Katharsis como “clarificação”: o papel ético das emoções trágicas a partir da poética aristotélica

Abstract

Our purpose in this dissertation is, from Aristotle’s theory of tragedies in Poetics, to deepen the interrelations between the concept of katharsis and the ethical-cognitive nature of the pathé (emotions) especially tragic of pity (eleos) and fear (phobos). We affirm the role given to these emotions, looking the way they are raised by the structure of the mythos (plot) of the tragedy, allows a kind of perceptual “clarification” regarding the understanding of practical values. Initially, we examined the theses of Gerald Else and Leon Golden, as well as the theory of katharsis as contained in Plato’s Sophist dialogue. Attention was focused on the second and third theses, considered as the status quaestionis on the investigated relationship, resulting, in the positioning in front of them, as a secondary objective of this research. In order to offer a specific interpretation regarding katharsis, we argue the meaning of the term demands an understanding of the ethical-cognitive nature of pity and fear based on Rhetoric and Nicomachean Ethics. As complex elements demanding specific judgments and beliefs about the world, such emotions are rationally engendered in the mythos (plot) of the tragic drama, in order to evoke certain reactions in the audience. Considering that, to arouse tragic emotions, it is necessary to 1) introduce people of good character, 2) showing them passing from good to bad fortune, we deepen this investigation in the last chapter based on Sophocles’ examples of moral conflicts in Antigone. Through the examination of particular cases of deliberation and affective response, we highlight 1) that the factor that contributes to the moral evaluation of the character is his adequate response to certain situations of conflict involving not only intellectual appreciation, but, when appropriate, emotional reaction. The adequacy of the character’s responses to deliberation determine his character, which is central to our properly tragic response to pity and fear. 2) By showing people of good character going from good to bad luck, tragedy, by means of pity and fear evoked, “clarifies” us about human eudaimonistic vulnerability in an Aristotelian sense.