ideas, yet Plato interestingly referred to Aristotle as "the mind of the school" (Magill 81 and Rackham IX). When founding their respective schools however, we find that they had the similar purposes for doing so.
Plato founded the Academy in 386 BC and designed it to be a school for philosopher rulers. Aristotle’s Lyceum, also referred to as the "peripatetic" school became the seat educating the sons of the ruling classes (Enos 27). Both philosophers believed that they had a duty to the state: "Although Aristotle’s political alliances would differ from Plato’s, Aristotle shared the assumption that the philosopher’s best function was to advise rulers of state" (Enos 1026).
Aristotle’s definition of tragedy differs from Plato, who saw it as a "expression of corrosive despair over the possibility of true happiness" (Halliwell 12). Aristotle’s catharsis differs sharply with Plato as well. "Aristotle may have explicitly introduced catharsis to block the Platonic charge that the arousal of emotions by tragedy tended dangerously to increase susceptibility to the same emotions in life" and In chapter 9 of Poetics Aristotle asserts that poetry is more significant than history, in doing this "Aristotle directly contradicts Plato’s derogation of art as an inferior appeal to human emotions" (Halliwell 18 and Groden 41). Aristotle’s method is both inductive and deductive, while Plato’s is deductive (Turner 3).
As Aristotle studied under Plato, Plato was both a friend and a student of Socrates (Wilson 2). Historically we have found a few similarities in the life of Aristotle and his philosophical grandfather, Socrates. The death of Socrates as recorded in The Apology and The Phaedo reveals that the same capital charge which led to the death of Socrates, led to the death of Aristotle (Magill 82). After Alexander’s death, Aristotle was a scapegoat for anti-Macedonian feeling, "the attack, like that of Socrates before, took the form of a prosecution for impiety" (Rackham XI). The charges against Socrates might be true if he had exceptional influence over children.
His dialogue with a young boy named Lysis shows us the way Socrates persuaded children: "… What about the whole Athenian people? When they believe you have enough knowledge, won’t they all entrust their affairs to you" (Wilson V)? Aristotle was not completely dependent upon Plato, although some similarities exist, and interestingly some apparently must exist between Aristotle and Socrates.
The universal impact of Aristotle can be summed up here: "the half-understood words of Aristotle have become laws of thought to other ages" (Turner 8). It is logical to examine who influenced him and then move on to his unique accomplishments.
Aristotle studied from the age of 17 until Plato’s death, 20 years later (Rackham IX). Plato felt that civil unrest and corruption would continue until man understood the purpose of life and society, and only philosophy could bring this understanding (Zeller 43).
Plato felt that the political parties ruling over him were corrupt and self-seeking (Zeller 217). Besides Plato’s political motives, Aristotle’s family and his contemporaries also influenced him. His father was a physicist, so his love was in the sciences and the profession of medicine was "in a sense hereditary in the family" (Turner 1 and Grene 3). The courses offered at the Lyceum were influenced because the competing school Instructor Socrates offered Rhetoric, which was among: philosophical dialectic, ethics, politics, sciences (Enos 27). This is significant because we only have fragments of Aristotle’s philosophy, most of which were probably class notes taken in the 1st century by a student at the surviving Lyceum
(Enos 28).
Aristotle used theater to express his philosophical views. "Aristotle points to the similarity of philosophy and theater as directed toward ‘seeing." Both philosophy and theater are concerned with revealing truth beyond the empirical level, according to the ancient Greek conception of truth as unconcealment. "For philosophy, ‘seeing’ is contemplation, while for theater it is catharsis" (Tassi). We have reasons for our study of catharsis, but the question arises why Aristotle deemed it worthy of study. The "founder of logic" (Turner 3) considers poetic philosophy the highest level of what we call Aristotelian philosophy; logic, metaphysics, physics, mathematics, practical philosophy, and poetic being the highest. And as noted above, he used theater to convey his philosophy. Poetic philosophy is the study of poetry and the other fine arts. To Aristotle, Poetry enacts real life enactment in life as well as fiction (Halliwell 8). The imaginative enactment of experience is how Aristotle employ’s mimesis as the "human propensity to explore the understanding of the word-above all, of human experience itself through fictive representation.
