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Masterarbeit MASTERARBEIT Titel der Masterarbeit „Katharsis and Aesthetic Emotion“ Verfasser Mag. Boris Grkinic angestrebter akademischer Grad Master of Science, MSc Wien, 2010 Studienkennzahl lt. Studienblatt: A 066 013 Studienrichtung lt. Studienblatt: Joint Degree Programme MEi:CogSci Cognitive Science Magisterstudium/Masterstudium Betreuer: Univ. Prof. Dr. Helmut Leder Content Introduction 5 Introduction to Part I 7 Introduction to Part II 11 Part I 1. Aristotle’s Katharsis 14 1.1. The Poetics 14 1.2. Interpretations of a Controversial Notion 17 1.3. A Discussion of the Various Interpretations of Katharsis 25 1.3.1. Particular Objections 25 1.3.2. General Arguments 27 1.3.3. Katharsis as Intrinsic Meaning 29 1.3.4. The Charge of the Politics 32 1.3.5. Plato and the Benefit of the Arts 39 2. The Interpretation of Katharsis in Schadewaldt’s Furcht und Mitleid? 44 2.1. Elementary: Eleos and Phobos 45 2.2. The Anagnorisis of Oedipus 48 2.3. Pure: Katharsis 51 3. Katharsis Reinterpreted 56 3.1. Some Implications of Eleos and Phobos 57 3.2. Eleos for Antigone 58 3.3. Eleos and Phobos Interlocked 60 3.4. The Contrariness of Katharsis 63 3.5. The Difference Indicated by Katharsis 66 3.6. Opening Katharsis 68 2 3.7. A Last Remark to the Interpretation of Schadewaldt 75 3.8. The Sole Mention of Katharsis in the Poetics 79 3.9. Katharsis as Purely Emotional 82 3.10. A First Conclusion 84 4. Dionysos: God of Tragedy 87 Part II 5. A Note on Aesthetics 94 5.1. Issue # 1 94 5.2. Issue # 2 96 5.3. Biological Aesthetics 98 5.4. Issue # 3 101 6. Emotion Theories 103 6.1. Approaching a Definition of Emotion 104 6.2. The Neuroscience of Emotions 108 6.3. Appraisal Theory of Emotion 112 6.3.1. The Common Ground of Appraisal Theory 114 6.3.2. Appraisal Theories 117 7. Katharsis and Aesthetic Emotion 125 7.1. Appraisal Theories of Aesthetic Emotion 125 7.2. Aesthetic Attitudes 134 7.2.1. Differences 135 7.2.2. Similarities 139 7.2.3. The Mirror Neuron System 142 7.3. An Explanation of Katharsis 148 7.3.1. Phobos 150 7.3.2. Eleos 156 3 7.3.3. Katharsis 158 7.3.4. Appraisal Theory and Kathartic Emotions 160 7.4. A Model of Emotional Responses to the Arts 164 7.4.1. The Right Branch 171 7.4.2. The Left Branch 174 7.4.3. Further Examples and Application 177 8. Conclusion 190 References 194 Appendix 203 4 Introduction Two brothers combat each other at the gates of Theben. Eteokles and Polyneikes, the sons of Oedipus, former king of Theben, murder each other in the struggle for the sole reign of the city. Kreon, consequently the new ruler of Theben, orders to leave Polyneikes, the attacker, unburied to be torn apart by wild animals. Polyneikes’ sister Antigone disobeys Kreon’s verdict and buries the corpse. Kreon sentences her to death, even though she is his niece and his son’s fiancé. Antigone is buried alive, Kreon ultimately regrets his cruelty, but comes too late to reverse his decisions. Antigone dies, Kreon’s son dies, Kreon’s wife dies, the tyrant is left behind with almost nothing and the tragedy is perfect. This is a short summary of the incidents reported in the tragedy Antigone of Sophocles. The incident of Antigone’s death is one of the paramount moments of Greek tragedy. In the course of centuries, scholars have paid tribute to the beauty of the play Antigone, G. W. F. Hegel has even referred to it as the most beautiful of all (see Hegel 1986). I myself have studied and most of all received the play over and over again. But when we meticulously think about the reception of such drama, particularly of the emotional aspect of it, the experience must appear somehow odd to us. How does it come that we feel so empathically towards Antigone and the other characters in spite of the awareness that these are fictional characters? Why do we deliberately ignore the fact that these incidents, occuring in front of our eyes, are untrue? Why are the emotions elicited in the course of the tragedy so life-like and intense, moving us to tears? And why do we choose to view just such horrible incidents over and over again? How does it come that we even relish the downfall of noble Antigone? And in regard of Hegel’s claim, what kind of beauty do we perceive in Antigone? The content of the present work is determined by these questions. This thesis is about the emotional impact of the arts. It is dedicated to the investigation of two notions which both approach the phenomenon from entirely different perspectives. These notions are Katharsis and aesthetic emotion. 5 About four centuries BC, Aristotle has proposed the application of Katharsis to the arts, he has characterised the notion in connection to the emotions elicited by the reception of tragedy and a certain musical play. Indeed, I consider Katharsis as a phenomenon constituting the core of aesthetic emotion. Aesthetic emotions can be described as emotions elicited in the context of the reception of the arts. The emotion researcher Richard S. Lazarus (1991) describes them as „emotions [that] occur when we react emotionally to movies or drama, a painting, sculpture, music, a natural scene, or a religious experience.