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Aristotle is dealing with the whole effect of the dramatic representation of what we should call a tragic occurrence. It is really the theory of the dramatic experience and not of the tragic, in our sense, which occupies him. Therefore, as I say, we must not assume, with many modern critics, than an analysis of the tragic in experience will solve the problem of the Katharsis.
Nor is Nature wanting in her own effects to make good his assertion; for so in physic, things of melancholic hue and quality are used against melancholy, sour against sour, salt to remove salt humours," adding "the homoeopathic comparison shows how near he was to the correct notion." Bernays concludes that by Katharsis is denoted the "alleviating discharge" of the emotions themselves.
The function of Tragedy he defined as the purification of the soul by Compassion and by Terror +di eléou kaì phóbou kátharsis+. Critics and commentators still debate the precise meaning of the definition; but my interpretation, or application of it to the present inquiry is this, that by compassion and terror the soul is exalted above compassion and terror, is lifted above the touch of pity or of fear, attaining to a state like that portrayed by Dante
Our "tragic event," it is true, is of the kind which dramatically treated helped to bring about this peculiar effect. But the question of Aristotle and our problem of Katharsis is the problem of the emotion aroused by the Tragic Drama. What, then, is the nature of dramatic emotion? The analogy of Aristotle's conception of the emotion of tragedy with certain modern views is evident.
Nevertheless Aristotle is answering Plato's objections to unrestrained emotionalism, and by his theory of katharsis endeavors to show not only that the emotional excitation of tragedy is harmless to the spectator, but that it is actually good for him. But if the spectator is to derive these emotional excitations from tragedy, his aesthetic experience cannot be passive.
Katharsis is indeed not the mark of Tragedy alone, although in Tragedy it has a very great relative intensity; it is ultimately only a designation for the specific aesthetic pleasure, to which I can give no better name than the oft-repeated one of triumphant acquiescence in the rightness of relations.
At any rate the Dionysus ritual itself was a katharmos or katharsis a purification of the community from the taints and poisons of the past year, the old contagion of sin and death. According to primitive ideas, the mimic representation on the stage of 'incidents arousing pity and fear' did act as a katharsis of such 'passions' or 'sufferings' in real life.
In Miss Harrison's Themis, pp. 341-63. I hope it is not rash to surmise that the much-debated word katharsis, 'purification' or 'purgation', may have come into Aristotle's mouth from the same source. It has all the appearance of being an old word which is accepted and re-interpreted by Aristotle rather than a word freely chosen by him to denote the exact phenomenon he wishes to describe.
Afterwards, says Aristotle, the patients "fall back into their normal state, as if they had undergone a medical or purgative treatment." Thus the theory of katharsis seems to have the same basis as the modern psychological theory which encourages the expression of emotions in their milder form lest, if inhibited, they gather added power and finally burst disastrously through all restraints.
For every emotion contains, according to Aristotle, be it ever so painful, an ecstatic degree would effect, at the same time with an alleviating discharge, a pleasure also. Pity and fear are aroused to be allayed, and to give pleasure in the arousing and the relief. Such, approximately, is Aristotle's view of the Tragic Emotion, or Katharsis. Is it also our own?
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