Part I: Catharsis on Demand

This essay is Part I of III.

Introduction

The other day I was scrolling through social media. For whatever reason the algorithm curated a powerful series of short form videos that made me feel a spectrum of emotions. One was thought-provoking, another was funny and a bit absurd, another was sad focusing on current world events, then a sobering one…

Each was captivating in its own way, and I watched them all the way through. However, after I decided to get back to work, I couldn't help but notice the depth of emotions I had just experienced — and at such a fast pace. What stood out to me more than anything was the almost complete lack of emotional residue, call to action, or any form of after effect.

It was as though I had become accustomed to feeling emotions so deeply so quickly? Perhaps I had become desensitised? In the moment, however, it all felt so real and some motivated me to do something after (e.g., read about a topic, learn a new hobby, etc.). Yet, once all was said and done, I came away unchanged, with no further action taken or to be taken.

It was a big wake up call, I think. Not least because of the time wasted on social media by my generation — which many of us are already painfully aware of. But that the problems go much deeper than we, or at least I, had originally imagined.

It occurred to me then that Aristotle wrote about catharsis and the role it plays in storytelling and drama. I wondered whether that idea might apply here, so I did some research.

Catharsis: The Term

You may skip this section if the etymology or how the term came to be does not interest you; however, you may find this section helpful and quite revealing. At least I did.

As far as my research goes, Aristotle wrote about catharsis [κάθαρσις] in two treatises, in Politics and Poetics. Before that, the term was primarily used for physical and medical rather than mental purposes. Used in medicine — by Aristotle as well in other writings — the term has its roots in the word kathairein [κᾰθαίρειν, 'to purify'] and katharos [κᾰθᾰρός, 'pure']. Therefore, it was used in its literal sense for medical purposes or to refer to purification rituals in mythology and in practice.

Interestingly, Burkert notes, ‘… It carries more weight that the root kathar, to clean/to purify, has no Indo-European etymology but ties in with a Semitic root in the sphere of purification: qatar, to fumigate.’[1] Wikipedia correctly notes the cognate term in Arabic قَطَّرَ [qaṭṭara, to distill], though they misspell the romanisation.[2]

The theme of purification, or catharsis, becomes important as philosophers and scholars throughout the ages employ the term in different ways. Platonism, Neoplatonism, Aristotelianism, and other traditions all understand catharsis as serving different purposes. Some of these interpretations will be explored in this essay, others fall beyond its scope.

Socrates and Plato on Catharsis

Influencers and short form videos were not present during the time of the Greeks. So, I take the liberty of grouping them with poets, musicians, and artists as entertainment for the sake of argument. Naturally, however, there are differences which we will discuss further on.

To better understand Aristotle, one must begin with his teacher(s). In Book X of The Republic, Plato presents a three part dialogue between Socrates and Glaucon, Plato’s older brother, in which they discuss the ‘Theory of Art’ and mimesis (imitation).[3]

Part I: Socrates lays out his reasoning and conviction for the exclusion of ‘dramatic representation’ in his ideal state (utopia). He argues that the productions of a painter and a poet are the imitations of a life which is itself only secondary reality. He uses the example of three sorts of beds.*

The first sort exists in nature and is created by god as the ‘Ideal’ bed — representing ‘bed-ness’ itself — an uncorrupted ideal form of what a bed is supposed to be. The second sort is manufactured by the carpenter and constitutes a particular or version of a bed. The third sort is the painter's. He is not a creator, and his work cannot be considered a bed. It is a representation of both; therefore, his work ‘stands at third remove from reality’ and ‘the throne of truth’.

This distinction is important for, as Socrates points out, the artist has no knowledge of what they imitate. He asks a long-dead Homer:†

Friend Homer, if you are only in the second remove from truth in what you say of virtue, and not in the third—not an image maker or imitator… tell us what State was ever better governed by your help?… Italy and Sicily boast of Charondas, and there is Solon who is renowned among us; but what city has anything to say about you?

Socrates also says something that really made me think, and I will likely take up in another part of this essay series:

Now do you suppose that if a person were able to make the original as well as the image, he would seriously devote himself to the image-making branch? Would he allow imitation to be the ruling principle of his life, as if he had nothing higher in him?

Part II: Much shorter, this section foregrounds catharsis and Aristotle’s rebuttal. Socrates argues that the ‘mimic’ appeals to the less rational part of our nature. Grief and other emotions, in Socrates’ view, ought to be governed rationally, wherever reason can gain purchase on it. We must seek the help we need, and learn to move forward. Poets, by contrast, make us give into grief and dwell on it — ‘like children who have had a fall, keeping hold of the part struck and wasting time in setting up a howl’.

Part III: Part III can be summarised by the opening line by Socrates:

But we have not yet brought forward the heaviest count in our accusation:—the power which poetry has of harming even the good‡ (and there are very few who are not harmed), is surely an awful thing?

