Philosophy Essay Example: Aristotle on Pity, Fear, and Tragedy

The terms, 'pity' and 'fear' are firmly associated with the Aristotelian hypothesis. There are distinctive sorts of fear. Fear can be focused on a person, as some unclear sentiment of instability and nervousness. It could get from an inclination for others, even for society or the state. Fear could be the result of confronting some incomprehensible occasion or some sad and dreadful incident. Fear may likewise emerge out of sentiments of blame, or rather an acknowledgment of this responsibility in ourselves, when we see, it depicted in another person. It is obvious that tragedy can without much of a stretch include every one of these types of fear, either independently or all in all.

Pity, we are told by Aristotle, is occasioned by undeserved mishap, and fear by that of one like ourselves. In the Rhetoric, fear is characterized as a sort of agony or unsettling influence because of a psychological photo of some damaging or agonizing evil later on. The looming malicious for this situation must be close at hand, not far off. Anything that causes fear in us if it transpires causes pity in us if it transpires. Pity is a kind of torment at an apparent fiendishness of a damaging or difficult kind on account of some individual who does not merit it, the evil being one which we may hope to happen to ourselves or some of our companions, and this when it is close at hand.

Pity and fear are connected feelings. Pity swings to fear when the question is firmly identified with us that the agony is by all accounts our own, and we pity others in conditions in which we should fear for ourselves. Pity is gotten from the inclination that comparable enduring may occur for us. It is because of this that the deplorable character ought to resemble ourselves' and in the meantime somewhat romanticized. In such a case, we feel pity for the misery of the intrinsically great individual, while having a thoughtful fear for one who is so similar to ourselves. Aristotle wherever says that pity and fear are the characteristic and important lamentable feelings.

The terrible basic impact relies on keeping up the private organization together amongst pity and fear. As indicated by Aristotle, pity alone ought to be not be evoked by tragedy, the same number of moderns have held; not pity or fear, for which Corneille contended; not pity and reverence, which is the change under which the Aristotelian expression finds ' money in the Elizabethan scholars. The necessity of Aristotle is a blend of pity and fear, as Munteanu (13) says.

The tragic fear is indifferent in the aesthetic sense. It isn't the devastating apprehension1 of individual calamity. In perusing or seeing a tragedy, one doesn't fear that one would be put in comparable conditions, or be surpassed by similar cataclysms that overwhelm the shocking saint. Be that as it may, there is a sentiment loathsomeness or of obscure premonition, as Munteanu (13) watches. The pressure and energized desire with which we sit tight for the calamity gets from our sensitivity for the saint, with whom we tend to recognize ourselves. Munteanu (22) says in this specific situation: We are excited with cunningness at the significance of the issues accordingly unfurled, and with the ethical certainty of the outcome. In this feeling of amazement, the feelings of fear and pity are mixed.

As indicated by Aristotle, a tragedy ought to stir in the onlookers the sentiment pity and fearpity predominantly for the saint's grievous destiny and fear at seeing the awful enduring that comes upon the characters, especially the legend. By stimulating these sentiments of pity and fear, a tragedy goes for the cleansing or purgation of these and comparable different feelings. As per the homeopathic arrangement of the solution, similar to cures as is; that, a wiped out individual is given measurements of a drug which, if given to a sound man, would influence him to wipe out. Substantially, a tragedy, by exciting pity and fear, cures us of these exceptional sentiments which dependably exist in our souls. A tragedy, like this, manages passionate help and the onlookers ascend toward the end with a sentiment joy.

Tragedy is an impersonation of an activity that is not kidding, finish, and of a specific extent; in dialect adorned with every sort of creative trimming, the few types being found in isolated parts of the play; an activity, not of an account; through pity and fear affecting the best possible purification, or purgation, of these feelings. Since the point of a tragedy is to stir pity and fear through an adjustment in the status of the focal character, he should be a figure with whom the group of onlookers can recognize and whose destiny can trigger these feelings. Aristotle says that pity is stimulated by the unjustifiable setback, fear by the incident of a man like ourselves.

Tragedy gives, by methods for pity, fear, and different feelings, alleviation as well as exercise and diet for the enthusiastic side of human nature. Tragedy equally fulfills in certain ways our adoration for excellence and of truth, of truth to life and reality about existence. Experience and more experience is a characteristic human desiring. Tragedy prompts an advancement of our experience of human life. It might show us to live more astutely. However, that isn't its capacity. It can enlarge the limits of our experience of life. Tragedy bargains essentially with malicious and with affliction, and it indicates human beings in the grasp of these. Tragedy demonstrates to us the endless logical inconsistency between human shortcoming and human mettle, human idiocy and human significance, human slightness and human quality. Tragedy manages us delight by showing human continuance and constancy even with cataclysms and debacles. Extensively, tragedy additionally bolsters the view that there is an ethical request in the universe, subsequently stirring in us endless sentiment equity. To put it plainly, tragedy stirs a vast number of emotions in us. In the meantime, the magnificence of the author's style and creative ability stirs an aesthetic feeling additionally. The aggregate impact of the tragedy, difficult to examine, is to remold our entire perspective of life towards something more significant, more daring, less narcissistic.

Aristotle has moderately less to say in regards to the disastrous legend because the episodes of tragedy are often past the saint's control or not firmly identified with his identity. The plot is expected to outline matters of grandiose instead of individual centrality, and the hero is seen fundamentally as the character who encounters the progressions that occur. This pressure put by the Greek tragedians on the improvement of plot and activity to the detriment of nature, and their general absence of enthusiasm for investigating psychological inspiration is one of the significant contrasts amongst old and current dramatization.

Work cited

Daniels, Charles B., and Sam Scully. Pity, Fear, and Catharsis in Aristotles Poetics. Nous, vol. 26, no. 2, 1992, p. 204, doi: 10.2307/2215735.

Munteanu, Dana Lacourse. Tragic Pathos: Pity and Fear in Greek Philosophy and Tragedy. Tragic Pathos, pp. 126., doi:10.1017/cbo9781139028257.003.

Martha Nussbaum. Tragedy and Self-Sufficiency: Plato and Aristotle on Fear and Pity. Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy. 1992.