Emotions: Better Out or In?
Can Catharsis Help... or Harm?
Dear Classical Wisdom Reader,
Emotions: Love em’ or hate ‘em, you certainly can’t ignore them. Sure, some emotions are stronger than others and not all of them tend the same way, but I think we can agree that they are a pretty critical element to our existence. So much so that I reckon it’s certainly worth taking a pause out of our busy, hectic lives to consider what we should do with our emotions in the first place?
Now, it might be a bit obvious to state that not all folks are on the same page with regards to this topic. This is as true now as it was in the ancient world. It would be nice if there was one clear cut answer, a solution from the past, but the reality is that the thinkers, writers and philosophers to which we dedicate these humble pages contradicted each other (and even themselves)...many times.
So what’s a hopeful seeker of wisdom to do? Look at a few different perspectives, try to understand and contemplate the question, and then discuss, of course!
Let’s start with Aristotle. When thinking about emotions, surely one of the first words to pop to the head is “Catharsis”, which comes from the Ancient Greek word κάθαρσις meaning "purification" or "cleansing". Funnily enough, it was used only once in his Poetics to explain tragedy... and yet it’s the core of the definition. The line in question goes:
“The tragedy is, therefore, the imitation of a serious and completed action of a certain size, with the speech which is refined and specific for every kind in certain parts, with characters that act, rather than talk; and with the evocation of pity and fear, it achieves the catharsis of such affects.” Poetics, Part VI
Aristotle believed that emotions weren’t bad in and of themselves. The feeling of anger, fear or pity isn’t evil... it’s the extent to which we let it affect us that’s important. Indeed, catharsis played an important role in evoking emotions and thus allowing us to be purified of them. One needed to feel the feels, whether through performance, poetry or music, to learn how to process them.
These ideas were in direct response to Plato... For his teacher, emotions should be avoided at all costs. In an ideal society, the good life required total domination of reason over the emotional parts of the soul.
Now at this point, it’s probably worthwhile to bring in the Stoics. Of course modern misconceptions of the ancient philosophy entail no emotions, but I know my astute readers are much more well versed on the topic. Having emotions is natural and immediate reactions are often out of our control, but what comes after is in our control... Emotions are to be regulated, reckoned the Stoics, but not necessarily provoked to the point of purification as Aristotle proscribes.
So where does that leave us, dear reader? When it comes to emotions, is it better to have them out or hold them in? Can catharsis help... or harm?
Write in with your thoughts in the comments section, email me directly at anya@classicalwisdom.com or reply to this mailing.
Now onto last week’s mailbag question: Are protests the best way to make change?? please enjoy your fellow classicists musings, below.
All the best,
Anya Leonard
Founder and Director
Classical Wisdom
P.S. Want to understand the fundamental differences between Plato and Aristotle? Last week we delved into their views on epistemology - if you didn’t catch it, Members can discover these essential philosophies here.
Not a Member? Make sure to level up your wisdom and subscribe today:
Monday Mailbag
Re: Are Protests the Best Way to Say Nay?
Dear Anya,
I’m 76 and I vividly remember the VietNam war protests; once again, fomented on the college campuses. Things came to a head, when National Guard soldiers fired on the protestors and killed 4 students at Kent State U. An iconic pic from that era was a girl inserting a flower in the barrel of a Nat Guardsman’s aimed gun. The Kent State incident galvanized public opinion against the war and eventually brought it to an end.
Sadly, today, seemingly, nobody cares.
I had hopes for the early campus protests against the Israeli genocide against Palistinians. That seems to have been taken over from outside influence and turning it into an anti-Semitic/pro Palestine political football.
Best,
Vertis B.
-
Most people seem to get more annoyed at the act of protesting than the act the protesters are protesting about. It's a desire by most to live in blissful ignorance, of course, until something affects them personally.
Austin J.
-
Hello Anya,
I'm not usually one for responding to emails, but this one was enough to draw one out of me.
Allow me to start by saying I enjoy your column and Classical Wisdom in general.
I feel that when people say that protesting is an effective means for change, I think they're missing the larger point. Protests aren't really intended to elicit change, at least not originally. As your article states, they are attended to be a manifestation of discontent within the populace.
Speaking personally, I am appalled with the current situation in the world. I find it morally reprehensible that my country, the United States, is so directionless and purposeless. No matter how you feel about the situation in Gaza, we must all certainly accept that it is reasonable that people would find such events intolerable. Whether you are opposed to the genocide of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli defense forces, or not, this situation evokes anger from people. It is the responsibility of those in power to observe the will of the people and either align themselves with it or stand against it and that is how I see protests.
