United States or Bahamas ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It is natural to think of the generally elevating and softening effects of great art as a kind of moral clarifying, and the question how this should be effected just by pity and fear was not pressed. So Lessing in the "Hamburgische Dramaturgie" takes Katharsis as the conversion of the emotions in general into virtuous dispositions.
Not only is he present at the action, even when he reads the drama, but he identifies himself with the hero and vicariously experiences his emotions. But neither the hedonism of Aristotle, nor his defense of poetry on moral grounds through his theory of katharsis, is usual in Greek criticism. Isocrates and Xenophon adhere to the usual opinion.
Consequently, although hedonist theorists have been anxious to establish katharsis on a purely aesthetic foundation, it seems that the theory has inescapable moral implications. To be sure, Aristotle in the same section of the Politics says that the emotional result of katharsis is "harmless joy," and in the Poetics he says that pity and fear produce the appropriate pleasure of tragedy.
Word Of The Day