"Aristotle’s theory of artistic mimesis describes a process involving the use by different art forms of different means of representation to an audience, and different levels of moral and ethical behavior as objects of the artistic representation" (Groden 41). Terrell Butler of BYU feels that "art and history can only express the wholeness that is their end by excluding the mimetic relations, which, because they are inextricably bound up with desire, create disequilibrium, undifferentiation, and tragic disorder …" (Butler). Through our careful study of mimesis, we find that our analysis of Aristotelian version of mimetic tragedy clarifies his Poetics (Murnaghan).
In the setting of tragedy, what does catharsis depend upon? The human flaw that causes or evokes tragedy is the idea of a change of fortune to the protagonist, the portrayal of human fallibility "for which hamartia is Aristotle’s chosen expression in the Poetics" (Halliwell 15). The sufferings caused by hamartia is the ground of pity and fear (Halliwell 17). "Hamartia embraces all the ways in which human vulnerability, at its extremes, exposes itself, not through sheer, arbitrary misfortune… but through the erring involvement of tragic figures in their own sufferings." The specific emotions of pity and fear are then realized.
Emotions occur as a result of experience, and "the emotions represented and evoked in tragedy are pity and fear" (Groden 41 and Halliwell 15). Although pity and fear are painful feelings, when they occur in mimesis they are used for the "production of intellectual pleasure as its goal" and Halliwell would agree "in contemplation of these phenomena (speaking of the effects of tragedy), it succeeds in affording an experience which deeply fulfils and enhances the whole mind."
So what then is catharsis?
There are three views of catharsis: moral, medical and cognitive. Professor Del Hanson of Biola University holds to the medical, Aesthetic usage of catharsis. Critics of this view would state that "Catharsis for Aristotle occurs through participation in the rhythmic movement presented in tragedy, not simply through contemplation of form… catharsis occurs through the separation of the human from nature in time" (Fynsk). The modern view is based on the cognitive purpose for catharsis.
The moral view was held from the 16th century up until the 19th century. It maintains from Nicomachean Ethics that the goal of catharsis is to remove pity and fear (purgation theory) (Groden 42). The medical view from the Politics is that music effects a medical cure by purging an excess of emotion. The cognitive theory is the basis of our first learning experiences that all human beings derive pleasure from, so that the function of mimesis is pleasure we know to be learning. "Emotions are cognitively based responses to experience … that pity and fear are … necessary emotions to be felt towards the suffering characters of tragedy" (Halliwell 18). Notice thought that the cognitive view doesn’t try to remove pity and fear, it just states that they are "based responses."
A fourth interpretation of catharsis was used by John Milton in his preface to "Samson Agonistes." This is the view that catharsis is purification in a religious sense, enlightenment in an intellectual sense or homeopathic purging" (Hale 1). A summary of Milton’s argument that Aristotle didn’t intend therapeutic health is found here: "sour against sour, salt to remove salt humors. Aversion therapy or psychoanalysis would be modern parallels. But one and all, they are methods to restore health, they are not health itself. They are the process, not the product" (Hale 3). So Milton would also agree to the cognitive view. Milton would say that the death of Christ would then be the ultimate historical example of catharsis to the Christian.
Pity then is an emotion toward someone who suffered an undeserved misfortune, and fear is the emotion we realize the one who suffers this misfortune is someone like ourselves. Aristotle defines these terms better in the Rhetoric chapters 5 and 8. In that context, pity is "a kind of pain excited by the sight of evil, deadly or painful, which befalls one who does not deserve it; an evil which one might expect to come upon himself or one of his friends, and when it seems near" (Freese 225). Looking closer at Aristotle’s use of pity, we find how humans experience it: "Men also pity those who resemble them in age, character, habits, position or family; for all such relations make a man more likely to think that their misfortune may befall him as well" (Freese 229). Aristotle found this to be true in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex when he refers to it in Poetics chapter 11. He even praises Sophocles in Poetics 19 as translated from the original Greek by Halliwell.
