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Wine and Catharsis of the Emotions in Plato's Laws

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Elizabeth Belfiore
Elizabeth Belfiore
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
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Extract

Plato's views on tragedy depend in large part on his views about the ethical consequences of emotional arousal. In the Republic, Plato treats the desires we feel in everyday life to weep and feel pity as appetites exactly like those for food or sex, whose satisfactions are ‘replenishments’. Physical desire is not reprehensible in itself, but is simply non-rational, not identical with reason but capable of being brought into agreement with it. Some desires, like that for simple and wholesome food, are in fact ‘necessary’ and approved by reason. Other appetites, like lust and gluttony, are ‘unnecessary’ and anti-rational in that they are actively opposed to reason. According to the Republic, the satisfaction of these ‘unnecessary’ desires inevitably strengthens the elements in the soul that oppose reason. The desire to weep at the theatre is treated in this dialogue as just such an anti-rational desire. Even a temporary indulgence in tragic pity and fear has a permanent deleterious effect on the soul, although it does not lead directly to any action.

This paper argues that a radically different psychological theory, with important aesthetic implications, appears in the discussion of wine-drinking in Books 1 and 2 of Plato's Laws. Though this long passage has been much scorned and neglected, it is of considerable philosophical importance. While in the Republic Plato condemns drunkenness and other anti-rational states, in the Laws he extols the benefits of a hypothetical ‘fear drug’ that could induce a temporary state of anti-rational terror and of wine to produce other anti-rational emotions and desires.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , December 1986 , pp. 421 - 437
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1986

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References

1 For the Republic I follow the text of Burnet, J., Platonis Opera 4 (OCT 1902)Google Scholar and for the Laws that ofdes Places, E. and Diès, A., Platon, oeuvres complètes, Xl–XII, les Lois (Budé, Paris, 1951–1956)Google Scholar. Hereafter, these and the following works will be referred to by author's last name only: Barker, E., Greek Political Theory (1918, 5th ed., London, 1960)Google Scholar; Bertier, J., Mnésithée et Dieuchès (Leiden, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Boyancé, P., ‘Platon et le vin’, BAGB, 3rd ser., no. 4 (1951), 3–19Google Scholar; Brès, Y., La Psychologie de Platon (Paris, 1968)Google Scholar; Croissant, J., Aristote et les mystères (Paris, 1932)Google Scholar; England, E., The Laws of Plato, 2 vols. (Manchester and London, 1921)Google Scholar; Görgemanns, H., Beiträge zur Interpretation von Platons Nomoi, Zetemata 25 (Munich, 1960)Google Scholar; Grote, G., Plato and the Other Companions of Socrates 3, 3rd ed. (London, 1875)Google Scholar; Hentschke, A., Politik und Philosophie bei Platon und Aristoteles (Frankfurt, 1971)Google Scholar: Jaeger, W., Paideia ii and iii, trans. Highet, G. (Oxford, 1943–1944)Google Scholar; Morrow, G., Plato's Cretan City (Princeton, N. J., 1960)Google Scholar; North, H., Sophrosyne (Ithaca, N.Y., 1966)Google Scholar; Pangle, T., The Laws of Plato (New York, 1980)Google Scholar; Pickard-Cambridge, A., The Dramatic Festivals of Athens, 2nd ed., revised by Gould, J. and Lewis, D. (Oxford, 1968)Google Scholar; Pigeaud, J., La Maladie de I'âme (Paris, 1981), pp. 477–503Google Scholar; Post, L., ‘The Preludes to Plato's Laws’, TAPA 60 (1929), 5–24Google Scholar; Robinson, T., Plato's Psychology (Toronto, 1970)Google Scholar; Stalley, R., An Introduction to Plato's Laws (Indianapolis, Indiana, 1983)Google Scholar; Tracy, T., Physiological Theory and the Doctrine of the Mean in Plato and Aristotle (The Hague and Paris, 1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. All translations are my own unless otherwise noted.

