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Aesthetics for Contemporary Artists

K. C. Bennett, The Purging of Catharsis, Brir. J. Aesth. 21, 204 (198 1). Are there some problems that philosophers should give up trying to solve? K. C. Bennett thinks he may have found one, i.e. the nature of Aristotelian ‘catharsis.’ To be specific, Aristotle’s work, the Poetics, is certainly one of the most discussed and admired work in the entire history of the philosophy of art. But the Poetics is incomplete and fragmentary, possibly made up of student notes. As Bennett says, there is a passage ‘ . . . in what is commonly designated chapter six of the Poetics, which usually reads something like this, “tragedy . . . arouses pity and fear, thereby performing a catharsis of these emotions’” @. 204). But, as he notes further, ‘ . . . what seems simple and direct can be full of pitfalls’ @. 204). Critics and philosophers, for more than two thousand years since Aristotle wrote, have argued about what is meant by ‘catharsis’. There is a medical use in which the term means purgation, and a religious use in which it means purification. And who or what is it that gets purified or purged? That is, does this happen to the audience (probably the most common position), or the author (or the actors or artists), or is catharsis a ‘structural concept’? All of these have been suggested. And what is meant by pity and fear? Are these two emotions, or just one complex emotion? Does fear mean terror? Also, to add to the confusion, should the word translated ‘these’ in the quote be translated ‘such’ instead? That is, should the quote read ‘ . . . arouses pity and fear, thereby performing a catharsis of such emotions’? Does this mean the arts can perform their wondrous work on other emotions, not just pity and fear? Bennett’s thesis seems to be that these questions are not only unanswerable, but also distracting. Critics and philosophers spend too much time, he thinks, discussing the sorts of questions raised by the text of the Poetics, and not enough time on questions they might be able to answer, ‘Instead of belabouring the problem of purgation or purification, we need to ask different, more penetrating, questions about the whole emotive aspect of literature’ (p. 21 1).