Not so much as a means of change, but a reflection of the general will of the populace in regard to a specific issue.
Thank you for your consideration and I appreciate your work,
Aaron J R.
Be it a crowd or a mob is a determining factor in acceptance or rejection of the protest's theme. A crowd that gathers at a scene for a protest is not the same as an unstable and hateful mob protesting to make a scene. There is a gulf between the morality and the mentality of a crowd and a mob.
Darrell B.
-
Enjoyed your latest pensees....key point is there are mobs and there are mobs. One must judge them not whether they were successful or not (how to define success? Mobs helped "successfully" put Hitler into power). One must also judge what cause they are advancing and whether that cause would leave society better off or not. Which was sort of the point I was making more modestly in my own recent scribble.
Be well....
Brook M.
-
Mob protests may change laws. I’m not sure they change hearts. Maybe over time, if there are underlying virtues, they might change opinions.
RKF
-
When protests become mobs, chaos and tyranny usually follow. When protests do not become mobs, then the catalyst for positive change is often ignited. Demonstrations by Bostonians in the Winter of 1775 against English tyranny are an example.
Mobs are a beast let loose when people believe they have lost everything. Hitler’s rise to power was propelled by this in Germany as was Lenin in Russia. Mobs can lead to lynchings. Is this ever good?
Mobs equal disaster and what follows is almost always far worse.
Charles F.
-
Hi there,
I am a child of revolution and war. I have participated in many protests and social movements in my lifetime. However, I now believe that we need the government to be a partner and a driver for change. See our webpage.
Best,
Marjan
Hello Anya,
The topic of protests is an interesting one. Some will argue that protests are effective but I will disagree because in a “game” of contests, it’s the pen that is mightier than the sword. I have never seen a group of people act in a reasonable manner when emotions are high and there’s so much bias involved.
The courts are the best way to contest and argue as it’s all based on reasoning and using our pens to spill ink rather than blood and emotions. People aren’t aware that there’s a difference between positive and natural law. People don’t take the time to consider the fact that legal fictions such as corporations, can’t reason and use common sense. The goal and aim for a business is different from the aim of a human which is happiness with being virtuous. There’s a maxim that says equity follows the law.
As people, we should seek equity through our intellect and promote actions that require self restraint. Corporations from what I have observed, promote the opposite of self restraint.
Living in Canada, I have seen what a “government “ (corporation) can do when people protest regarding freedom such as the topic of vaccines. The bank accounts of many who protested the restrictions of freedom were frozen and inaccessible, proving to me that protesting is just a trick that the social scientists use to further their agenda that involves bias.
There’s a quote from the video game “Hitman” that has resonated with me since I heard it and it’s very simple: “Knowledge without power is ivory tower academics, power without knowledge is simply brute force”. Those who protest are ignorant of how the law works and are pawns in the game.
Sincerely,
Aaron K.
If we are all just steam boilers then letting off steam is obviously the right thing to do. But we are not steam boilers. We are human beings.
Temperance, best translated from the Greek as Self Control, is one of the Cardinal Virtues, making the top four list. Good parents team their children to control their emotions through a process of love and discipline, taken together. Temper tantrums in the bedroom with the door locked are neither a sign of success nor likely to result in same. We are to control our emotions by controlling ourselves. Getting there may require instruction and discipline alloyed with love. When a society loses that skill it will produce wild animals who can control neither emotion nor the urge to act on them.
Dear Anya,
I greatly enjoy Classical Wisdom...thank you for all your effort (Good on ya, Anya)! But I take (friendly) exception with your summary of Plato's take on emotions: "These ideas were in direct response to Plato... For his teacher, emotions should be avoided at all costs. In an ideal society, the good life required total domination of reason over the emotional parts of the soul."
The Republic is not about an ideal society, but about an ideal standard for us all to strive toward in developing a just and healthy Psyche:
"A pattern, then, was what we wanted when we were inquiring into the nature of ideal justice and asking what would be the character of the perfectly just man, supposing him to exist, and, likewise, in regard to injustice and the completely unjust man. We wished to fix our eyes upon them as types and models, so that whatever we discerned in them of happiness or the reverse would necessarily apply to ourselves [472d] in the sense that whosoever is likest them will have the allotment most like to theirs. Our purpose was not to demonstrate the possibility of the realization of these ideals.” (Republic 472c-d) ((all quotes herein are from the Republic, save one))
He did not advocate complete domination and avoidance of emotion, but integration of the parts (epithumos, thumos, and logistikon) of the Psyche with emotions (thumos) being moderated:
Moderating anger at 572a: "and when he has in like manner tamed his passionate part, and does not after a quarrel fall asleep with anger still awake within him, but if he has thus quieted the two elements in his soul and quickened the third, in which reason resides, and so goes to his rest, you are aware that in such case he is most likely to apprehend truth, and [572b] the visions of his dreams are least likely to be lawless.