2 Stalley, p. 5, remarks that ‘Many readers have found this section tedious’; Post, p. 16, views it as a device to ‘entice the unsuspecting drunkard into hearing a sermon on temperance’. Among the few who see it as a serious and important psychological study is Schuhl, P.-M., ‘Platon et l'idée d'exploration pharmaco-dynamique’, Journal de psychologie normale et pathologique 43 (1950), 279–81Google Scholar.

3 That Plato did not substantially revise his views on poetry and art in the Laws is argued by many with very different points of view. See, for example, Partee, M., Plato's Poetics (Salt Lake City, 1981), esp. pp. 106–7Google Scholar; Sörbom, G., Mimesis and Art (Bonniers, 1966), p. 171Google Scholar; Schipper, E., ‘Mimesis in the Arts in Plato's Laws’, JAAC 22 (1963), 199–202Google Scholar; Tate, J., ‘On Plato: Laws X 889CD’, CQ 30 (1936), 48–54Google Scholar; Collingwood, R., ‘Plato's Philosophy of Art’, Mind 34 (1925), 167–8Google Scholar. Morrow, pp. 373–6, holds a different view.

4 For a more detailed account of Plato, 's views on the tragic emotions see my ‘Plato's Greatest Accusation Against Poetry’, CJP, suppl. v. 9 (1983), 39–62Google Scholar.

5 Some helpful recent discussions of Plato's account of the desires in the Republic are those of Cooper, J., ‘Plato's Theory of Human Motivation’, History of Philosophy Quarterly 1 (1984), 3–21Google Scholar; Gosling, J. and Taylor, C., The Greeks on Pleasure (Oxford, 1982), pp. 97–128CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Annas, J., An Introduction to Plato's Republic (Oxford, 1981), pp. 128–52Google Scholar; Irwin, T., Plato's Moral Theory (Oxford, 1977), pp. 191–248Google Scholar.

6 Our passage in Rep. 8 states that the unnecessary desires can be entirely removed, if a person is properly trained. Plato thinks that this is only an ideal, however, for in Rep. 9 (572b) he states that everyone has some ‘savage and lawless’ desires. Cf. 571b–c, where these desires are said to be either gotten rid of or weakened in a virtuous person.

7 ‘Desires’ (epithymiai) in this passage are not limited to the impulses of the appetitive part of the soul but belong to each of the three ‘psychological determinants of choice and voluntary action’, as Cooper points out, op. cit., p. 5. Cf. Rep. 9.580d8, where each of the three parts of the soul is said to have its own pleasures and desires.

8 Cornford, , ‘The Doctrine of Eros in Plato's Symposium’, in The Unwritten Philosophy and Other Essays, ed. Guthrie, W. (Cambridge, 1950)Google Scholar, rpt. in Plato II. A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. G. Vlastos (New York, 1971), pp. 123–4.

9 Though we should perhaps not press the details of Plato's metaphor too far, I believe that this view represents his ideas better than Cornford's belief that ‘the energy must flow along all the channels in due measure’ (op. cit., p. 124).

10 I follow Cooper, op. cit., esp. pp. 4–8 and notes 9 and 18.

11 That the Republic fails to take into account adequately the ‘special’ aspects of art is argued by Schaper, E., Prelude to Aesthetics (London, 1968), pp. 42–55Google Scholar; Abrams, M. H., The Mirror and the Lamp (Oxford, 1953), pp. 8–9Google Scholar; Grey, D., ‘Art in the Republic’, Philosophy 103 (1952), 291–310CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Murphy, N., The Interpretation of Plato's Republic (Oxford, 1951), pp. 224–37Google Scholar; Bosanquet, B., A History of Aesthetic, 2nd ed. (1904; rpt. London, 1966), pp. 10–55Google Scholar.

12 Aristotle, 's Politics 8.1342b 17–34Google Scholar states that certain music critics condemned Plato's rejection of sympotic musical modes in Republic 3. 389e. Grote, p. 328, note, and Adam, J., The Republic of Plato i (1902; 2nd ed., Cambridge, 1963) ad locGoogle Scholar., speculate that these criticisms may have been partly responsible for Plato's changing his mind about methê in the Laws. The authenticity of the Pol. passage has recently been questioned by Lord, C., Education and Culture in the Political Thought of Aristotle (Ithaca and London, 1982), pp. 215–9Google Scholar.

