1
To Aristotle tragedy seemed to afford a cleansing or "katharsis of the soul" through the sympathetic experience of pity or fear.
2
Such, approximately, is Aristotle's view of the Tragic Emotion, or Katharsis.
3
What is meant by the Purgation (Katharsis) through pity and fear?
4
Bernays concludes that by Katharsis is denoted the "alleviating discharge" of the emotions themselves.
5
The mysterious Katharsis, the emotion of tragedy, is, then, a special type of the unique aesthetic emotion.
6
We speak o Aristotle's Katharsis as the Tragic Emotion, forgetting that to-day Tragedy and the Tragic are no longer identical.
7
So Lessing in the "Hamburgische Dramaturgie" takes Katharsis as the conversion of the emotions in general into virtuous dispositions.
8
But the question of Aristotle and our problem of Katharsis is the problem of the emotion aroused by the Tragic Drama.