“ (see 292) The investigation of this particular kind of emotions can be considered as a current „hot topic“ in the field of the disciplines which empirically investigate the (human) mind; these are the cognitive sciences. However, these short definitions of aesthetic emotion pointed out above are actually too simplistic; it is ultimately the task of this thesis to elaborate the complexity of aesthetic emotions and to provide a detailed definition and exact explanation of the nature of the phenomenon, regarding both ancient philosophical and current scientific insights. This thesis is driven by the conviction that the experience of the arts is on a cognitive and particularly on an emotional basis fundamentally different from the ,,mundane life" experience. I suppose that current investigations of the cognitive sciences do not pay sufficient attention to this crucial difference. In the beginning of the 20th century, the philosopher Moritz Geiger (1976) wrote that contemporary psychologists ignore and neglect the fact that emotions felt in the course of a tragedy or the arts in general possess particular unique features (see 191). Geiger’s objection is still valid today and this thesis is particularly concerned with the investigation of this class of aesthetic emotions. Particularly psychological and neuroscientific approaches fail to account properly for the emotional response to the arts. As this is one of my scientific foci, I will illustrate my claims in reference to Greek tragedies; but not exclusively. This work addresses the arts in general, including, for 6 instance, film, music and fine arts. Thus, emotions towards Antigone, but also towards the Girl with a Pearl Earring, towards the android Roy Batty in Blade Runner or towards Gregor Samsa in Die Verwandlung are subject of this thesis. I consider the ancient notion of Katharsis as an ancient insight that generally indicates the difference of this unique class of emotions and the methodological attempt of this work is to fruitfully combine the notion of Katharsis with current conceptions of aesthetic emotions. It is an attempt to bridge the old with the new, so to say, and to enrich insights of philosophy, theatre studies and philology with contemporary approaches of the cognitive sciences and vice versa. Plainly spoken, this thesis will elaborate what the ancient notion of Katharsis tells us about aesthetic emotion, and also examine what current research on aesthetic emotion tells us about Katharsis, in order to ultimately approach and explain the complexity of our emotional responses to the arts. I have structured this thesis in two parts. The first will be fully dedicated to Katharsis, the second to current conceptions of aesthetic emotion and to the combination of these conceptions with the Aristotelian notion. Two separate introductions shall provide a further overview on the particular contents of these two parts. Introduction to Part I In 1857 the philologist and famous Katharsis-interpreter Jacob Bernays (1970) noted: […] so fragt man noch immer mit Recht, worin besteht denn aber die Katharsis? Aristoteles hat sich – diese Voraussetzung ist sicher nicht zu kühn – gewiss unter Katharsis etwas Bestimmtes, nicht Eines oder das Andere gedacht; und wenn in neuerer Zeit ‘tragische Reinigung der Leidenschaften’ in die zahlreiche Klasse ästhetischer Prachtausdrücke übergegangen ist, die jedem Gebildeten geläufig und keinem Denkenden deutlich sind, so ist dies wahrlich nicht des Stagiriten Schuld. (138) Katharsis is indeed a complex, ambiguous notion. Already in ancient Greece the term found diverse applications, embracing meanings of plain physical cleansing of objects, 7 medical “purging” and “cure”, bodily “discharge”, religious “purifications” and metaphorical uses ranging from “psychological” to “spiritual” phenomena (see Halliwell 1986, 185). It was around 330 BC in Athens that Aristotle decided to apply the notion on poetry by naming the certain effect and ultimate function of Greek tragedy Katharsis (see Fuhrmann 1992, 13f & 101) . Katharsis as an aesthetic category signifies “the nature (or the result) of the emotional experience of tragedy” (see Halliwell 1986, 188), and only as aesthetic category the notion will be of relevance for this thesis. Aristotle did not bother to exemplify the structure of Katharsis in detail. Philologist Fuhrmann most likely refers to the sole controversial paragraph in Aristotle’s Poetics that defines the aesthetic category of Katharsis - insufficiently - when speaking of “Stellen, deren orakelhaftem Dunkel die hartnäckigsten Auslegungskünste keinen befriedigenden Sinn haben abgewinnen können” (see 1992, 3), others claim the Katharsis-clause to be incomplete (see Girshausen 2005, 163).
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