On page three in “Pathos and Katharsis in ‘Aristotelian’ Rhetoric: Some Implications”, Walker begins to discuss the analogy Gorgias makes between medical katharsis and emotional katharsis. The analogy basically conveys that different drugs draw out different fluids from the body just as different speeches draw out different emotions. I am currently taking a course in ancient Greek medicine and, from what I have learned so far in this course, this analogy has a lot of truth to it. Ancient Greek medicine involves the belief that there are four humors (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile) within the body. It was understood that these humors needed to be in balance in order to for someone to be in good health. Therefore, when someone was sick, it was believed that they needed to expel humors from the body in order to correct the imbalance by bleeding, throwing up, etc. It interests me how the Greeks seem to rely on this concept of forcing things out even concerning two completely different topics such as medicine and emotions.
In class today, we talked about Aristotle's begrudging attitude toward emotions (how he found them unfortunate but perhaps thought that not accounting for them would be inappropriate). Davis noted that Aristotle felt that intelligent, serious-minded philosophers should be addressed differently from the "many". Perhaps this knowledge of Greek medicine can help us consolidate Aristotle's views on ethics and rhetoric. It seems that Aristotle advocated using rhetoric on the philosopher in order to bring balance. Thus, he categorized emotions by their counterparts, so intuitively, if you have an angry philosopher, and you want to balance them, you would look to the section on calm. In this way, he's not "manipulating" the audience, but merely removing the existing bias. So the Pathetic moves that Aristotle advocates wouldn't challenge the primacy of rationality/reason. On the contrary, they would bring balance. I think this is remarkable. For me, it's not really that challenging to increase the anger and hatred in an angry mob. It's much more impressive to be able to "balance out" that anger by bringing some degree of calmness. This is an "uphill battle" (forgive the violent metaphor!)
ReplyDeleteI also found the topic of forcing out medicine and emotions interesting. Personally, I thought that the term “expel emotions” sounded a little extreme. But as I began to think more about it, I realized the validity of this statement. When I think of examples of forced emotions, what comes to mind is people who keep their feelings bottled up. Sometimes it is extremely difficult to enlist an emotion out of these individuals because they keep their feelings so suppressed. But this is never good because, like medicine, when there is an unequal balance health problems can arise. Those individuals who keep their feeling hidden tend to have more stress and physical ailments. So while they may not like expressing their emotions, it is essential for their feelings to be expelled in order for them to return to good health.
ReplyDeleteI remember reading that part of the reason why horror films are so popular is because they basically provide an emotional katharsis. That is, a scary movie allows you to "expel" emotions like fear and sadness but in a safe, contained environment. So in a weird, roundabout way, you feel better after watching a really good horror film because of venting some of that negative emotion. So I think what you and Gordon and said about bringing balance is a good insight and something that is echoed throughout a lot of different cultures.
ReplyDeleteThe concept of katharsis must actually be central to most rhetoric -- everything Aristotle says that doesn't imply some sort of input-output relationship deals with the appropriate way of showing emotions. As powerful as mirror neurons might possibly be, a rhetorician who simply models what the audience should be feeling isn't always effective, especially if the audience isn't inclined that way in the first place. Rather than showing the audience how sad they should be, the rhetorician has to actually MAKE them sad -- the pathemata is the "input," the emotion is the "output."
ReplyDeleteIn theory, you could even display a totally different emotion if your display would provoke the correct response. That's why that Republican campaign ad with the Chinese professor was so effective (on some people) -- the Chinese students' lightheartedness and joy over having defeated America was the pathemata that could stimulate intense anger in an American audience. Likewise, in horror movies, we feel fear when the characters feel fear, but we also feel fear (and sometimes more intensely) when they don't know anything's coming. The only part of the movie "Halloween" that scares me is waiting for Mike to strike in the first thirty minutes, when you're halfway bored and kind of fooled into thinking this is a teen romance and his face just kind of appears behind that really obnoxious blonde.
I had actually entirely forgotten about the Greek medical philosophy of different types of bile until I read Prof. Walker's paper. One has to wonder whether or not Gorgias believed that emotions were a type of physical condition or if he actually wrote his philosophy on emotions first and later came to the conclusion that they operated in much the same manner as Greek medicinal philosophy did. Granted, it appears to have been an analogy, but sometimes things like this get lost in translation.
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