13 The statement at 648d1, that people might practise drinking alone, is no exception to the rule. This passage is concerned with the ‘fear drug’ and not with wine, and it would in any case be no contradiction for Plato to allow solitary, unsupervised drinking but to require a symposiarch to rule groups of drinkers. I agree with Stalley, Görgemanns and Hentschke, that the Laws is a fundamentally united work. For opposing views see Vanhoutte, M., La Philosophie politique de Platon dans les ‘Lois’ (Louvain, 1954), esp. p. 26Google Scholar, on drinking, and Müller, G., Studien zu den platonischen Nomoi, Zetemata 3 (Munich, 1951)Google Scholar.

14 The three Choruses are described at 2. 664c ff. Plato is consistent in forbidding drunkenness to the young, however much his statements vary about specific ages of different groups, especially that of the Chorus of Dionysus. On these varying accounts see Morrow, p. 318 and Stalley, p. 125.

15 This is the view of England, p. 12; Morrow, p. 442; Stalley, p. 124. Hentschke, p 224, correctly argues that all benefits of drunkenness are reserved solely for the Third, Dionysian Chorus of older people. This is one reason why the symposia of the Laws should not be too closely connected with the tests for the young discussed in Republic 3.413c–414b, as is done, for example, by Diès, XI.xii and Adam, pp. 191–2.

16 Görgemanns' view, pp. 119–21, that the golden pull represents respect for law imparted by early education and that the ‘help’ is given by one person to another fails to take this context into account. I agree with Hentschke, p. 208, that the puppet represents an adult. On the image of the puppet see Rankin, H., ‘Plato and Man the Puppet’, Eranos 60 (1962), 127–31Google Scholar.

17 On this passage see further below, p. 433.

18 Jaeger, iii.340 n. 88, writes that ‘Drunkenness is educational simply because it makes an adult into a child (παῖς) Laws 646a4. For thus it enables the educator to continue all the way from childhood into maturity the basic function of all education, the formation of the proper attitude to emotions and impulses in the soul’.I cannot agree with Morrow, pp. 313–18, that the Chorus of elders is largely symbolic.

19 Two accounts of the different kinds of aretê in the Laws are those of Saunders, T., ‘The Structure of the Soul and the State in Plato's Laws’, Eranos 60 (1962), 37–55Google Scholar and Görgemanns, pp. 113–55, discussed and criticized by Ostwald, M., Gnomon 34 (1962), 236–9Google Scholar.

20 The general idea of this difficult passage is clear enough. On the textual problems see England, ad loc.; Morrow, p. 353; Saunders, T., ‘Notes on the Laws of Plato’, BICS suppl. 28 (1972), 6–7Google Scholar; Reverdin, O., La Religion de la cité platonicienne (Paris, 1945), pp. 69–70Google Scholar; Boyancé, P., Le Culte des muses chez les philosophes grecs (Paris, 1937), p. 171Google Scholar.

21 The parallels are noted by des Places, E., ‘L'Education des tendances chez Platon et Aristote’, Archives de philosophie 21 (1958), 412–14Google Scholar. The account of education in the Laws is discussed by Morrow, pp. 297–389; Anderson, W. D., Ethos and Education in Greek Music (Cambridge, MA, 1966), pp. 64–110CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Moutsopoulos, E., La Musique dans l'oeuvre de Platon (Paris, 1959), pp. 198–216Google Scholar; Bury, R., ‘The Theory of Education in Plato's Laws’, REG 50 (1937), 304–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 On the importance of psychic elements other than reason in Plato's late dialogues and in the Laws in particular, see Dodds, E. R., The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1951), chapter 7; North, pp. 186–96Google Scholar.

23 These statements apply only to Plato's theory of individual psychology. His cosmology perhaps assigns a more positive role to the disordered movements of the World Soul(s), in the Timaeus and in Laws 10. On this difficult topic see Skemp, J., The Theory of Motion in Plato's Later Dialogues (Cambridge, 1942)Google Scholar and the bibliography listed in the section on cosmology in Saunders, T., Bibliography on Plato's Laws, 1920–1970, 2nd ed. (New York, 1979)Google Scholar.