He outlines how primitive desires, emotions and jokes we would be ashamed to display in public are brought forward and made ‘acceptable’ by virtue of being on a stage. For these and other reasons summarised, Socrates and Glaucon agree that poetry and art should not form part of a properly run state.

Finally, one might wonder where Plato fits into all of this. Socrates left no writings of his own, and where Socrates ends and Plato begins has long been debated. For our purposes, it is enough to treat the Socrates of The Republic as the vehicle through which Plato presents these arguments.

Aristotle on Catharsis

Aristotle, it would seem, had a rather different view of art and its purpose in our lives. Whereas Socrates and Plato worry that art excites emotions which ought to remain under the control of reason and that it guides the audience away from truth, Aristotle allows for the possibility that such emotions may serve a useful purpose when properly aroused and may, in fact, be a vehicle for learning. He discusses these ideas in two treatises: Politics and Poetics.

His treatment of this idea in Politics is brief. He writes:

… we say that music should not be applied to one purpose only, but many; both for instruction and purifying the soul (now I use the word purifying at present without any explanation, but shall speak more at large of it in my Poetics); and, in the third place, as an agreeable manner of spending the time and a relaxation from the uneasiness of the mind… all music which has the power of purifying the soul affords a harmless pleasure to man…[4]

Politics is a response to the ideal state (utopia) discussed in various dialogues by Socrates and Plato in The Republic. Art was never the main subject, therefore, but as it is discussed, it is brought up here too, albeit briefly. I present the excerpt then only because this is the first time the term kátharsis [κάθαρσις] appears in Aristotle’s writing, and is worth highlighting. Ellis translates it as ‘purifying the soul’, which is not inappropriate as discussed in the etymology section.

A full analysis of Poetics would be difficult to do without making an already lengthy essay considerably longer. So, I will highlight the important parts for our purposes.

Catharsis is mentioned in Poetics Chapters VI and XIV, with nothing noteworthy other than to connect catharsis with the arousal of pity and fear, and to argue that these emotions are best produced by the structure of the tragedy itself.[5]

Where things begin to get interesting is in Chapter IV, where Aristotle begins to take up art. He notes two origins of poetry: imitation is in human nature from childhood, and that we take delight in it. The point on delight, I think, deserves the most attention.

Aristotle writes that though the thing being imitated may be painful for us to see — such as unpleasant creatures or death — learning something is ‘the greatest of pleasures not only to the philosopher but also to the rest of mankind, however small their capacity for it.’ The pleasure is in recognising an imitation and making the connection to real-life, ‘that the man there is so-and-so’. Where one does not know the thing being imitated, he continues, one’s pleasure is derived instead from the execution of the work itself, such as its colouring or craftsmanship.

Chapter IX is another chapter worth noting, as it directly addresses the argument by Socrates in Part I of Book X in The Republic, that poetry guides the audience away from universal truth. That is, by virtue of being at third remove, poetry, then, is undesirable.

Aristotle makes the distinction between history and poetry by saying that their difference is not simply that one uses prose and the other verse. History, he says, is a ‘singular statement’: it is concerned with a particular time, place, and events that happened. Poetry, by contrast, is a ‘universal statement’: concerned with the things that might happen. It may draw upon history, but more importantly it asks what a certain kind of person would probably or necessarily say or do in a given situation. In this sense, poetry attempts to move beyond the particular event and say something more general about human nature. For this reason, Aristotle considers poetry to be more philosophic and of greater import than history.

The remainder of Poetics is concerned largely with what constitutes good art and how it ought to be constructed. Those are questions I will leave for another essay.

Conclusion(s)

I began this essay by reflecting on short form content and its after effects, or lack thereof, on the individual. That one experiences a depth of emotions while watching, but after escaping the addictive algorithm, one is left feeling as though nothing happened.

A passing thought I had about the concept of ‘catharsis’ became a week and a half of researching and reading Ancient Greek philosophy. Having now done so, I think the question is more complex than whether social media simply desensitises its users. Perhaps it's whether anyone should be exposed to so much tragedy, comedy, motivation, and inspiration within less than a minute.

As to who has the better argument, that is a question for another time. In Part II, I want to return to Plato’s more troubling charge: that imitation does not merely act upon our emotions, but may also stand between us and the truth, and what that means for the founder who sits ‘at third remove’.

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References

1. Burkert W, Pinder ME, Burkert W. The orientalizing revolution: Near Eastern influence on Greek culture in the early archaic age. 3. print. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press; 1997. 225 p. (Revealing antiquity; no. 5).

2. Catharsis. In: Wikipedia [Internet]. 2026 [cited 2026 Aug 20]. Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Catharsis&oldid=1364249140

3. Plato. The Republic [Internet]. Project Gutenberg; 2021 [cited 2026 Aug 20]. Available from: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/150

4. Aristotle. Politics: A Treatise on Government [Internet]. Project Gutenberg; 2013 [cited 2026 Aug 20]. Available from: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6762

5. Aristotle. Aristotle on the Art of Poetry [Internet]. 2013 [cited 2026 Aug 20]. Available from: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6763