According to the medical view, fear is an emotion which catharsis intends to purge us of. Aristotle’s own definition of fear in the Rhetoric: "a painful or troubled feeling caused by the impression of an imminent evil that causes destruction or pain … that is why even the signs of such misfortunes are fearful, for the fearful thing itself appears to be near at hand, and danger is the approach of anything fearful" (Freese 78). Finding a similar usage in Oedipus, where the highest social "animal" in the play’s settings experiences the hubris, "so that whenever it is preferable that the audience should feel afraid, it is necessary to make them think they are likely to suffer, by reminding them that others greater than they have suffered and showing that their equals are suffering or have suffered, and that at the hands of those from whom they did not expect it, in which a manner and at times when they did not think it likely" (Freese 207).
A specific modern medical view of catharsis is used by Psychotherapists to help individuals with emotional problems "through the use of techniques that build on the natural processes of catharsis" (Guinagh 1). The modern view of catharsis includes the emotions of fear, anger and "sadness through crying" (Guinagh 5). Through clinical examination, patients usually feel less tense after a cathartic experience (Guinagh 7). My criticism of this is these modern views were redefined by Freud as "abreaction" and this distorts what Aristotle’s philosophy reveals about human experience. The logical conclusion is that catharsis is only the name used for this recent medical discovery revolving around human emotions, an application of what we find in Greek Tragedy.
Psychotherapists began looking at tragedy for therapeutic purposes after Freud published his observations in "Oedipus Rex." In Freud’s words, "… in the story of King Oedipus… his destiny moves us because it might have been ours…" Freud Continues "while the poet, as he unravels the past, brings to light the guilt of Oedipus, he is at the same time compelling us to recognize our own inner mind, in which these same impulses, though suppressed, are still to be found" (Freud 1805-1806). A similar view is that Aristotle implies that after witnessing a tragedy we feel better, not worse – not depressed but somehow elated. "We take a kind of pleasure in the spectacle of a noble man being abased" (Kennedy 1148). Freud’s recognition of catharsis in Oedipus Rex is no breakthrough, Aristotle discovered this 2500 years ago. The only difference is that Freud distorts it when he sees an application for it in medicine.
The apparent danger of Freud’s misuse of treatment through catharsis generates the concern if modern tragedies could be constructed to persuade the masses.A student of philosophy, Juan Sanchez feels that emotions are built up while witnessing the tragedy. Emotions that existed beforehand are not purged unless they are of the same nature as those portrayed in the tragedy. There is an anxiety which exists in human experience that evil will prevail and the hope that good will win. The tragedy plays on that by presenting itself in a way to fulfill the audience’s expectations. After questioning Juan about whether or not catharsis could be used to persuade an audience including propaganda in the midst of cathartic material, he replied: "if it (tragedy) appeals to natural emotions (namely the example of good prevailing over evil, etc) then it is catharsis. If it is not a fulfillment of these, then it is propaganda" (Sanchez).
The purgation view of catharsis is an emotional outlet and release, probably the cognitive view. I agree with Halliwell’s definition because the release of emotions is a contingent by-product of tragedy, not the essential element which ought to explain its presence within the chapter 6 definition in Poetics (227). But I agree with Hanson because if catharsis invokes purgation in the aesthetic sense it would be advantageous because in Aristotle’s words, "the frame of mind which leads men to pity … are all painful and distressing things that are also destructive, and all that are ruinous…" I disagree with Aristotle though, who holds that music is the most influential mimesis that an audience can be affected by. A good tragedy like "Antigone" can produce the desired results of catharsis. I would agree with John Milton, that it is not for a therapeutic purpose that catharsis was intended for, whose premise the psychotherapist exclusively molests. Only through watching the tragic hero come to anagnorisis, recognition of his hubris and feeling pity and genuine fear of a similar hamartia
happening can one be purged of his suppressed emotions.
See Works Cited
 ]
|