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COGNITIVE DIMENSIONS OF CATHARSIS: ARISTOTLE'S 

TRAGIC PLEASURE EXPLORED 
 

Prof. Benjamin J. Walker 

Department of Philosophy, Indiana University South Bend, South Bend, Indiana, USA. 

 

Abstract: Aristotle's concept of catharsis in tragedy has intrigued scholars for centuries, 

leading to various interpretations. This paper delves into Aristotle's original text to decipher 

the essence of catharsis and its implications on the audience. Aristotle's definition of tragedy 

as an imitation of serious and complete action, pleasurably embellished through speech, 

holds the key to understanding catharsis. He emphasizes that tragedy should evoke specific 

emotions of pity and fear in the audience, leading to a cathartic experience. 

This study explores three prevalent interpretations of catharsis: purgation, purification, and 

cognitive stimulation. Through a meticulous analysis of Aristotle's text, it sheds light on the 

multifaceted nature of catharsis and its role in the tragedy. The paper argues that catharsis 

serves as a cognitive process that stimulates self-reflection and emotional release in the 

audience. 

 

Keywords: Aristotle, tragedy, catharsis, purgation, purification, cognitive stimulation, 

emotional release, audience, interpretation. 

 

Introduction  

At Poetics I.6, 1449b25-29, Aristotle articulates the definition of the essence of tragedy that 

includes its function.1  He states:  

Tragedy, then, is an imitation [μίμησις] of serious and complete action, which possesses 

magnitude, by being pleasurably embellished through speech with each of the forms 

separately [employed] in the parts, [through] acting and not through a narrative, by bringing 

to fruition through pity and fear the catharsis [κάθαρσιν] of such kinds of emotions.2  

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Then, Aristotle proceeds to sharpen his point about catharsis in terms of the pleasure qua 

tragic pleasure that ought to be elicited from the audience:  

And the [poet], who produces not the fearful [effect] through spectacle but only the startling-

sensationalism [effect], shares nothing in common with tragedy; for it is not necessary to 

seek every pleasure by means of tragedy but [to seek] the appropriate kind [of pleasure]. And 

since it is necessary for the poet to produce the pleasure from pity and fear through imitation, 

it is clear that this [kind of tragic pleasure] must be created within the circumstances [of a 

tragedy].3  

Closely related to the above quotations, Aristotle goes on to describe in which contexts and 

circumstances pity and fear should be presented:  

And whenever misfortunes have occurred among family relationships, for example either 

[between] brother [and] brother or son [and] father or mother [and] son or son [and] mother, 

either when one kills [a person] or when one is about to do a thing of such a kind to another 

[person], one must seek out these [things].4  

It is evident from the first of the above passages that the ability to effect a “catharsis” in the 

individuals of an audience is one of the crucial requirements of a well-constructed tragedy, 

according to Aristotle.  Moreover, the second passage makes clear that the cathartic effect of 

a tragedy will produce an “appropriate pleasure” of a certain kind.  Lastly, the third passage 

above indicates that the appropriate method of bringing about the emotions of pity and fear 

(and the corresponding kind of “tragic pleasure”) is through a certain depiction of the 

relationships between friends and relatives.  Unfortunately, the remains of Aristotle’s Poetics 

(or any of his other works) reveal no thorough account of his concept of catharsis.  This 

dearth of details has resulted in a plethora of interpretations of Aristotle’s concept of 

catharsis.   Today, three broad interpretations of these different versions of tragic catharsis 

have emerged from the research.5  Tragic catharsis has been interpreted as a process of either 

(or some combination of) (1) purgation, (2) purification, or (3) cognitive stimulation.  

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I. Three Interpretations of Catharsis and Tragic Pleasure   

On the purgation view of tragic catharsis, observing a tragedy can assist in removing 

unhealthy emotions or pathological conditions.  Specifically, it is the emotions of pity and 

fear that are purged.  By way of the medical-homeopathic analogy, pity and fear are used to 

remove pity-and-fear-type emotions and related pathological states in much the same way 

that illness-causing agents can be removed from a physically ill person by micro-doses of 

the same illness-causing agents.  From this perspective, scholars argue that Aristotle held the 

view that tragic catharsis is the removal of unhealthy emotional and pathological states and 

tragic pleasure is the psychological relief or renewal brought about by the removal of such 

emotions.6  Meager promotes the purgation reading of catharsis and tragic pleasure since he 

thinks that Aristotle’s view about the imitation of action “must move us, deeply and 

consciously, to an intensity of pity and fear which mounts to an emotional climax in us, 

permitting a sudden and controlled release from tension and restoration of a state of 

emotional freshness and readiness.”7  

In contrast to the purgation account, some scholars insist on a purification interpretation.   

According to this reading, tragic catharsis is the cleansing of the emotions of pity and fear 

such that the emotions of pity and fear are modified.  Tragic pleasure, then, is the enjoyment 

of the cleansed emotions of pity and fear.   So, when the audience comes to understand the 

honest mistakes made by Oedipus, the audience expresses both pity and fear in the right way 

and toward the appropriate set of circumstances.  In this way, the confusion and pain that 

frequently accompany pity and fear are cleansed away by the focus of those emotions on a 

fully comprehensible set of tragic events (e.g., Oedipus).  Butcher states the purification view 

(as a response to the purgation interpretation) by noting that tragedy provides “an outlet for 

pity and fear, but to provide for them a distinctively aesthetic satisfaction, to purify and 

clarify them by passing them through the medium of art.”8  

Distinct from both the purgation and purification renderings is the cognitive stimulation 

/clarification interpretation of catharsis and tragic pleasure.  According to this approach, 

Aristotle takes the cathartic experience to be that of improved understanding of the details of 

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both a particular plot and the actions of the actors.  Additionally, the universal aspects of the 

human condition are better understood by the unfolding of the pitiable and fearful events of 

a tragedy.    

Golden stands as one of the prominent defenders of this construal.  He thinks that catharsis 

and tragic pleasure are best understood in terms of inferences made by the observer of a 

tragedy.  Such inferences reflect cognitive clarification in the sense that they provide a better 

understanding “of the individual act by providing, through the medium of art, the means of 

ascending from the particular event witnessed to an understanding of its universal nature, 

and thus permits us to understand the individual act more clearly and distinctly.”9  On this 

cognitive stimulation/clarification reading, then, catharsis is the process by which observers 

of a tragedy are better able to realize the nature of particular actions of a protagonist and 

human actions more generally.  Tragic pleasure, moreover, is the accompanying cognitive 

pleasure of this better understanding, which is illuminated by pitiable and fearful events.10  

II. Lear’s Challenge  

In a number of places, Jonathan Lear has argued that none of the above interpretations can 

be defended on the basis of Aristotle’s corpus.11  This essay, in part, will focus on Lear’s 

rejection of catharsis as a process of (3) cognitive stimulation.  Basically, Lear provides what 

he calls an “anticognitivist” interpretation of catharsis, an interpretation which he considers 

to approximate most closely what Aristotle’s own account would have been.  Lear’s view is 

summed up in the following two passages:  

1. For an anticognitivist like myself does not believe that there is no role for cognition 

and its attendant pleasure in the appreciation of a tragedy; he only denies that cognitive 

pleasure is to be identified with tragic pleasure.  For the anticognitivist, cognitive pleasure is 

a step that occurs en route to the production of the proper pleasure of tragedy.12  

2. Tragic poetry provides an arena in which one can imaginatively experience the tragic 

emotions:  the performance of a play “captures our souls.”  However, it is crucial to the 

pleasure we derive from tragedy, that we never lose sight of the fact that we are an audience, 

enjoying a work of art.  Otherwise the pleasurable katharsis of pity and fear would collapse 

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into merely painful experience of those emotions.  Aristotle is keenly aware of the important 

difference between a mimesis of a serious action and the serious action of which it is a 

mimesis.  The emotional response which is appropriate to a mimesis—tragic pleasure and 

katharsis—would be thoroughly inappropriate to the real event.13  

Lear stresses that the cognitive element and its associated pleasure in a cathartic experience 

are merely “causalantecedents of the proper effect and proper pleasure of tragedy.”14  

According to Lear, the proper pleasure of tragedy is the joy we experience when “[w]e 

imaginatively live life to the full, but we risk nothing.”15  

In response, this essay reveals that Lear’s thesis can be weakened to the extent that it is 

reasonable to think that Aristotle thought that tragic catharsis is associated with the pleasure 

of judging fairly and sympathetically the actions of the characters in a tragedy.  Additionally, 

given Lear’s use of imagination, this essay will also reveal that, for Aristotle, the imaginative 

faculty has a cognitive dimension that is constitutive of various sorts of pleasure, including 

tragic pleasure.  If correct, then this cognitive aspect of the imaginative faculty further casts 

doubt on Lear’s account of how Aristotle likely understood catharsis and tragic pleasure.  If 

this overall positive account is reasonable, then locating Aristotle within the cognitivist camp 

is also reasonable.  

III. Citizenship and Judgment: Catharsis and Tragic Pleasure  

The positive account to be proposed provides a credible interpretation of catharsis that will 

reveal the implausibility both of Lear’s two points and of his anticognitivist account of 

catharsis in general.   Even granting Lear his strategy of using the Politics as a means of 

understanding tragic catharsis in the Poetics, the positive account to follow will still 

undermine his argument.  By synthesizing aspects of Aristotle’s Politics, Poetics, 

Nicomachean Ethics, De Anima, Rhetoric, and Sophocles’s Oedipus the King, a plausible 

approximation of Aristotle’s response to the challenge presented by Plato can be put forth.16  

To begin, it is important to introduce a distinction that has been often neglected in the current 

literature on catharsis:  the distinction between the kind of cathartic experience that the 

citizenry of the polis has and the kind of cathartic experience restricted to all other denizens.  