Integration at 586c:
“So, again, must not the like hold of the high-spirited element, whenever a man succeeds in satisfying that part of his nature—his covetousness of honor by envy, his love of victory by violence, his ill-temper by indulgence in anger, [586d] pursuing these ends without regard to consideration and reason?” “The same sort of thing,” he said, “must necessarily happen in this case too.” “Then,” said I, “may we not confidently declare that in both the gain-loving and the contentious part of our nature all the desires that wait upon knowledge and reason, and, pursuing their pleasures in conjunction with them, take only those pleasures which reason approves, will, since they follow truth, enjoy the truest pleasures, so far as that is possible for them, and also the pleasures that are proper to them and their own, [586e] if for everything that which is best may be said to be most its ‘own’?” “But indeed,” he said, “it is most truly its very own.” “Then when the entire soul accepts the guidance of the wisdom-loving part and is not filled with inner dissension, the result for each part is that it in all other respects keeps to its own task and is just, and likewise that each enjoys its own proper pleasures and the best pleasures and, [587a] so far as such a thing is possible, the truest.”
Moderation at 603e:
When a good and reasonable man,” said I, “experiences such a stroke of fortune as the loss of a son or anything else that he holds most dear, we said, I believe, then too, that he will bear it more easily than the other sort.” “Assuredly.” “But now let us consider this: Will he feel no pain, or, since that is impossible, shall we say that he will in some sort be moderate in his grief?” (metriasei de pōs pros lupēn, metriazōto be moderate, keep measure) “That,” he said, “is rather the truth.”
This is very much like the biblical quote from Ephesians 4:26: "Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath."
In other words, there is a difference between having an emotion (be ye angry) about something or someone that you truly love/care about (which is inevitable unless you are a sociopath), and acting (or not) on the impulsive part of it (and sin not). But to suppress (or worse, repress) it is to cause yourself a build-up of anxiety and irritability, also known as the fight or flight response, which can lead to all kinds of physical and social problems. Unfortunately, most people (including many mental health professionals) don't know the difference between the physiology of anxiety and the physiology of a true emotion, so they think anger is bad when it's irritability that is bad and interferes with our rational part (so we don't think or act reasonably), causes tension in our body and impulsiveness, resulting in a myriad of behavioral and health problems.
So we should not "let the sun go down" on our wrath (or grief), but process or experience it. To experience an emotion means to be cognitively aware of it, physically experience it (power and heat in anger, pain and urge to cry in grief), and be aware of the impulse to act in some way. We can be relaxed and experiencing all of this and be truly aware and in control of our self, then decide what, if anything, further we should do about it. The emotion will pass either way if experienced, whether there is any other action worth taking about it.
Now Plato wasn't aware of useful biblical quotes or effective modern psychotherapy techniques, but he laid the foundation quite well all those years ago.
At 604b he talks about integration, moderation, and true Psyche-therapy, which is potentially within our control, and (mis)Fortune (tukhas), the things outside of our control (clearly much of this used but muddied by the Stoics):
“The law, I suppose, declares that it is best to keep quiet as far as possible in calamity and not to chafe and repine, because we cannot know what is really good and evil in such things and it advantages us nothing to take them hard, and nothing in mortal life is worthy of great concern, and our grieving checks the very thing we need to come to our aid as quickly as possible in such case.” “What thing,” he said, “do you mean?” “To deliberate,” I said, “about what has happened to us, and, as it were in the fall of the dice, to determine the movements of our affairs with reference to the numbers that turn up, in the way that reason indicates would be the best, and, instead of stumbling like children, clapping one's hands to the stricken spot and wasting the time in wailing, ever to accustom the soul to devote itself at once to the curing of the hurt and the raising up of what has fallen, banishing threnody by therapy.” “That certainly,” he said, “would be the best way to face misfortune and deal with it.” “Then, we say, the best part of us is willing to conform to these precepts of reason.” “Obviously.”
Thanks for the stimulation and forum to respond in.
Chet
---------------------------------------
Chet Sunde, Psy.D.
Clinical Psychologist