Der Begriff Katharsis geht auf die aristotelische Poetik zurück. Dabei schreibt Aristoteles der Tragödie die Wirkung zu, dass sie beim Zuschauer Jammer (eleos) sowie Schauder (phobos) erzeugt, was dann die Katharsis bewirkt. Als Katharsis bezeichnet er die Reinigung von diesen Leidenschaften (Jammer, Schauder) und ähnlichen Affekten (Gemütserregungen). Das Verständnis des Begriffs und die Frage, wer nun die Katharsis durchlebt (Zuschauer oder Figuren) ist seit jeher umstritten und führte in den vergangenen Jahrhunderten zu verschiedenen Deutungen und Interpretationsansätzen.
The term goes back to the Greek noun kátharsis (κάθαρσις), which can be translated with purification. Accordingly, the translation of the concept merely refers to its real meaning, namely the purification [of certain affects]. In Greek antiquity, however, the term also meant the general cleaning of dirt and was also used in three areas.
According to this, the word can be found in ancient medicine, primarily by cleaning harmful substances or purifying excretions. Furthermore, the term can be found in a religious and religious sense, which meant the purification (cleaning of the liturgical vessels) and the removal of pollution. In both cases, therefore, the actual cleaning of a thing is in the foreground. Aristotle, however, assigns the catharsis a therapeutic function which cleanses the soul. He writes:
The tragedy is the imitation of a good and self-contained action of a certain magnitude, attractively shaped, […] causing misery and shudder, and thereby causing a cleansing of such states of excitement.
The above excerpt comes from the sixth section of Aristotelian poetics. It is said that in the tragedy Jammer und Schauder makes possible the cleansing of ebied states of excitement. Aristotle, however, does not clearly point out who is the target group of the catharsis – who is experiencing a purification here and what is meant by such states of excitement? The ambiguity gives space for interpretation. Following the individual approaches in chronological order (see literaturepochen).
Katharsis in the Baroque (1575 – 1770)
The driving force, which influenced the concept of catharsis in the Baroque, was Martin Opitz, a poet and theorist of that epoch. Above all, the deterrent effect of the catharsis was the focus, which should lead to a stoic attitude towards destiny.
A stoic attitude means that one’s own fate, however terrible it may seem, will be taken and endured. Tragedy always shows protagonists who are at the mercy of a destructive destiny and endure it nevertheless. According to Opitz, the spectator who pursues the dramatic work should also assume a stoic attitude through the catharsis that causes the tragedy.
The spectator sees, therefore, the suffering of the actors, which causes him to be shuddered and agitated. He can scarcely restrain his tears, and draws from this a realization: by seeing such terrible fates his own positive appears and can be better borne. With Opitz reads as follows:
Such stability, however, is promoted by the infirmity of the human life in the tragedies: then, in the great cities and cities of the country, we shall regard and bear the pittance of the people and can scarcely restrain the tears again; but we also learn from the continual inspection of so many Creutzes and Vels, that the other one who has encountered / is less afraid and better to endure. (From: Martin Opitz: Trojans, 1625)
On the terms of Aristotle’s “Jammer (eleos)” and “Schauder (phobos),” Opitz refers when he writes that the viewer feels compassion with the actors, as well as melancholy about their destiny. The logical consequence, according to Opitz, is that the viewer can fear and endure his own suffering less. According to this, Opitz writes an educational function.
This understanding is, on the one hand, characteristic of the seventeenth century, whose Christian world-view suggested a similar approach, and on the other hand, in accordance with Opitz’s assumption that poetry should not only delight but be equally instructive and useful (cf Alexandriner).
Katharsis near Corneille and Lessing
Later, it is Pierre Corneille (1606-1684) and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) who influence the interpretation of the term. Corneille’s theoretical approaches are known in modern times, mainly because of the discussion of his writings by Lessing.
Corneille presented his dramatic theories in detail in the Trois discours sur le poème dramatique (1660). At that time, the ancient drama was criticized primarily by Christian dignitaries because of his lack of mercy. Corneille now attempted to show in his writings that the drama and a Christian world-view could harmonize perfectly with one another.
For this purpose, he investigated the tragedies that the Baroque brought, concentrating on the martyr drama of that time. The martyr drama revolves around a positive hero, who appears virtuous, oriented towards Christian morality and facing a tyrannical and also vicious opponent (cf. antagonist). The figurative constellation was thus clear in such dramas – the absolute, tyrannical evil was opposed to the undoubted, Christian good.