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The Politics alludes to just this division in which Aristotle discusses the role attributed to 

music:  

[It is necessary] for everyone that a certain catharsis [τινα κάθαρσιν] is brought about and [it 

is necessary for everyone] to be satisfied in the midst of pleasure.  And similarly, the effective 

melodies also render a harmless gratification to humans.17  

On which account, the participants, when they perform theatrical music, should be permitted 

to use harmonies of these kinds and melodies of these kinds; but since the spectator is two-

fold: one group is free and has been educated, while the other group is vulgar and is grouped 

together from workings and hired laborings and other things of such kinds, one must provide 

contests and spectacles and things of these kinds with a view to relaxation…and what is 

suitable according to nature provides pleasure for each.18  

These passages from Aristotle reveal the following argument he is making with regard to 

class and catharsis.  Basically, within the context of his best or ideal city-state, he is claiming 

that the having of a cognitively based cathartic experience requires individuals who are 

naturally free (have leisure) and educated.  In contrast, the having of emotional excitation, or 

hedonistic frenzy alone, is relegated to individuals who are naturally vulgar and uneducated.  

Therefore, since citizens have the requisite leisure and education and workers and slaves lack 

both, citizens of the polis naturally do have cognitively based cathartic experiences, and 

workers and slaves naturally only have emotional or hedonistic cathartic experiences.19The 

purpose of laying out this argument is to impress upon the reader Aristotle’s own division 

between the kinds of aesthetic experience had by non-citizens and citizens.   This distinction 

will prove most valuable as my argument unfolds.   

That a tragedy even more than music is included in the above argument will now be 

examined.  The discussion can commence with Aristotle’s account of a properly formed plot 

in a tragedy.  The plot and representation of character are the most important aspects of an 

Aristotelian tragedy (although the rest are necessary to achieve the full theatrical effect) 

because of their connection with action.  It is action (within the construction of the story), 

which establishes the character of the protagonist, that the audience is being asked to judge.  

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The point about judgment is clear in the Politics, where Aristotle emphasizes the importance 

of “judging correctly and rejoicing [τὸ κρίνειν ὀρθῶς καὶ τὸ χαίρειν] at reasonable 

dispositions and noble actions.”20  This emphasis on action, moreover, is clearly articulated 

in the Poetics:   

For tragedy is an imitation not about people but about actions and life, and both happiness 

and unhappiness are in action, and the end is a certain kind of action, not a quality.  And it is 

according to character that people have certain qualities, but they are happy or the opposite 

according to their actions.    

Therefore, they [i.e., the poets] do not act in so far as to represent character, but they include 

character for the sake of actions; consequently, the events and the plot are the goal of a 

tragedy, and the goal is the most important of all [the elements of a tragedy].21  

Aristotle does not mean just any type of action, however, in his discussion of tragedy.  He is 

referring to a change from happiness to misfortune that is the result of a mistake [ἁμαρτία] 

made by a person of good character (e.g., Oedipus).22  This distinction between action and 

tragic action is crucial to Aristotle’s system.  One kind of action that he does not allow in a 

tragedy is that of base or guilty people whose actions are intentionally criminal.  These 

people, due to their baseness, do not warrant our pity when bad things happen to them.  

Aristotle also does not allow the depiction of fortunate events that befall virtuous people, 

because there is no choice made by these virtuous people that can be judged in such 

circumstances.  Rather, he includes the representation of the unfortunate actions of virtuous 

people whose actions are based on their deliberative choices [προαίρεσεις].23  

It is the deliberative choices of people in a tragedy, then, that the audience judges.  In order 

to understand to what this kind of judging amounts, it will be necessary to explicate 

Aristotle’s two practical virtues concerned with conduct in Nicomachean Ethics, VI.9-11, 

and then turn to how they relate to the specifics of tragedy.  The two practical intellectual 

virtues that are to be distinguished here are σύνεσις and γνώμη.  To capture fully the sense 

of these terms, they will also be distinguished as subordinate virtues in relation to the 

superlative practical virtue of practical wisdom [φρόνησις].24  

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According to Aristotle, an individual who acquires practical wisdom has the ability to judge 

and determine correctly the truth or falsity of moral judgments (his own moral judgments as 

well as others).  Further, this morally insightful man has the unique characteristic of never 

erring in such judgments.  It is the combination of these two characteristics that reveals why 

Aristotle understands a man who has acquired the rather elusive intellectual virtue of 

practical wisdom to be a rather exceptional person.  Thus, Aristotle expresses the possession 

of practical wisdom as “the state of the soul by which we always grasp the truth and never 

make mistakes, about what can or cannot be otherwise.”25  By taking all of this together, it 

is should be clear why most scholars correctly understandφρόνησις as practical wisdom.   

As Louden stresses, both σύνεσις and γνώμη are subordinate virtues with respect to practical 

wisdom.26  That is, a man who possesses practical wisdom is definitely in possession of its 

subordinate virtues (i.e., σύνεσις and γνώμη), but it is also possible for a man to be in 

possession of one or both of the subordinate virtues and still not acquire practical wisdom.  

The justification is that, because it is a prescriptive virtue that enables us to know what to do, 

practical wisdom is concerned with both universals and particulars.27  Σύνεσις and γνώμη, 

while concerned with critically judging actions and character, are restricted only to judging 

[κριτική μονον] and grasping particulars.28  

Keeping these intellectual virtues in mind, the ability to reflect critically and judge the 

mistakes of others within the context of a tragic plot is the primary issue at hand here.  For 

Aristotle, the honest mistake would be the only kind of action that would effectively produce 

pity and fear, because the actions of a corrupt person would shock us rather than move us in 

the direction of pity and fear.  Similarly, the good fortune of accidental events of the virtuous 

man’s actions is not convincing but absurd because it is not in conformity with necessity or 

probability.  Ἁμαρτία is to be understood, then, as an error or mistake made by a protagonist 

in a tragedy due to his ignorance of particulars.29  This definition of error in tragic plots is 

categorically concluded by Aristotle in the Poetics:  

Consequently, it is necessary for the plot that is well-made to be single rather than double, 

as some say, and change [occurs] not from misfortune into good fortune, but the opposite: 

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from good fortune into bad fortune, not through wickedness, but through a great error 

[ἁμαρτίαν μεγάλην] either just like I have stated or better rather than worse.30  

Further, both reversal [περιπέτεια] and recognition [ἀναγνώρισις] as elements of a well-

constructed plot aid in amplifying the probability and/or necessity of such honest mistakes—

the former by exemplifying the antithesis of the expected results of particular actions (i.e., 

unintended consequences), and the latter by bringing about a state of knowledge from a state 

of ignorance.  According to Aristotle, the best plot will have recognition and reversal 

occurring simultaneously, as in Oedipus The King.31  The cathartic experience, then, will 

reach its apex when this marriage between reversal and recognition occurs because both pity 

and fear will accompany these elements of the tragedy.   

Here we see a very powerful strategy employed by Aristotle in his attempt to produce the 

emotions of pity and fear in the audience, emotions that will aid in their ability to adjudicate 

equitably the character of the protagonist.  For example, when a messenger arrives to tell 

King Oedipus that his father in Corinth has recently died from natural causes, there is a 

tremendous feeling of relief on the part of Oedipus (and the audience) that he was not the 

cause of his father’s death as the prophecy warned.  Unfortunately, two other messengers 

arrive to reveal that the King in Corinth was not Oedipus’s real father and that he had been 

delivered to the King of Corinth at his birth.  Oedipus’s reaction is that of horror and 

stupefaction.  This reversal of events, along with the amazement expressed by the two 

messengers who recognize each other after many years, provide the missing information that 

reveals the error in Oedipus’s actions.   

As noted earlier, Aristotle places such a strong emphasis on this definition of a mistake within 

the context of a complex plot because he does not wish it to be confused with deliberate 

wrong-doing.  For example, Oedipus’s accidental killing of his father and subsequent 

marriage to his mother represent the kind of non- 

deliberative mistake that Aristotle is stressing.  The issue is that Aristotle is concerned with 

the difficulties that arise out of complex interactions between a person of good character and 

other friends and family in his environment.  Since an individual’s character is best analyzed 

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by those closest to him, it is crucial for friends and family to cultivate and employ the skills 

of ethical judgment.         

Aristotle’s point is that the cathartic experience is not merely the result of treating a tragedy 

as a didactic exercise upon which one reflects in isolation, but must be an activity that 

includes close friends and family.32  Friendship and filial relations provide the kind of 

interaction appropriate for improving one’s character, as noted above.  Observing a tragedy 

is an activity that allows friendship among family and neighbors to “become better as they 

are active together and correct one another:  from the mold of each he takes the imprint of 

the traits he likes, whence the saying:  ‘Noble things from noble people’.”33  

Oedipus the King is the appropriate exemplar of the above discussion.  Oedipus is a man of 

good character and virtue but is still the victim of terrible circumstances that are beyond the 

deliberative choices he makes. True friendship (which is an important element of one’s moral 

character) is the ability tactfully to see past such misfortunes or mistakes and assess the 

correct character of one’s friend in the light of how he has deliberated on his actions.34  

Aristotle’s discussion of the requirements for tragic character in the Poetics and character in 

the NE specifies the relationship between an individual’s character and his actions, speech, 

and decisions:  

And [tragedy] will have character if, just as we said, the speech or the action makes apparent 

a deliberate choice of whatever sort; [and it will have] upright  

[character], if [it makes apparent] an upright [deliberate choice].35  

Indeed, since we wish for the end, and because we also wish and deliberately choose things 

with a view to the end, the actions concerning these things would be according to deliberate 

choice and voluntary. And the activities of the virtues are concerned with these things.  

Indeed, virtue is also up to us, and similarly also vice.36  

The above quotations reveal that the actions and words of individuals generally, as well as 

in a tragedy, divulge their decisions and character.  But how does this relationship between 

actions and character relate to catharsis and cognition?  Keeping in mind the earlier 

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discussion of Aristotle’s intellectual virtues, a turn to what can be considered a strong 

connection between catharsis and cognitive stimulation is in order.  