24 On Plato's concept of sôphrosynê in the Laws see Barker, pp. 343–5; North, pp. 186–96; Stalley, pp. 54–6; Hall, R., Plato and the Individual (The Hague, 1963), pp. 187–215Google Scholar.

25 The polity of the Laws is called ‘second’ at 739e4 and 875d3–4.

26 626e2–6, 634a6–b6, 647c7–d8. O'Brien, M., The Socratic Paradoxes and the Greek Mind (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1967), p. 183Google Scholar, writes that courage in the Laws is needed by a ‘soul in which strong emotions imply some danger of disorder’. England, ad 626c6–d2, notes that Plato begins by describing life as a fight, and (ad 630a5) that he treats sôphrosynê as a fight against oneself.

27 Laws 636d6–e3 and 736a–c use similar water-blending metaphors; Statesman 305e–311c uses a weaving metaphor to describe a correct blend of opposites; Timaeus 41d4–7 describes the Demiurge combining elements for the creation in a mixing bowl. On Plato's concept of mixture, especially important in the late dialogues, see Boyancé, pp. 8–10; Morrow, pp. 521–43; Stalley, pp. 74–9. On the connections between Plato's views and Greek medical theory see further below, p. 431.

28 England, ad 637d4. Stalley, p. 124, writes that the symposiasts are ‘mildly intoxicated’.

29 Especially interesting sources for ancient attitudes towards drinking are, in addition to Plato's Symposium, the Aristotelian Problems 3 and 30, discussed by Croissant, pp. 76–111 and Flashar, H., ‘Die Lehre von der Wirkung der Dichtung in der griechischen Poetik’, Hermes 84 (1956), 12–40Google Scholar. Some of the immense bibliography on wine in antiquity is listed in Bertier, pp. 56–86; Boyancé; Pigeaud; McKinlay, A., ‘Attic Temperance’, Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol 12 (1951), 61–102Google ScholarPubMed, and Wasson, R., Hofmann, A., Ruck, C., The Road to Eleusis (New York and London, 1978), esp. pp. 89–93Google Scholar. Wasson makes the intriguing but controversial suggestion that Greek wine was mixed with hallucinogens as well as with water. On this idea see also Burkert, W., Griechische Religion (Stuttgart, 1977), trans. Raffan, J. as Greek Religion (Cambridge, MA, 1985), pp. 277 and 455 n. 10Google Scholar.

30 I owe these examples from Herodotus and Homer to Bertier, p. 79.

31 North, p. 84 n. 135, has some good remarks on the parallels between the Bacchae and Laws 1 and 2.

32 On the theme of old men dancing when drunk see also Athen. 134c (Eriphus) and Aristophanes, Frogs 345, cited by Gulick, C., Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists (Harvard and London, 1930) ad locGoogle Scholar.

33 Boyancé, pp. 9–10. See also his references to ancient sources that cite Laws 773c–d. The best known version of this myth is Athen. 11.465a: Phanodemus 325 F 12 Jac., cited by Pickard-Cambridge, p. 6.

34 Diodorus Siculus 4.3.4, cited by Bertier, p. 78.

35 Rufus of Ephesus, Oeuvres de Rufus d'Ephesus, Daremberg, C. and Ruelle, C. (Paris, 1879), p. 370Google Scholar: cited by Pigeaud, pp. 498–9.

36 There is an extensive bibliography on Plato's connections with Greek medicine. Some interesting discussions are those of Bertier, pp. 57–143; Brès, pp. 287–300; Jaeger, iii.3–45; Pigeaud; Tracy; Flashar, op. cit.; Jones, W., Philosophy and Medicine in Ancient Greece, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Supplement 8 (Baltimore, MD, 1946)Google Scholar; Joly, R., ‘Platon et la medecine’, BAGB 20 (1961), 435–51Google Scholar; Entralgo, P. Lain, The Therapy of the Word in Classical Antiquity, ed. and trans. Rather, L. and Sharp, J. (New Haven and London, 1970), pp. 108–38Google Scholar; Jouanna, J., ‘Le Médecin modèle du legislateur dans les Lois de Platon’, Ktema 3 (1978), 77–91Google Scholar. Joly, R. gives comprehensive bibliographies on the problem of the connection between Phaedrus 269–272a and the Hippocratic corpus in ‘La Question hippocratique et le témoignage de Phèdre’, REG 74 (1961), 69–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar and ‘Platon, Phèdre et Hippocrate: vingt ans après’, in Actes du quatrième colloque international hippocratique, Lausanne 21–26 sept., 1981, ed. Lasserre, F. and Mudry, P. (Geneva, 1983), pp. 407–22Google Scholar.