As a result, such a drama of martyrs certainly broke with the classical dramatic structure of exposure, excitement, momentum, disaster, and catastrophe because there was or was no real catastrophe. For the hero was so sure of his (soul) salvation that, in the true sense of the word, he could not be thrown into the catastrophe that broke the conflict (see Dénouement). The drama was also foreseeable because of the wickedness of the enemy.
The Dénouement as dissolving the conflict in classical drama
From these observations, Corneille developed the theory that catharsis was to be understood as a purification of passions, and not, as Opitz described it, as an education to a stoic, or assuming, attitude toward one’s own destiny. Passions, that is, emotions that take hold of the mind, were negatively attributed to Corneille’s time, and, according to religious understanding, bad.
Following this conception, dramas could not be cheerful or produce a real tension, but at most showed the emotions (moods) in order to warn the audience. A viewer feels compassion and fear when looking at the heroes of the work – the Christian translation of the Greek words eleos (jammer) and phobos (shudder) – and thus can clean itself of it.
For example, the hero of a drama could be evil and be influenced by his passions, which is why he does the trick, while the spectator would have no sympathy with him, but he would be afraid of his deeds and passions. But if the hero were a martyr or a saint, he would be above the passions. The spectator, according to Corneille, can pity and admire him. It expands the affects that lead to catharsis (compassion and fear), thus a third concept: the admiration.
Corneille, therefore, expands the two-horsepower of the passions, as Aristotle suggested, when he also leads admiration into the field. Furthermore, he interprets the basic task or function of the catharsis in that, by looking at external passions in the drama, the viewer himself is purified of these passions when he fears, feels compassion, or admires.
Extension of the doctrine of catharsis by Lessing
A few years later, it was Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, who again expanded the meaning of catharsis. With his Hamburg dramaturgy (1767 – 1769) Lessing created a treatise on drama. This is composed of several theater criticisms, which Lessing wrote as dramaturge of the German Nationaltheater in Hamburg and is therefore multi-part and not designed as a book.
Accordingly, the Hamburg drama drama contains two things: on the one hand all kinds of criticisms of the plays of that time, and, on the other, essential considerations on poetics and, above all, on dramatic theory. Above all, the latter is interesting since Lessing rejects the existing opinions about the drama.
It was true that the drama had two aspects to fulfill. In doing so, the three Aristotelian units should orient themselves to action, place and time, and should also focus on compassion and fear in order to effect the catharsis of the spectator. Lessing, however, discovered that the first effect of tragedy must be compassion, and turns against the existing dramatic poetics.
He bases this assumption with the assertion that Aristotle has been misunderstood so far. All the theorists had separated the terms eleos and phobos, which were translated with shame and shudder, or even compassion and fear, and understood them in such a way that the spectator was afraid of the deeds or had sympathy with the hero. According to Lessing, it is primarily a matter of the fact that the fear arose from compassion, that a similar thing might happen. Fear and compassion are thus bound together.
From these reflections on the concept of catharsis, an approach which commonly calls the Enlightenment catharsis doctrine of the drama: the spectator of a tragedy should sympathize with the protagonists, which should bring about a change. He should become more virtuous through compassion. As a result, Lessing assumes a moral function for tragedy and thus for catharsis.
Lessing clearly reveals an Enlightenment note: for the most moral man is the compassionate man, who fears the fate shown by the hero for himself. Consequently the spectator suffers with the heroes of the work. This causes the catharsis to purge itself of the passions. Corneille and Lessing emphasize the cleansing of passions through compassion and fear.
Katharsis with Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, one of the most important representatives of German-language poetry, is now referring to the effects of the catharsis not on the audience, but on the figures of the drama. He describes the catharsis as an artistic extension of the work.
In the catharsis Goethe, therefore, sees rather an artistic concept of the poet who manages to allow his tragedy to pass through pity as well as fear, but in the end show a balance of these passions. The catharsis, therefore, does not mean the education or purification of the spectator, but rather describes a concept which should go through a tragedy or a type of tragedy construction, with the harmony of the passions being superficial. With Goethe, this reads:
If the tragedy had passed through a course of compassion and fear, it would have to complete its work with the reconciliation of such passions at the theater. [Aristotle] understands under Katharsis this conciliatory round-off, which is actually demanded by all drama, even by all poetic works. Aristotle speaks of the construction of tragedy, inasmuch as the poet, setting it up as an object, is something worthy of attraction, and of hearing what is heard (JW von Goethe, Nachlese zu Aristotle’s “Poetik,” 1827).