It is this ability to judge fairly and equitably [γνώμη] with an empathetic heart [συγγνώμη] 

that captures the pleasurable activities of the educated citizens when they observe a tragedy 

in Aristotle’s system, or so it shall be argued.  To elaborate, the cathartic experience (that is 

the representations) produces the feelings of pity and fear which concomitantly evoke 

emotions of sympathy from the audience (with regard to the actions of the protagonist) and 

feelings of dread that such errors could conceivably be committed by themselves.  Only the 

citizens of the polis have the virtues of σύνεσις and γνώμη to evaluate critically and correctly 

actions of the protagonist and focus appropriate attention on his intentions in relation to the 

given circumstances after the initial emotions of pity and fear are experienced.  Reasonably, 

in contrast to Lear’s position, the proper effect of a cathartic experience via tragedy can be 

the cognitive pleasures produced from the activities of judging equitably and empathetically.       

A final look at Sophocles’s Oedipus the King may help to synthesize what can be considered 

to be Aristotle’s approach to the cathartic experience.  The story begins with Oedipus hastily 

deciding to leave his parents in Corinth due to the prophecy by Phoebus (that Oedipus would 

kill his father and sleep with his mother) that was prompted by a drunkard at a dinner party.  

As the story unfolds, Oedipus establishes a new life as the King of Thebes only to find out 

that the woman he has married and who is the mother of his children, Jocasta, is also his 

mother who abandoned him as a baby.  To make matters worse, Oedipus discovers that one 

of the men whom he killed on the road during his initial departure from Corinth was his 

wife’s husband— Oedipus’s real (biological) father!  As a result of these unbearable events 

Oedipus violently blinds himself.    

The citizens of the polis, it has been argued, not only have the ability to understand or 

comprehend [σύνεσις] the circumstances surrounding the events of Oedipus the King, but 

they also have the good sense to judge Oedipus fairly/equitably [γνώμη] as opposed to 

strictly.37  That is, Oedipus may be persecuted or ostracized for the killing of the men during 

his flight from Corinth (admittedly, Oedipus was defending himself, but it is possible that he 

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could have “negotiated” a less violent means of resolving the conflict), but he would not be 

condemned for patricide or incest because those actions were based on a mistake or error.  

Oedipus’s character can, for the most part, be judged based on actions that were the result of 

deliberate choice.38  The audience is moved to this decision because the cathartic effect, 

which is achieved through pity and fear, produces such a response.       

From this perspective, only some citizens of the polis, for example, have the leisure, 

education, and the natural ability to understand [σύνεσις] and pass good/fair judgments 

[γνώμη] on the errors (ignorance of particulars) made by the characters in tragic plays.  Most 

importantly, citizens are also able to connect relationships of various actions, which can have 

an impact on anyone anywhere (universals) “in accordance with probability and necessity.”39  

The ability to make such connections is the extended cognitive stimulation that reversal, 

recognition, and suffering, which contain pity and fear, can produce in some of the citizenry 

who have these mental aptitudes and moral virtues.  

The workers and slaves, conversely, do not have the education, leisure (freedom), or the 

mental faculties to recognize moral virtue.  Thus, they are unable to make equitable 

judgments regarding which actions determine or do not determine an individual’s character.  

As noted earlier, the result is that they are restricted to musical contests, the initial emotional 

jolt of a tragic play, or the impulsive frenzy of a religious ritual.  Again, the Politics reveals 

just this special distinction between liberated citizens and all others in the polis: “a virtue that 

belongs to a citizen must not be spoken of all (citizens), and not even of a free citizen only, 

but (only) to as many as those who are liberated from necessary working-occupations that 

are difficult.”40  

In summary, although the impact of tragedy (or art in general) would vary from the citizenry 

to all others within the polis, everyone receives some level of satisfaction and/or intellectual 

stimulation.  Both non-citizens and citizens, on the one hand, are entertained and are able to 

relax from the rigors of daily life.  Only some citizens, on the other hand, have the individual 

satisfaction of attempting to resolve difficulties that are outside the scope (an adjournment) 

of everyday problem solving, but that can be the foundation of daily interaction.  

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IV. Catharsis and Tragic Pleasure in the Light of Imagination  

  

If this version of how Aristotle understood the cathartic experience is correct, then it tells 

against Lear’s view on how to understand Aristotle as a respondent to Plato.  First, if the 

peculiar pleasure of catharsis (for citizens of the polis) involves the intellectual virtues of 

comprehension [σύνεσις] and empathetic judgment [συγγνώμη], then such an experience is 

deeply tied to the rational part of the soul.  The consequence is that Aristotle can now be 

viewed to be providing a reply to Plato that poetry can enhance the rational part of the soul 

through the skills of comprehending and judging empathetically.  Therefore, if this 

interpretation is a reasonable approximation of Aristotle’s account of catharsis, then Lear’s 

belief that Aristotle defended the idea that the cathartic experience is neutral with respect to 

its influence on the rational part of the soul is mistaken.  

Furthermore, Lear’s claim that the cognitive element is nothing more than a precondition of 

tragic pleasure is also open to objection.  There are two ways to respond to this claim.  First, 

if the positive account of the cathartic experience in the previous section is correct, then the 

pleasure that attends judging empathetically is a rational pleasure.    

As a result, the cognitive element of the cathartic experience is no longer a causal antecedent 

to the proper pleasure of poetry (as Lear thinks), but is constitutive of the pleasure that attends 

the cathartic experience.  

Lear could reply, however, that this analysis ignores the imaginative element [ϕαντασία] that 

is a needed part of Aristotle’s account of catharsis.  Recall, Lear thinks that an integral part 

of the cathartic experience is that “[w]e imaginatively live life to the full, but we risk 

nothing.”  The assumption of this kind of response, of course, is that the psychology of 

imagining, for Aristotle, is necessarily minimally cognitive and harmless with respect to the 

soul.Yet, Baxter correctly points out that Lear’s analysis depends “crucially on an appeal to 

‘imagination’.”  Moreover, hinting that Lear has not explored the details of such an appeal, 

Baxter stresses that “more work needs to be done to illuminate the connection between 

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mimesis and imagination.”41  This section and the next forge just such a connection suggested 

by Baxter.   

The problem with Lear’s use of imagination is two-fold.  First, Aristotle’s account, as 

interpreted by Lear, would fail to meet Plato’s objection.  Plato would reply that Lear’s notion 

of imagining a sensible object is the production of a representation that is thrice removed 

from The Forms.  Lear’s account could not be utilized in this way by Aristotle to explain the 

cathartic experience.  Plato would have rejected it straightaway because of its soul-harming 

effects.   

Second, it is not at all clear that Lear is entitled to offer the above objection, because it is not 

clear that Aristotle recognizes the sense of imagination that Lear uses.   To see this, a review 

of Aristotle’s account of the faculty of imagination, that is ϕαντασιά, is in order.After making 

clear that his predecessors accounts of the soul are wanting due (in part) to their inability to 

allow for the failure of the content of mental states to correspond with the way the world is 

(i.e., “mental error”), Aristotle introduces imagination to fill the lacuna.42Furthermore, 

before offering his considered view on the nature of imagination, Aristotle makes clear that, 

even granting that the faculty of imagination is related to either perception or reason, it is not 

identical to (1) sensation (perception), (2) conception, (3) knowledge, (4) belief, and (5) a 

combination of belief and sensation.  The implication is that the faculty of imagination is (in 

some sense) a distinct mental faculty.  

Aristotle begins his account of imagination by suggesting how it is related to sensation.  He 

then proceeds to locate where imagination does not admit of error and where it does admit 

of error. Additionally, he turns to differentiate senses of imagination with respect to humans 

and all other animals, making clear that animals do not possess rational [λογιστικὴ] 

imagination, but only possess perceptual [αἰσθητικὴ] imagination.43  Given the discussion at 

hand, how is rational imagination in humans to be understood?  

Scholars dispute how to make sense of Aristotle’s answer to the above question.  Some argue 

that rational imagination is nothing more than a necessary condition for reason qua 

calculation,44 while others insist that it can function much like reasoning.45  One way of 

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understanding this debate is to determine where rational imagination should be located on 

the spectrum between perception and thinking; the former (at one extreme) being 

non/minimally cognitive and the latter (at the other extreme) being maximally cognitive:  

Sense Perception (non/minimally cognitive)…??«rational 

imagination»??…Thinking(maximally cognitive)  

To start, Aristotle categorically states that rational imagination is a faculty of discrimination:  

Now we see that the things which move the animal are intellect, imagination, purpose, wish, 

and appetite.  Now all these can be referred to mind and desire.  For imagination and 

sensation [ἡϕαντασιά καὶἡ αἴσθησις] cover the same ground as the mind, since they all 

exercise discrimination [κριτικὰ], though they differ in certain aspects as has been said 

elsewhere.46  

Aristotle makes clear in the above passage that the faculty of imagination engages in 

discrimination. Yet, in this context, discrimination ranges over both imagination and 

sensation. This suggests that imagination takes on more of a minimally cognitive role much 

like the role perception plays in human and nonhuman animals.  Still, Aristotle is quick to 

point out that they differ in certain ways.  What this means is that, although both perception 

and imagination discriminate, they do not do so in precisely the same manner.  Can 

imagination perform in a more robust cognitive way in the case of humans? Well, to plumb 

a bit further, as part of his account of how movement occurs, at De Anima, 433b29-30, 

Aristotle notes (as mentioned above) that all imagination is related to either reason or 

sensation.   

