catharsis
What is catharsis in the context of art and tragedy?
How does Aristotle’s view of catharsis differ from Plato’s view of poetry?
What are some interpretations of catharsis in tragedy?
How did Bertolt Brecht’s view of theater differ from Aristotle’s?
catharsis, the purification or purging of the emotions (especially pity and fear) primarily through art. In criticism, catharsis is a metaphor used by ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle in the Poetics (384–322 bce) to describe the effects of true tragedy on the spectator. Aristotle states that the purpose of tragedy is to arouse “terror and pity” and thereby effect the catharsis of these emotions.
Aristotle’s concept of catharsis
The concept is derived from the medical term katharsis (Greek: “purgation” or “purification”). The term has been interpreted variously depending on context. In medicine it could mean the removal of harmful substances from the body. In ritual practice it could mean purification from pollution, religious defilement, or spiritual uncleanness. These meanings have led to different interpretations of Aristotle’s description of the effect of tragedy. If katharsis is understood as purgation, tragedy becomes a kind of emotional release: The mind gets rid of excessive feelings, much as the body would expel something harmful. If it is understood as purification, tragedy becomes more like a ritual experience, leaving the audience morally or spiritually cleansed. No single interpretation has won general agreement.
Scholars have also looked to Aristotle’s Politics (Book VIII; 335–323 bce) for clues about what he meant by katharsis. There, Aristotle discusses the effects of music on people prone to religious ecstasy, a state of intense emotional or spiritual excitement. He observes that certain music or melodic patterns can calm such listeners. After listening to music, they experience a sense of relief and pleasure, as though they had undergone a medical treatment and been purged of a disturbance. For Aristotle, this illustrated music’s broader capacity to regulate emotion and restore psychological balance.
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Plato’s rejection of poetry and Aristotle’s retort
Greek philosopher Plato was wary of the influence that dramatists could exert through language and performance. He believed that poetry’s ability to stir powerful emotions—particularly the intense, ecstatic impulses associated with Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, fertility, and ritual celebration—could weaken rational judgment and potentially undermine the stability of civic institutions. In Books III and X of his dialogue The Republic (about 380–370 bce), he banished the poets from his ideal society on such grounds.
Aristotle responded in the Poetics by defending the value of tragedy in drama. Rather than portraying wholly virtuous or wholly wicked figures, he argued, tragedy centers on characters whose downfall results from hamartia (a tragic error or flaw). He found the model in Greek dramatist Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, in which Oedipus, the ruler of the ancient Greek city of Thebes, seeks to rid his plague-stricken kingdom of pollution without realizing that he himself is its source. For Aristotle, the pity and fear aroused by such stories culminate in catharsis, allowing tragedy to engage powerful emotions while serving an ethically meaningful purpose.
Traditions of interpretation
The German dramatist and literary critic Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, in his essay Hamburgische Dramaturgie (1767–69), held that catharsis converts excess emotions into virtuous dispositions.
A notable critic who opposed Lessing’s perspective is German philosopher Jakob Bernays. He argued that catharsis should be understood as a medical metaphor: Rather than suppressing or countering distressing emotions, tragedy intensifies them until they discharge themselves, producing relief—the same mechanism by which a physician’s cathartic remedy draws out and expels a harmful substance.
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German dramatist Bertolt Brecht offered a markedly different account of what theater should accomplish. Whereas Aristotle regarded tragedy as a form of mimesis (imitation or representation) that moves audiences through pity and fear toward catharsis, Brecht objected to the audience’s emotional identification with characters. Instead, he sought to cultivate critical distance through the Verfremdungseffekt (German: “alienation effect”), a set of techniques designed to remind spectators that they were watching a staged representation rather than reality itself. Instead of spectators completely associating emotionally with the fate of the characters, Brecht opined that audiences were to observe events with detachment and objectively question the nature of social reality being staged in performance.
Other critics see tragedy as a moral lesson in which the fear and pity excited by the tragic hero’s fate serve to warn the spectator not to similarly tempt providence. The interpretation generally accepted is that through experiencing fear vicariously in a controlled situation, the spectator’s own anxieties are directed outward, and, through sympathetic identification with the tragic protagonist, his insight and outlook are enlarged. Tragedy then has a healthful and humanizing effect on the spectator or reader.