Goethe, therefore, takes the catharsis back from the audience to the stage when he points out that the tragedy, if it has now carried through all the exciting means, should create a reconciliation in the theater itself. In short: a tragic tragedy should end the Carthaginian effect with the tragedy, but the audience is not morally educated or improved.
The concept of catharsis to the present
From Aristotle to Opitz to Corneille and Lessing, all approaches are in common, that the catharsis was understood as something that should improve a spectator morally. Goethe was the first to apply the term to the tragedy itself, and to point out the catharsis as the primary goal of the conception. In the 19th century, however, the term experienced a new direction.
Jacob Bernays (1824 – 1881), a German classical philologist, played a major role in the understanding of Aristotelian poetics and the catharsis doctrine. He summarizes the catharsis in the work of the lost treatise of Aristotle on the effect of tragedy (1885) as a facilitating discharge of emotional effects on the part of the spectator. His beginnings had a great influence on Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy (1872) and Sigmund Freud’s theories.
The kathart method, which the Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud himself describes as the immediate predecessor of psychoanalysis, is made clear by the fact that the catharsis later plays an essential role in psychoanalysis. This carthagic method states that a patient can free himself from aborted aggression and affects by abrections (for example, by beating a sack).
According to Bernays, Freud, and Nietzsche, the catharsis is once again in a greater medical context, and is thus solved from the direct theory of the theory of the Draem. It is interesting to note that the circle closes, if only partially. After all, the catharsis, before Aristotle applied them to the drama, was mainly used in medical circles as the cleansing of the body from harmful, if not mental, substances, and once again triggered medical discussions.
Short overview: The most important part of the term at a glance
The term catharsis was originally used in medical and religious areas. He meant either the cleansing of the body of harmful substances, and in regard to the religious the purification or even cleansing of pollution. Aristotle, one of the most influential philosophers of history, used the term later in his poetics.
Aristotle points to the structure and effect of tragedy. The tragedy is characterized by a closed, manageable action and is permeated by an artistic language. Furthermore, it is called to provoke jammer (eleos) and chills (phobos), which cause a purification, the catharsis, in the viewer.
This approach has been one of the longest controversies of the Draem theory and can not be definitively resolved from today’s point of view. The individual theories that took up the topic are confronted with false translations or misunderstandings concerning the interpretation. The utterances of Aristotle were interpreted by Opitz, Corneille, Lessing, and Goethe, and later by Bernays, Nietzsche, and Freud.
Thus, Opitz maintained that the catharsis was to be understood as an upbringing of the Stoics against its own destiny. He pointed out that the spectator could better accept his own fate by the suffering which he showed in tragedy.
Corneille attributed to the cathartic effect, above all, the cleansing of passions. According to Corneille, the affects are thus used in drama to warn against them. Thus the spectator could be frightened of the villain and pity – but also admire a saint – and freed themselves from the same passions.
It is Lessing that does not regard the passions that tragedy shows separately. He assumes that the compassion the viewer feels when he looks at the hero causes the fear that he might as well go. Through this fear, it is easier for the viewer to act morally right afterwards.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in his essay, treats catharsis for the first time to the tragedy itself and no longer to the audience. He understands catharsis rather as an aesthetic variable that completes the drama. This, however, runs through all dimensions of compassion and fear, but should always strive for a balance in the end.
The concept of Bernays was subsequently interpreted, which attributed to it a facilitating discharge of mood effects, and thus influenced the psychoanalytic of Sigmund Freud. The main point here is that aggression and energies can be partly solved by means of abrections. In this context, it is discussed in this context, for example, whether violent computer games allow a harmless removal of aggressions.
In the twentieth century the concept of catharsis was discussed very controversially. For example, the interpretations of Theodor Lipps, Theodor Gomperz, Robert Petsch, and Wolfgang Schadewald’s confrontations.
Note: The essential feature of all disputes is that it is always a form of purification, which is indicated by the concept itself. Those who are concerned with the dramas of an epoch or time should always examine them under the aspects of the dramatic theories which were decisive for them. Also helpful is the idea that Aristotle gave the catharsis a therapeutic function that cleans the soul.