Very soon after this passage, at 434a7-8, he says that the calculating faculty of imagination 

is only found in those organisms that possess the reasoning ability.  Notice that, in his 

description of the calculating sense of imagination, Aristotle shifts from rational to 

deliberative in order to render a precise sense of rational; for he goes on to explain the 

deliberative sense of rational imagination as it relates to practical reasoning.  He tells us:  

So, perceptual imagination, just as it has been said, is present in other animals, but 

deliberative [βουλευτικὴ] imagination is in those animals that have the reasoning ability.  For 

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whether this or that shall be enacted is already a result of the work of reason; and it is of 

necessity to measure in one way; for one seeks after the greater [of two options]; it follows 

that what acts in this way must be able to make a unity out of several images.47  

As is made clear in the above passage, the sense of rational imagination is deliberative 

imagination as it is tied to practical reasoning.  One reasons qua calculates about which 

option (amongst competing options) is best able to achieve a particular end. Yet, in order for 

the reasoning faculty to be able to do this, it must have a number of available options from 

which to choose.  Although the presence of these options is itself the work of imagination 

and reason, each option is a composite of x number of images.  The reasonable inference, 

then, is that deliberative imagination has the function of synthesizing together various images 

to create a composite image.    

Moreover, why is the presence of such options already a result of the work of reason?  

Aristotle does not explicitly give an answer, but the reasonable one is that the ability to form 

a number of composite images, which reason uses as options in the light of the end under 

pursuit, is a rational activity.  Specifically, deliberative imagination “calls up” and forms the 

relevant images (from a range of many) in the light of the end under consideration and then 

synthesizes the relevant images into image-options in a way that allows for reason to convert 

the image-options into the various means that will assist in the achievement of a particular 

end.48  Then, reason will calculate which option best assists in securing the target end.  Thus, 

deliberative imagination is a rational faculty in the sense that it (1) makes manifest a range 

of images with respect to the end being pursued and (2) synthesizes the relevant images into 

unified sets of image-options so that practical reason can perform its function.        

On this interpretation, then, deliberative imagination is both an image selector/producer and 

an image synthesizer.  

Now, recall that Aristotle also thinks of deliberative imagination as discriminating or 

discerning.  Not only is deliberative imagination able to discern in the fashion noted above, 

but it is also able to unify images concerning possible future events.  Aristotle makes this 

point within the context of practical reasoning:  

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So the thinking faculty [τὸ νητικὸν] thinks the forms in the images [φαντάσμασι], and just 

as in those cases what was to be pursued and avoided is determined for it, so also beyond 

perception, whenever it is directed towards images, it is moved, as for example someone 

seeing a beacon sees that it is a fire, and seeing it moving knows that it is hostile; but 

sometimes also it reasons and deliberates [λογίζεται καὶ βούλευεται ] concerning what is 

going to happen by means of images or thoughts in the soul on the basis of what is present.49  

In part, the above account suggests that the ability to produce mental images about future 

events is the work of the thinking faculty by way of both images [φαντάσματα] and thoughts 

in the soul.  This can be interpreted in at least three ways.  One, Aristotle is claiming that 

imagination by itself can produce mental images about the future for the thinking faculty, 

which then deliberates and calculates concerning such images.  Two, he could mean that 

imagination and thoughts can independently produce mental images for the thinking faculty.  

Three, he could mean that the combination of images and thoughts produce mental images 

of future events upon which the thinking faculty can reflect.   

Although there is no knockdown evidence in favor of any of the above accounts, in his 

discussion of animal movement, Aristotle does hint at interpretation one as follows: “that 

which moves would be one in form, that is the appetitive faculty qua appetitive, but the thing 

desired would be the first of all things (for this brings about movement without being moved 

through thinking or imagining [τῷ νοηθῆναι ἢ φαντασθῆναι].50  Here, Aristotle explicitly 

acknowledges (by way of ‘or’) that imagination is able independently to access desired 

objects.  Smith translates this passage to include “being apprehended in thought or 

imagination.”51  Although ‘apprehended’ is not explicitly stated by Aristotle, there is scope 

for this interpretation here.    

The crucial assumption here is that ‘apprehend’ must be interpreted as a capability both (1) 

to discriminate that an object is an object of a certain sort and (2) to construct a future image 

of said object.  We have already seen that (1) is clearly defended by Aristotle.  Interestingly, 

in his Rhetoric, Aristotle acknowledges (2).  Within the context of distinguishing between 

fear and confidence, he says:   

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Confidence is both the opposite with respect to fear, and [what brings about] confidence [is 

the opposite of what brings about] fear; thus it is in concert with the imaginative expectation 

[φαντασίας ἡἐλπὶς] of things that are safe [that they are also the things] that are nearby, while 

the things that are fearful either do not exist or are far off.52  

The passage makes clear that being confident is attached to expectationimages associated 

with either those things that keep us safe or the remoteness of those things that would put us 

in harm’s way.  Clearly, to expect is to have futureoriented images of close things that are 

good or distant things that are bad.  On this view, then, imagination can independently 

produce images of future images qua expectation-images.  Indeed, this is in keeping with 

Aristotle’s beacon of fire example noted above; that is, when one sees such a fire, one forms 

images of what one anticipates or expects will occur; for example, that one’s village will be 

burned to the ground or that one’s army has arrived.  Thus, it is reasonable to infer that 

imagination is able both (1) to discriminate that an object is an object of a certain sort and 

(2) to construct a future image of said object.  

If the above analysis is on the mark, there is no reason why deliberative imagination cannot 

independently apprehend and construct future object-images of the desired object.  For 

instance, not only does deliberative imagination apprehend that object X is a dessert, but it 

is able to construct the future image-object of the observer enjoying the dessert at some future 

time T.  Thus, deliberative imagination can independently apprehend an object and can 

construct, for the thinking faculty, future object-images (this will require synthesis of images 

as well) of an apprehended object.          

In summary, deliberative imagination is a cognitive feature of the rational soul to the extent 

that it is able to (1) apprehend independently that an object is a certain kind of object, (2) 

construct future object-images, (3) select images, (4) produce images, and (5) synthesize 

images.  With these characteristics in place, it is clear that not only is deliberative imagination 

far removed from being minimally cognitive, but can be reasonably understood to be in the 

highly cognitive range (though not maximally cognitive).  

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Still, Lear might contend that his analysis remains untouched by my interpretation.  He could 

very well grant this interpretation and claim that all the “intellectual stuff” that has been 

articulated is a mere antecedent to the actual pleasure of catharsis.  To elaborate, whenever 

someone offers a cognitive account of Aristotle’s concept of catharsis, Lear could always 

grant such an interpretation, but insist that it is merely a causal antecedent to the “real tragic 

pleasure” associated with catharsis.  Such a move, however, should be viewed with much 

suspicion, because such a reply would render Lear’s analysis unfalsifiable.  That is, no matter 

what cognitive account of catharsis is offered, Lear could always claim that such an account 

is a mere causal antecedent to the proper effect of tragedy.  Moreover, if it is the case that 

Lear’s use of imagination is inappropriate, then his use of it as part of his anticognitivist 

account of the real tragic pleasure of catharsis is weakened as well.  Thus, it is reasonable to 

conclude that Lear’s account of Aristotle’s reply to Plato’s challenge is off the mark.    

Moreover, even if it is assumed that deliberative imagination is one of the linchpins to 

understanding the cathartic experience, it seems to run counter to Lear’s anti-cognitivist 

account.  Specifically, deliberative imagination, according to Aristotle, is a highly cognitive 

activity associated with both moral and non-moral actions.  It reasonably follows that its 

attending pleasures can be of a rational qua cognitive sort.  This means that, for Lear, the 

tragic pleasure produced by catharsis would include (at least in part) cognitive pleasure—an 

implication that Lear would not wish to countenance.  Thus, it does not appear that Lear is 

in a position to employ, from an anti-cognitivist perspective, Aristotle’s account of 

imagination in order to make sense of his concepts of catharsis and tragic pleasure.    

V. Imagination, Pity & Fear, and the Pleasure of Catharsis  

More must be said about imagination and its relationship to catharsis and tragic pleasure; for 

Lear is correct to mention imagination, but its exact role with respect to the observance of a 

tragedy must be made clear.  First, attention will be given to how imagination is related to 

comprehending and judging empathetically the actions of someone like Oedipus and how 

such comprehending and judging are related both to deliberative and perceptual imagination.  

Second, the physical and cognitive dimensions of pity and fear will be explained.    

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Recall that in order for the mind to reflect on the appropriate features of a particular image, 

deliberative imagination must conjure up the relevant image.  The nature of such images qua 

likenesses is explained by Aristotle as follows:  

For just as the animal drawn on a tablet is both an animal and a likeness, and this is both one 

and the same thing, the essence, however, is not the same for both, and it is possible to think 

[of the drawing] both as animal and as a likeness, and in this way it is also necessary to accept 

that the image in us [τὸἐν ἡµῖν φάντασμα] is itself essentially [καθ’ αὑτό] an object of 

contemplation and an image [φάντασμα] of something else.53  

In the same way that a drawing of an animal can be viewed both as an animal and as a likeness 

of an animal, the likeness of an animal in our minds is simultaneously both (1) a mere image 

of an animal that has the shape of an animal and (2) an image qua likeness (conjured up by 

deliberative imagination) upon which the thinking part of the soul reflects.  It is in this sense 

that the ontological status of the same mental image can be different.  In this way, the image 

of a gouge-eyed Oedipus is both the shape of a man and an image qua likeness of ill-fated 

Oedipus—an image that is stitched together by deliberative imagination.     

In the Poetics (noted above), Aristotle states that non-philosophers and philosophers “take 

pleasure when they see likenesses, because while they observe they understand and reconcile 

[μανθάνειν καὶ συλλογίζεσθαι] what each thing is: for instance, that this [person] is that 

[person].”54  However, he qualifies his claim about learning by noting that non-

philosophers“partake of it to a lesser extent [ἐπὶ βραχὺ].”55  

Again, we see Aristotle making a distinction between different sorts of aesthetic 

experiences—in this case different degrees of cognitive pleasures—had by different 

members of the polis.  Non-philosophers have cognitive pleasures of likenesses to a far less 

degree than philosophers.  Yet, Aristotle’s educated citizen stands between these two extreme 

groups.  As I argued earlier, it is the pleasure that accompanies the joy in having judged 

finely that captures the cathartic experience for these educated citizens.  Thus, granting that 

the education of citizens will vary, it reasonably follows that the less educated citizen shares 

in this cognitive pleasure to a lesser extent than the more educated citizen and the more 

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educated citizen shares this pleasure to a lesser extent than the highly educated philosopher.  

