Catharsis
Aristotle's concept that tragedy purifies the audience by arousing and then releasing pity and fear.
The Meaning of Catharsis
Catharsis was Aristotle's term for the emotional purification that tragedy achieves in its audience. In the Poetics, he argues that tragedy, through arousing pity (eleos) and fear (phobos), accomplishes the catharsis of such emotions. Scholars have debated for centuries what exactly this means: does tragedy purge dangerous emotions like a medical treatment? Does it purify them, refining crude feeling into moral understanding? Or does it clarify them, helping the audience understand what is truly pitiable and fearful? The concept had medical roots — katharsis in Hippocratic medicine meant the purgation of harmful substances from the body. Aristotle may have been deliberately using a medical metaphor to defend poetry against Plato's attack: where Plato argued that tragedy inflames dangerous passions, Aristotle countered that it safely discharges them. The concept influenced every subsequent theory of art's psychological function, from Renaissance drama to Freudian psychoanalysis.
Fun Fact
Catharsis was originally a medical term for purging — Aristotle borrowed it to explain why watching tragedy feels good.
Words We Inherited
English words and phrases that trace back to this myth. See our full guide to English words from Greek mythology.
Explore Further
Catharsis
💭 conceptRitual and Drama
The concept of emotional purification through experiencing pity and fear in Greek tragedy.
Katharsis
💭 conceptPurification and emotional release
Katharsis was both a ritual purification from miasma and — in Aristotle's famous definition — the emotional cleansing that tragedy performs on its audience.
Pathos
💭 conceptRhetoric and Emotion
The Greek rhetorical appeal to emotion, one of Aristotle's three modes of persuasion.
Eleos
💭 conceptEthics and Emotion
The Greek concept of mercy and compassion, personified as a god and central to Athenian civic identity.
Apollonian and Dionysian
💭 conceptPhilosophy and aesthetics
A philosophical dichotomy introduced by Nietzsche contrasting the rational, ordered, and formal qualities associated with Apollo against the ecstatic, chaotic, and primal forces associated with Dionysus
Tragedy
💭 conceptLanguage and drama
An English word for a serious dramatic work ending in suffering, derived from the Greek tragodia meaning "goat song," possibly referring to the goat sacrificed to Dionysus or awarded as a prize
Miasma
💭 conceptSpiritual pollution from bloodshed
The concept of ritual pollution caused by murder, contact with death, or moral transgression that required purification.
Euripides
💭 conceptTragedy, psychology, women
Radical Athenian tragedian who explored human psychology and gave voice to women and outsiders
Pharmakon
💭 conceptThe substance that is both cure and poison
The Greek word that means simultaneously medicine and poison — a concept that embodies the duality at the heart of all power.
Psyche
💭 conceptLanguage and psychology
An English word meaning the human mind or soul, derived from Psyche, the mortal woman whose love for Eros and trials among the gods became an allegory for the soul's journey
Oedipus Complex
💭 conceptPsychoanalysis and psychology
A Freudian psychoanalytic concept describing a child's unconscious desire for the parent of the opposite sex, named after the mythological king who unknowingly killed his father and married his mother
Narcissistic Personality
💭 conceptPsychology and mythology
A psychological condition characterised by grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy, named after Narcissus, the beautiful youth who fell in love with his own reflection