For example, (1) responses by the less educated may be more visceral than cognitive, (2) the 

more educated could glean the pleasures of judging finely, and (3) the philosophically 

educated would be able to reflect on the metaphysical and ethical dimensions of the 

universality of poetic expression.   

Now, one may still be skeptical of my positive account of catharsis and imagination, even if 

Lear’s analysis is not satisfactory.  Specifically, one could reply that the positive account 

offered here over intellectualizes Aristotle’s sense of the cathartic experience. Even if one 

were to grant that there are different sorts of cathartic experiences amongst citizens and non-

citizens, it does not follow that the cathartic experience of the citizenry is so closely tied to 

judging finely.  Such fine judgments may be both appropriate and required for the scientist 

and the philosopher, but seem out of place for the average citizen of the polis—even  

Aristotle’s ideal polis.    

In reply, Aristotle’s own assessment of the generally educated man of thepolis  

clearly tells against this skeptical concern:  

There appears to betwoways of being in a certain state of understanding, of which one 

possesseswhatcanrightlybecalled the scientificunderstanding of the subjectmatter, and a 

certain kind [of understandingthatcanbecalled] the general-educationunderstanding, 

concerningbotheverystudy and inquiry, and in a similarway for both more humble [studies 

and inquiries] and more honorable [studies and inquiries].  For itis in keepingwithcharacter 

of the educated man to be able to judgeaccuratelywhatisfair or whatis not fair in an 

explanation.   

For, indeed, wealsothinkthat the generallyeducated man [τόνὅλως 

πεπαιδευμένον]isthisparticularkind [of judgingperson], and [wethinkthat]  

beingeducatedisbeing able to do thatwhichwassaid.56  

As Aristotle makes clear in the above passage, the generally educated person does engage in 

various degrees of intellectual activities, some of which include sorts of judging regarding 

what is fair and unfair.  Although such an educated citizen may not be able to engage in 

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highly abstract or philosophical kinds of analysis, he can still engage everyday activities in 

a reflective and discriminating fashion.  Thus, the average educated citizen can reasonably 

have the sort of cathartic experience I have suggested.  This can be seen by connecting 

rational imagination and catharsis to pity and fear.  

So, we can now ask: what about catharsis and tragic pleasure in terms of pity and fear?  A 

review of Aristotle’s account of pity and fear and how these are connected to the story of 

Oedipus should answer this question.  For assistance, Belfiore offers the following account 

of pity as it relates to Oedipus:  

Pity involves wailing and weeping…for pity, like fear, involves involuntary, painful 

physiological reactions (weeping) that are necessary in some way to the production of 

aesthetic pleasure… These reactions, however, are not involuntary and automatic…Pity, in 

Greek thought, is an essentially human emotion, dependent on an awareness of the common 

human lot…we often feel pity for people in completely hopeless situations… We weep while 

viewing Oedipus with his eyes put out because we see what appears to us to be a man in pain 

and weeping…Finally, because we shudder and weep at the tragedy qua people weeping, we 

realise that it is an imitation of a pitiable and fearful event: that this plot is an imitation of 

that event.57  

Belfiore notes both the physical and cognitive dimensions to pity with emphasis given to the 

context of observing a tragedy.  Basically, initial weeping of the depiction of a tragic event 

is a natural physiological response of pity.  Then, according to Belfiore, the cognitive aspect 

to pity is that we are able to recognize that the unfolding plot is a copy qua imitation of a real 

human scenario that involves pitiable and fearful events.  

Moving beyond Belfiore, this response of pity becomes both emotionally and cognitively 

heightened (possibly to the extent of wailing) when one recognizes that near-inevitable 

events, like those that befall Oedipus, are part of the human condition.    

This human condition, moreover, is pitied to the extent that, not only do we feel badly for 

the protagonist’s plight, but we also understand that we could find ourselves in reasonably 

somewhat similar near-inextricable circumstances.58Aristotle makes all of this explicitly 

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clear: “People also pity those who are similar to them in terms of age, in terms of character, 

in terms habits, in terms of social position, [and] in terms of descent; for in all such 

[similarities] it appears more likely that [what happens to others] may also befall oneself.”59  

On this reading, the cognitive response to an Oedipus-type tale is more than the recognition 

that this plot is an imitation of that event.  Indeed, this understanding is extended to judgment, 

by way of σύνεσις and γνώμη, in the sense that educated citizens are able to judge 

empathetically and equitably Oedipus’ actions in the light of their own past similar 

experiences or that they could very well find themselves in similar circumstances—this 

Oedipus scenario is similar to that event that befell me and, moreover, this Oedipus scenario 

is a kind of unfortunate happenstance that could very well befall me. This is the cognitive 

pleasure achieved upon both the empathetic feeling of pity aroused by Oedipus’ plight and 

the corresponding empathetic and fairness judgments.  As defended earlier, we take joy in 

having judged finely.  It is at the empathetic judging stage, concomitantly with the 

recognition that one could be in similar circumstances as the protagonist in a tragedy, from 

which the heightened cognitive pleasure qua tragic pleasure emerges.60  

The other element of the cathartic experience is associated with fear.  Clearly, the spectacle 

of terror produces the physiological response of fear, which can have an accompanying 

feeling of fleeing the object of fear or a kind of almost dreadfulparalysis.61  Aristotle explains 

the physiology of fear as follows: “Then let fear [be understood as] a certain suffering [λύπη 

τις] or commotion because of an image [ϕαντασιάς] of a looming wickedly destructive or 

sufferable event.”62 With respect to tragedy, the audience feels such pain or disturbance as 

they anticipate the unfolding of a plot (in part by way of recognition and reversal discussed 

earlier), which includes both destructive and painful events that are imminent.  Oedipus’ 

patricide and incest, all of which culminates in the gouging of his eyes, bring to fruition the 

specific destructive and painful events that are broadly and fearfully anticipated (“I know 

something terrible is going to happen now…”) by the audience.  Aristotle hints at this kind 

of account, which includes judgment, emotions, and imagination, in De Anima:   

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And, moreover, when we judge [δοξάσωμεν] that something is either fearful or threatening, 

we are at once affected by it, and similarly even when [we judge something to be] cheering; 

but in relation to imagination we are just like spectators [who are observing] fearful or 

cheering things in a painting.63  

Aristotle is clear that, upon judging that X is terrible or frightening, the relevant emotions (in 

this case fear) are produced.  Notice that causal priority is given to judgments over emotions.  

From this perspective, emotions are distinct from visceral feeling responses or the initial 

“pain or disturbance” of threatening evil.  This suggests that, for Aristotle, emotions 

themselves are intertwined with cognitive meaning.  Interestingly, as part of his reply to Lear, 

Halliwell stresses the cognitive dimension of Aristotle’s account of emotions with respect to 

pity and fear (drawing on Poetics 4).64  To quote at length, here is his assessment:   

The complete experience of a tragedy will necessitate the understanding of the work’s 

significant structure of “actions(s) and life” (6.1450a16-17), the ethical characterizations of 

its agents, the rationale of their expressed thoughts, and so forth.  But this cannot be a coldly 

cerebral process of ratiocination; it is the necessarily evaluative engagement of the mind with 

imagined human actions and experiences of a deeply serious and, for Aristotle, a justifiably 

emotion-inducing kind.  It is for this reason that Aristotle speaks interchangeably of, on the 

one hand, the “pitiful” and “fearful” as properties of a tragic plot structure itself and its 

components (e.g., 9.1452a2-3), but also, on the other, of pity and fear as the appropriate 

response of the spectator (or reader) who attends to and is absorbed in this structure of events 

(e.g., 11. 1452a38-39)…So to suggest, as one scholar has, that the cognitive pleasure of 

tragedy “is a step that occurs en route to the production of the proper pleasure of tragedy,” 

where this pleasure is said to arise from pity and fear through mimesis, is to separate elements 

that we should expect to find fused, given Aristotle’s view…that the emotions themselves 

are cognitively grounded.65  

Halliwell insightfully points out that (1) pity and fear are an integral part of Aristotle’s 

understanding of a well-crafted plot, (2) the response of pity and fear (through the help of 

imagination) on the part of the audience is appropriate because it aids in the audience’s ability 

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to make reasonable normative/prescriptive claims regarding human actions and life in 

general, and (3) that it is a mistake to separate (as Lear does) the cognitive and emotional 

responses by the audience, since (for Aristotle) emotional responses are mediated by the 

faculty of reason.  As part of his reply to Lear’s claim that cognitive pleasure is a step in the 

direction of the proper pleasure of tragedy, Halliwell notes that such an account separates the 

cognitive and emotional aspects of the proper pleasure of tragedy when, in fact, these should 

be kept “fused.”66Thus, taking (1)-(3) yields further support of the claim that emotions, for 

Aristotle, are intertwined with cognitive meaning.  The further upshot is that, contrary to 

Lear’s account, tragic pleasure is robustly cognitive.67  

In this same chapter, Halliwell offers his own account of how to make sense of Aristotle on 

tragic pleasure: “Such pleasure…is considered by Aristotle to arise from the exercise of our 

capacities for both understanding and emotion in the engagement with the fictive possibilities 

that art dramatizes.”68  He goes on: “In the case of tragedy, Aristotle’s whole theory suggests 

that an audience needs to have sufficient experience of life to understand various kinds of 

action, intention, and character; to be able to distinguish degrees of innocence, responsibility, 

and guilt; to know, in an effectively mature way, what merits pity and fear; to have a grasp 

of human successes and failures, of the relationship between status and character, and so 

forth.”  From all of this, Halliwell concludes that the “peculiar pleasure that tragedy affords 

will thus be of a compound kind (‘the pleasure from pity and fear through mimesis’).”69  

There is very little here with which I disagree.  Note that, with respect to my account, 

Halliwell’s analysis is restricted to the citizen class.  Within this class, he has captured very 

well the cognitive dimension of the educated citizen-audience and the kind of general tragic 

pleasure they will have.  My view is in keeping with his, although I give greater emphasis 

on judging character and the corresponding joy qua pleasure that comes from doing this 

well—all within the context of mimetic pity and fear.  My only concern with Halliwell’s 

account is when he claims that tragedy provides the audience “with imaginative opportunities 

to rest, refine, extend, and perhaps even question the ideas and values on which such 

comprehension rests.”70    

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I would resist this reading, because it requires using both ‘comprehension’ and ‘imagination’ 

in ways that can be misleading.  Also, Halliwell does not pursue the role of imagination 

within this framework.  This is why I have offered an account of the role played by rational 

imagination in the cathartic experience.                  

Still, even granting my rational imagination account of catharsis and tragic pleasure, Aristotle 

appears to suggest (in the previous quotation above) that real-life emotions are not really 

present in the same manner as in the case of emotions associated with mental images; that is, 

the emotion-states that are produced by images and judgments are more akin to those 

emotions associated with observing art objects.For example, an image of a growling tiger 

does not produce the same emotional response as a living growling tiger a few feet away.  

Aristotle must here mean that the intensity of emotion with respect to art objects is less than 

the intensity of emotions with respect to real-life frightful phenomena.  This interpretation is 

in keeping with his claims about what thinking and imagination can produce.  Aristotle says:       

And qualitative change is caused by imaginations and sense-perceptions and ideas.  For, on 

the one hand, sense-perceptions are at once a certain kind of qualitative change, while on the 

other hand, imagination and thinking have the effect of the objects [out in the world]; for in 

a way, the idea envisioned about [the warm or cold or] the delightful or fearful comes to be 

the same kind [of effect], much like [the effects] of what the objects [out in the world 

produce], and therefore [people] shudder and are frightened when they merely think [of scary 

things].71  

Aristotle clearly states that the combination of imagination and thinking has the power of 

actual things.  The subtle shift here to include thinking with imagination is important.  

Although images of art objects have a far less intensity of emotion than real-life fearful 

things, the ideas that emerge as a result of both imagination and thinking have potencies 

much like actual real-life things. As discussed earlier, deliberative imagination constructs the 

image upon which the thinking faculty reflects.  Again, for example, an image of a growling 

tiger and the thoughts that emerge as a result of thinking about the image of a growling tiger 

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are almost as powerful as a reallife growling tiger.  As Aristotle puts it, this is why we 

shudder and are frightened— even when we are merely thinking of menacing things.  

This means that the combination of images of X (which may include deliberative 

imagination-induced foreboding evil images) and thoughts about images of X can produce a 

rather similar kind of fear that emerges from observing real-life fearful things.  The major 

difference is that of degree; in real-life one is likely to be panic-stricken at the sight of a 

growling tiger at arms distance, but less likely so when observing such an event unfold on 

stage in the confines of an amphitheater.    

Moreover, since a tragedy is “more alive” than a picture or any other inanimate art object—

we are actually observing our fellow citizens engage in a range of activities on stage—it is 

reasonable to think that the emotional response of actually observing Oedipus’ travails is 

very close to the emotional response that would be produced if one observed someone in real 

life undergoing similar struggles (caused by error) to that of Oedipus.  Aristotle, in fact, notes 

that such unfixable error-induced effects are to be most feared and pitied:  

And all fearful things are more fearful, in so far as, if after an error [ἁμάρτωσιν] occurs, it is 

not possible to be corrected…and thus in a word, [all] things are fearful, inasmuch  as, when 

they occur in a certain manner or when they are about to occur, they are pitiable [ἐλεεινά 

ἐστιν].72  

Along with pity, Aristotle goes on to address the cognitive effects that are produced and with 

respect to whom tragedy should befall:  

Fear produces deliberation [βουλευτικούς], and indeed no one deliberates about that which 

is without hope.  Consequently, whenever it is fitting that the audience should be afraid [that 

something may happen] to them, it is necessary to prepare [the audience] for  such kinds of 

[fearful scenarios]; especially that it is possible that they will suffer such kinds [of fearful 

scenarios]; certainly that others have suffered greater [than they have]; and [they] are shown 

that those who are similar [to them] are suffering or have suffered, and have suffered at the 

hands of those from whom they did not expect; and both in such ways and at those times that 

they did not suspect.73 We not only fear what we think is about to happen to Oedipus as result 

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of his honest mistakes, but we are also afraid upon reflecting how similar events could befall 

us.  Thus, the cognitive stimulation, in conjunction with the images produced by deliberative 

imagination, brings to fruition a range of intensity with respect to the emotion of fear 

(reasonably, this would apply to pity as well).  The upshot is that the emotion of fear (and 

pity) is imbued with cognition.  Finally, Aristotle brings together the relationship of pity and 

suffering coupled with the relevant cognitive responses.   He tells us:  

[And pity is also produced by] both signs and actions [related to suffering], for instance both 

the clothes of those who have painfully worked hard and as many such kinds of things, and 

words and all the rest of the [details] of those who are in a state of suffering, for instance 

those who are presently dying.  And especially the morally excellent men [σπουδαίους], who 

are in such critical scenarios, are those who are pitiable; for all these things, on account of 

appearing near, produce greater pity, and both because they are undeserving of evil and 

because the suffering is apparent to our eyes.74  

Keeping in mind the discussion of fear above, Aristotle brings together the intensity of pity 

by way of the confluence of events that illuminate suffering.  The audience is brought to such 

a state of pity in the case of Oedipus in the light of his honest mistake, the undeserving events 

that follow, the self-inflicted wounds to his eyes, the blood on the clothing as a result of these 

wounds, Oedipus’ own verbal and physical expressions of pain, etc.  All of this comes 

together on stage to produce pity in the audience at a very intense level.  Most notably, 

Aristotle points out that the cognitive dimension of pity is produced by understanding that 

the evil that befalls someone, like Oedipus, is undeserving, while the emotional aspect of 

pity is tethered to the immediacy and close distance of observing someone, like Oedipus, 

suffer. Thus, much like fear, pity is also imbued with cognition.  Therefore, both pity and 

fear, according to Aristotle, are emotions that have a cognitive dimension.   

Finally, unlike an actual legal trial, the judging audience can take pleasure in what has 

occurred to them.  With the cognitive dimensions of pity and fear in place, the audience can 

both judge Oedipus and determine of what he is morally and legally culpable and take 

pleasure in the quality of such judgments.    

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Indeed, given the role of σύνεσις and γνώμη, ϕαντασιά, and pity and fear, it is quite plausible 

to understand the pleasure associated with Aristotle’s concept of catharsis in a highly 

cognitive way.  It is this cognitive pleasure, I argue, that captures the tragic pleasure of 

Aristotle’s concept of catharsis.       

VI. Conclusion  

By indicating the division that exists between the citizens and all others in the polis, it is 

possible to explicate the corresponding kinds of catharsis and tragic pleasure that are 

produced.  Character analysis is a highly cognitive process both in everyday interactions with 

others as well as in observing a tragic play for the Athenian citizen.  The positive account 

offered has revealed the plausibility of a richly cognitive interpretation of catharsis that 

stands in sharp contrast to Lear’s anti-cognitivist interpretation.  Specifically, the cathartic 

experience is closely linked to the evaluative judgments and rational imagination of an 

educated citizenry.  While observing the deeds of the protagonist, the ensuing emotions of 

pity and fear are cognitively imbued and heightened by understanding that the framework of 

his predicament is, mutatis mutandis, not all that different than one that could befall most 

people.  Additionally, as part of this experience, there is the production of tragic pleasure; 

namely, the joy in having judged the overall character of the protagonist correctly in the light 

of his overall circumstances.  This interpretation, then, establishes a highly cognitive account 

of the cathartic experience and tragic pleasure.  Indeed, it is just such an account that provides 

the kind of response by Aristotle that would be needed to address adequately Plato’s 

challenge.75  

ForAristotle,togivethedefinitionofathingistoinclude,aspartofthething’sessence,itsfunction.S

eeMeteorologica, IV.12,390a10-12.  Note thatthereis a “teleological thread” 

thatrunsthroughmuch of Aristotle’swritings.  It should come as no surprise, then, thatsuch a 

strandispresent in hisPoetics.  Althoughthisessaydoes not directlyaddress the structure of 

“poeticteleology,” see ch. 10 of Christopher Shields, Aristotle, 2nd. edn.  

(London: Routledge, 2014) for such an offering.   

Please note that all translations of Aristotle’sworks are myown.     

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Aristotle, Poetics, I.14, 1453b8-13.  
4 Ibid., I.14, 1453b19-23.  AlsoseePoetics I.23, 1459a17-22 and I.25, 1461a14-b15.  
5 Note that Jonathan Lear’sinterpretation of catharsis withwhichthisanalysistakes issue 

is not one of thesethreeinterpretations.   

The purgation view has been defended by Thomas Tyrwhitt, De poetica liber (E  

TypographeoClarendoniano, 1794), A. S. Minturno, L’ArtePoetica (1563; Munich: Wilhelm 

Fink, 1971), F. L. Lucas, Tragedy in Relation to Aristotle’s Poetics (London: Hogarth Press, 

1953), and most rigorously by JakobBernays, ZweiAbhandlungenfiber die 

aristotelischeTheorie des Drama (1857; Berlin: 1880). 

. M. Quinton and M. Meager, “Symposium: Tragedy,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian 

Society, suppl. vol. 34 (1960): 177.  
8Samuel H. Butcher, Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and FineArt :with a criticaltext and 

translation of the Poetics (London: Macmillan, 1911), 254-55.  
9Leon Golden, “Catharsis,” Transactions of the American Philological Association, 93 

(1962): 57.  
10 Despite the distinctiveness of their respective interpretations,among others, G. F. 

Else, Aristotle’sPoetics (Cambridge: Harvard UniversityPress, 1963), StephenHalliwell, The 

Aesthetics of Mimesis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), Martha Nussbaum, 

“Tragedy and Self-Sufficiency: Plato and Aristotle on Fear and Pity,” in Essays in Aristotle’s 

Poetics, ed. A. O. Rorty (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 261-90, Richard Janko, 

“From Catharsis to the Aristotelian Mean,” in Essays in Aristotle’s Poetics, ed. A. O. Rorty 

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992): 341-58, and ElizabethBelfiore, “Pleasure, 

Tragedy and Aristotelian Psychology,” The ClassicalQuarterly, 35, no. 2 (1985): 349-61 

broadly fit into this cognitivist camp.   
11 Jonathan Lear, “Katharsis,” inEssays on Aristotle’sPoetics, ed. A. O. Rorty 

(Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 1992),315-340.  
12 Ibid., 324.  
13 Ibid., 334 [italics mine].  

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14 Ibid., 323. 15 Ibid., 335.  
16 There are two parts to Plato’s criticism of poetry, one related to the nature of sensible 

objects, the other concerns the effect of poetry on the soul. First, in his account concerning 

the nature of art, Plato claims that the phenomenal world and its objects are not the source of 

true knowledge, but merely imitations [μιμήσεις] of the transcendental Forms, which we are 

able to grasp with our intellect alone.  From this conceptual framework, Plato points out that 

art is three “levels” removed from the reality of the Forms.  Plato makes it clear, at Republic 

X, 602c, that the imitations of poets to be “third from the truth.” That is, an art object is 

merely a copy of a representation of an object in the sensible world, and the sensible world 

is only a copy of the World of the Forms. Thus, art is a copy of a copy of a copy (see Republic 

X, 598b-599a).  Second, keeping this “copy of a copy of a copy” view of the nature of art in 

mind, in the Republic, Plato argues that poetry is harmful to the soul.  Those who wish to 

indulge their emotions in such “wretched” activities, thinks Plato, are strengthening the lower 

part (i.e., the appetitive part) of their souls and thereby weakening the higher rational part of 

the soul.  If Aristotle is to provide a convincing argument against Plato’s position, he must 

show forcefully how poetry enhances the rational part of the soul.  Indeed, this essay 

endeavors to make manifest that Aristotle’s theory of poetry is able to address adequately 

Plato’s challenge.  For more on Plato’s views regarding the effects of poetry, see M. F. 

Burnyeat, “Art and Mimesis in Plato’s ‘Republic’,” The London Review of Books, May 21, 

1998, 3-9, C. L. Griswold, “The Ideas and Criticism of Poetry in Plato’s Republic,” Journal 

of the History of Philosophy, 19 (1981):135-50, Stephen Halliwell, “Plato’s Repudiation of 

the Tragic,” in Tragedy and the Tragic, ed. M. S. Silk (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 332-

49, Christopher Janaway, Images of Excellence: Plato’s Critique of the Arts (Oxford: 

Clarendon Press, 1995), 106-57, Kimon Lycos, “Making Things with Words: Plato on 

Mimesis in Republic,” Philosophical Inquiry, 18, nos. 3-4 (SummerFall, 1996): 1-19, and C. 

D. C. Reeve, Philosopher Kings (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 220-23.  

Aristotle, Politics, VIII.7, 1342a5-16.   Lear may have this passage in mindregardinghis 

claim thatAristotle’sreply to Platoisthatpoetryisharmless.  It is not 

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beingdeniedthatAristotlethinksthisisso; however, thiscannotbe all Aristotlewouldwant to say 

on the matter if hehopes to swayPlatointoacceptingtragicdrama and other arts in the polis.  

Ibid., 1342a17-28.  
19 The claim is not thatcitizens (according to Aristotle) cannot have 

hedonisticcatharticexperienceslikethose of the (b)-class—theycan have bothhedonistic and 

cognitive pleasuresassociatedwithtragedy.  Given  the  nature  of theirsouls,however, 

the  (b)-class individualscanonly have hedonisticcatharticexperiences.  This 

interpretation of a sort of nestedhierarchy of catharticexperiences stands in somewhatcontrast 

to Depew’s tentative claim that the tragiceffect in the Politicsis not exactly the samething as 

the tragiceffect in the Poetics.  See DavidDepew, “FromHymn to Tragedy: 

Aristotle’sGenealogy of PoeticKinds,” inThe Origins of Theater in Ancient Greece and 

Beyond: FromRitual to Drama, ed. EricCsapo and Margaret C. Miller (Cambridge: 

Cambridge UniversityPress, 2007), 126-49.  
20Aristotle, Politics, VIII.5 1340a19-20.       
21Aristotle,Poetics, I.6, 1450a15-24.  
22 Ibid., I.13, 1452b31-1453a11.  Note that ‘good’ hereis not to suggestthatOedipusis a 

morallyexceptionalperson.  AristotlemakesclearthatOedipus stands betweenthosewho are 

highlyvirtuous and thosewho are extremely base (Poetics, I. 1453a7-12). ‘Good’, then, 

isdesigned to capture thisintermediary position.  
23 Ibid., I.14, 1454a16-b8.  
24Loudendiscusses, in addition, a thirdsubordinatevirtue, [εὐβουλία], thatismuch more 

controversial and not of great importance here.  See Robert B.Louden, “What Is Moral 

Authority? εὐβουλία, σύνεσις and γνώμη vs. φρόνησις,” Ancient Philosophy, 17, no. 1 

(1997): 103-18.  He alsogives a lucidaccount of how all of 

thesevariouspracticalintellectualvirtues are related and yet distinct.    
25Aristotle, NicomacheanEthics, VI.6, 1141a3-4.  
26 R. Louden, “What Is Moral Authority?” 107.  
27Aristotle, NicomacheanEthics, VI.7, 1141b15-24.  

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28 Ibid., VI.10, 1143a8-10.  
29Aristotle stresses justthis point in Poetics, XIII, 1453a7-10.  For furtherdetails about the 

nature of Aristotle’s use of reversal and recognition in tragedy, see JohnMacFarlane, 

“Aristotle’sDefinition of ‘Anagnorisis’,” The American Journal of Philology, 121, no. 3 

(2000): 367-83, PatchenMarkell, “Tragic Recognition: Action and Identity in Antigone and 

Aristotle,” Political Theory, 3, no. 1(2003): 6-38, Malcolm Heath, “The Best Kind of Tragic 

Plot: Aristotle’s Arguments in Poetics 13-14,” Anais De FilosofiaClássica, 2, no. 3 (2008): 

1-18,  and S. Halliwell, The Aesthetics of Mimesis, 220-24.   

Aristotle, Poetics I.13, 1453a13-15.  For more discussion on ἁμαρτία see J. M. Bremer, 

Hamartia: TragicError in the Poetics of Aristotle and in Greek Tragedy (Amsterdam: Adolf 

M. Hakkert, 1968), T.C.W. Stinton, “Hamartia in Aristotle and Greek Tragedy,” 

ClassicalQuarterly, 25, no. 2 (1975): 221-54, and Leon Golden “Hamartia, Ate, and 

Oedipus,” Classical World, 72, No. 1 (1978): 3-12.  
31 Ibid., I.9, 1452a23-b5.  

Jankoemphasizesthisdidacticapproach to catharsis in  

“FromCatharsistotheAristotelianMean”inA.O.Rorty,ed.,EssaysonAristotle’sPoetics(NewJer

sey:PrincetonUni versityPress,1992),pp.341-358.   

Aristotle, NicomacheanEthics, IX.12, 1172a12-15.Now one mightbeconcerned about the 

omission of φρόνησιςfromthis discussion, giventhatAristotle points out 

thatpoetryisphilosophical to the extentthatit deals withevents and actions that are likely to 

occur.  This omission isintentional on the grounds thatAristotleistrying to locate the 

moderatephilosophicalsense of poetry as being more thanhistory, but lessthan full-

blownphilosophicalinquiryintoethics and action.  The ability to judge the actions of 

othersregarding how theymightlikelybehave, how thosejudgingcouldfindthemselves in 

similarcircumstances, and how to judgesuchbehaviors are the skills at hand.  The argument 

isthat the subordinateintellectualvirtues are enough to actualizetheseskills.  Thus, with 

respect to understanding the philosophical nature of poetry, drawing on the 

subordinateintellectualvirtues, as opposed to φρόνησις, is a way of strikingthis balance 

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between the less-than-philosophicalfield of history and highlyphilosophicalarena of ethics 

and action theory.  
34 Ibid., IX.11-X.1, 1171a36-1172b10.  

Aristotle, Poetics, I.4, 1454a16-19.  

Aristotle, NicomacheanEthics, III.3, 1112a2-3; and III.5, 1113b3-8.  
37 No doubt, the audience wouldalsoadmonishOedipus for not being a more temperate 

or dispassionateperson[σώφρων]with regard to the statements made by the drunkard at the 

party.  
38 ‘for the most part’ isnecessaryherebecause, according to Aristotle, one 

canbeheldblameworthy for akraticacts (weak-willedacts), which are not necessarily the 

product of deliberatechoice; although, of course, akraticacts are not on a par withviciousacts.  

So, one couldcondemnOedipus for beingakratic, but thatwouldlikelyrequiregoingbeyond the 

details of the story.  For Aristotle’s discussion on akrasia, seeNicomacheanEthics, VII.1-10, 

1145a15-1152a35.   
39Aristotle,Poetics, I.9, 1451b9.  In the production of art, Aristotle notes the importance of 

extracting the universalfromparticularexperiences:  “And  art  [τέχνη]  comes to 

bewheneverfrommanyreflectionsuponexperience a single universal [καθόλου][judgment] 

isproduced in relation to similarobjects.”  Given the high level of educationpossessed by the 

citizens, itisreasonable to thinkthattheycandiscern the universalsassociatedwith the 

particulars of a dramathat are in keepingwith the universalsdiscerned and employed by a 

poet.  The position takenhereisthatthis extraction canoccurthrough the intellectualvirtues of 

σύνεσις and γνώμη.  SeeMetaphysics, I. 1, 980a5-6.  Golden defendswhathe calls an 

“intellectual clarification” account of catharsis based on thisability to extract the 

universalsembedded in the particulars of a tragicplay.  See L. Golden, Aristotle on Tragic 

and Comic Mimesis (Atlanta: ScholarsPress, 1992), 5-39.  
40Aristotle,Politics, III.5, 1278a8-13.  Although this quotation does not come from 

Aristotle’s discussion of the ideal city-state, it could be viewed as how he might envision an 

ideal citizen body that is free of labor.  

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41SeeAristotle’sPoetics: Translatedwith a Commentary by George Walley, ed. John Baxter 

and Patrick Atherton (Montreal: McGill-Queen’sUniversityPress, 1997), xxv.  
42 As Aristotle points out at Metaphysics, V.29 1024b24-26, “Things are called false either 

because they themselves are not or because the phantasia that results from them is of what 

is not”(italics mine).  Note, as far as I can tell, Castonis one of the few recent commentators 

who is sensitive to keep this problem of error as the central theme of De Anima, III.3.  See 

Victor Caston, “Why Aristotle Needs  

Imagination,” Phronesis, 41, no. 1 (1995): 20-55. Also see Gary Watson, “ NTA IA in 

Aristotle, De Anima 3.3,” Classical Quarterly, 32, no. 1 (1982): 100-13 and Ronald 

Polansky, Aristotle’s De Anima (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)for similar 

accounts. 43Aristotle,De Anima, III.3 433b29-434a7.  
44See G. Watson, “ NTA IA in Aristotle, De Anima 3.3,” and V. Caston, 

“WhyAristotleNeeds Imagination.”  
45See DorotheaFrede, “The Cognitive Role of Phantasia in Aristotle,” in Essays on 

Aristotle’s De Anima, ed. Martha C. Nussbaum and AmelieOksenbergRorty (Oxford: 

ClarendonPress, 1992), 288-89 and S.Pendlebury, “Practical Arguments, Rationalization and 

Imagination in Teachers’ PracticalReasoning: A Critical Discussion,” Journal of Curriculum 

Studies, 25, no. 1 (1993):147.  

Aristotle,De Motu Animalium, I.6, 700b17-22. 47Aristotle, De Anima, III.11, 434a5-10.  

It is in the sense of synthesizingrelevant images that I 

agreewithHankinsonthatβουλευτικήϕαντασιά, as distinct from αἴσθησις andὑπόληψις, 

engages in the activity of comparison.  As Hankinsonputsit, “[βουλευτικήϕαντασιά] 

involvesgoingbeyond the judgmental component alreadypresent in perception, although not 

as far as thatwhich corresponds to propositionaljudgmentproperlyso-called, hupolêpsis.”  See 

R.J. Hankinson, “Perception and Evaluation: Aristotle on the Moral Imagination,” Dialogue, 

vol. 39 (1990): 52.  

Aristotle, De Anima, III.7, 431b2-8.  

Ibid.,III. 10, 433b10-13.  

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51 J. A. Smith’s translation of Aristotle’sDe Anima, III.10, 433b10-13, inThe Complete Works 

of Aristotle, vol. 1, ed. Jonathan Barnes (New Jersey: Princeton UniversityPress, 1985), 689.  
52Aristotle, Rhetoric II.5, 1383a15-19.  
53Aristotle, De Memoria I, 450b21-27.  
54Aristotle, Poetics IV, 1448b12-13.  ‘this [person] isthat [person]’ followsHalliwell’s 

translation. See S. Halliwell, The Aesthetics of Mimesis, p. 178, n. 3.      
55Ibid.,IV, 1448b13.   
56Aristotle, Parts of Animals, I.1, 639a1-9) [italics mine].  
57 E. Belfiore, “Pleasure, Tragedy and Aristotelian Psychology,” 359-60.  I have slightlyre-

arrangedsome of the sentences for the sake of conciseness.  This discussion relies upon 

Aristotle,Rhetoric II.5 1383a58, 2.81386a7-9 and 1386a21.  
58Puttfarkenhints at thissamekind of judgment: “Wepity the personwhodoes not deservehis 

fate, whilehorror or fearovercomes us whenwe are facedwithsomethingsimilar to ourselves.”  

See ThomasPuttfarken, “Aristotle, Titian, and Tragic Painting,” in Art and Thought,ed. Dana 

Arnold and Margaret Iversen (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003),17.  Moreover, thisaccount of pityis 

in keepingwithHalliwell’sinsightfulanalysis of pity in which the spectator of a 

playcanempathizewith the plight of the protagonist, but cannotactually “share the 

sufferer’ssubjectivity: howevermuchwemaydrawemotionallynear to it, or move 

vicariouslywithitspsychological expression, weremain, quafeelers or pity, outside the 

immediate, ‘first-person’ reality of the pain, whetherphysical or mental.”  I could not agree 

more withHalliwell’sanalysishere.  In fact, itisbecauseourempatheticresponsecannotaccess 

first-personsubjectivitythatwe are able to reflect on the possibility of 

ourownpersonalpredicamentsbeing similar to that of the protagonist.  See S. Halliwell, The 

Aesthetics of Mimesis,  216.     
59Aristotle, Rhetoric, II. 8, 1386a28-34.  
60 I amhereclearlyreferring to the pleasurehad by the educatedcitizenry.    
61 AtRhetoric II. 6, 1385b38-40, Aristotledoes point out thatbeing panic-

strickenmakesitnearly impossible to be able  to express pitybecause one isconsumed by 

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one’sownfear.  So, althoughitisreasonable to thinkthat the audience of a tragedymay express 

muchfear as the plot unfolds, itisunlikelythattheywouldbe panic-stricken or shouldbeinduced 

to be panic-strickengiven the needto express pity or compassion.   

Ibid., II.5,1382a21-22.  

Aristotle, De Anima, III.3, 427b21-24.  
64  For furtherdetails, see William. W. Fortentbaugh, Aristotle on Emotion (New York: 

Harper and RowPublishers, 1975).  

See S. Halliwell’sThe Aesthetics of Mimesis.  Similarly, Else argues that the properpleasure 

of tragedyincludesboth an intellectual component and an emotional one.  Seechapter 11 of 

GeraldF. Else, Plato and Aristotle on Poetry (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina 

Press, 1987).  Elsealsoembracesa “jury-like” view of the spectator at a play and gives ample 

weight to the connectionbetweenpity and judgment: “But underwhatcircumstancescan I 

bringmyself to pity the murderer or would-bemurderer?  I canpityhim if I judgethathedid not 

intend the parricide, matricide, or whatever, as such: in otherwords, if itisestablished to my 

satisfaction thatheperformed or intended the fearfulactδἰἁμαρτίαν τινά, because of 

someerror.” See Gerald F. Else, Aristotle’sPoetics (Cambridge: Harvard UniversityPress, 

1963), p. 437.   
66 S. Halliwell’sThe Aesthetics of Mimesis, p. 206.  
67 W. W. Fortenbaughaddressesdramaticpoetry.  He says: “Aristotleadopted an 

inclusive view of emotionalresponse.  He recognizedbothits cognitive and itsbodily aspects.  

This meantthatAristotlecould not onlyreject the Platonic suggestion thatdramaticpoetryplays 

to unintelligent feelings divorcedfromreason but alsomeet the Platonicdemand for a positive 

benefit to human life (Rep. 607d8-9).” See W. W. Fortenbaugh, Aristotle on Emotion, 21.  
68 S. Halliwell,The Aesthetics of Mimesis, 205 69Ibid., 204-5  
70Notably, Halliwellconcedes on this same pagethatAristotledoes not pursue the possibility 

of tragedyproducingthiskind of response.  Again, my account of rational imagination as it 

pertains to the cathartic experience reveals that this sort of response is not at all hostile to 

Aristotle’s thinking.  

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71Aristotle, De Motu Animalium, I.7, 701b16-22 

[retainingθερμοῦἢοψυχροῦἢ].Althoughhedoes not us the language of imagination, 

itisclearlyimpliedwhenAristotlemakes the following point about pity: “And, indeed, on the 

whole, [a man experiencespity] in thismannerwheneverheis in a state of 

rememberingthatsuchkinds [of undeserving tribulations] have happened or are expected to 

happen to himself or to those [family and friends] of his.”  Aristotle, Rhetoric, II.8, 1386a1-

3.Again, the faculty of imagination must be at work in order for there to be images that are 

remembered and uponwhich are reflected.  
72Aristotle, Rhetoric, II. 5, 1382b23-27. 73Ibid., II. 5, 1383a7-12.  
74Ibid., II. 8, 1386b2-7 (italics mine).    
75Earlier versions of thispaperwerepresented at Bowling Green State University, California 

State UniversityFullerton, Chicago State University, University of Kentucky, and The 

Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy.  I amgrateful to all the participants at these venues 

for theirhelpfulcomments. Moreover, I wouldlike to thankMarvBelzer, Jim Child,Ben Dixon, 

Paul Gomberg, Robert Grant, Ralph Hanke, Carrie-Ann Biondi, Louise Collins, Loren 

Lomasky, Phillip Peek, Christopher Perricone, Christopher Shields, and James Taylor for 

discussing and/or reviewingearly versions of thispaper.  Theircritical feedback 

wasinvaluable. Additionally, I must acknowledge the research and financial support of the 

College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at IU South Bend—particularly the efforts of Elizabeth 

Dunn (Dean of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences) and her staff.  Finally, I wouldlike to 

express a specialthanks to David Depew and Fred D. Miller, Jr. ; the former for introdcuing 

me to Aristotle’stheory of art manymoonsago and the latter for taking the time to read 

multiple versions of thispaper, offeringdetailedcomments, and providingmuch 

encouragement. Of course, the aboveindividuals do not necessarilysharemyinterpretations 

and conclusions.  

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