37 On the concept of isonomia as balance of opposites in Greek medical thought and cosmology see Vlastos, G., ‘Equality and Justice in Early Greek Cosmologies’, CP 42 (1947), 156–78Google Scholar and MacKinney, L., ‘The Concept of Isonomia in Greek Medicine’ in Isonomia. Studien zur Gleichheitsvorstellung im griechischen Denken, ed. Mau, J. and Schmidt, E. (Berlin, 1964), 79–88Google Scholar. Tracy, pp. 22–156, also discusses this concept in Greek medical thought and argues that Plato's physiological and psychological theories are based on a similar notion. For an opposing view of Plato's theories see G. Cambiano, ‘Pathologie et analogie politique’, in Lasserre and Mudry, op. cit., pp. 441–58.

38 See Bertier, p. 65; des Places, ad loc.: Festugière, A.-J., Hippocrate, l'Ancienne médicine (Paris, 1948; rpt. New York, 1979), p. 65Google Scholar.

39 Greek Anthology 11.32, cited by North, p. 83.

40 Jaeger, iii.222. Critias, fr. 6.20–21 West.

41 The author and date of this influential work are much debated. Smith, W. in The Hippocratic Tradition (Ithaca, 1979), pp. 44–60Google Scholar has recently argued for its Hippocratean authorship. This idea is rejected by Joly, R., Recherches sur le traité pseudo-hippocratique Du Régime (Paris, 1960)Google Scholar; Lloyd, G. E. R., ‘The Hippocratic Question’, CQ n.s. 25 (1975), 171–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mansfeld, J., ‘Plato and the Method of Hippocrates’, GRBS 21 (1980), 341–62Google ScholarPubMed. However the question is resolved, the Regimen's ties with tradition are clear, as Smith, W. argues in ‘The Development of Classical Dietetic Theory’ in Hippocratica, Actes du Colloque hippocratique de Paris (4–9 september, 1978), ed. Grmek, M. (Paris, 1980), pp. 439–48Google Scholar.

42 Regimen 35–6. See the study of Huffmeier, F., ‘Phronesis in den Schriften des Corpus Hippocraticum’, Hermes 89 (1961), 51–84Google Scholar.

43 In viewing the old as moist, the Regimen departs from generally accepted medical views, and from Plato. On this question see S. Byl, ‘La Vieillesse dans le Corpus hippocratique’, in Lasserre and Mudry, op. cit., pp. 85–96.

44 Regimen 1.13; cf. Laws 666c1–2 and 671b8–9, where a similar metaphor is used. On the properties of wine in Regimen, and the underlying medical theory, see G. Harig, ‘Anfänge der theoretischen Pharmakologie im Corpus Hippocraticum’, in Grmek, op. cit., pp. 223–45, esp. 241.

45 Laws 2. 666a2–c3, 7. 789e2–3. I am indebted to Bertier, pp. 66–7, 121, for these parallels.

46 A homeopathic ethical function of wine in the Laws is commented on by Brès, p. 363, and Diès, Xl.xii. When used as a medical purge, however, wine had the allopathic function described in ‘Aristotle’, Prob. 1.2: ‘They cure diseases by excess of wine or water…because the causes of disease are opposites of one another. Each opposite brings the other to a mean’. On the cathartic properties of wine see Mnesitheus, fr. 45 (quoted above, p. 431); Regimen 2.52 init.: οἶνος θєρμòν κα⋯ ξηρόν∙ ἔχєι δ⋯ τι κα⋯ καθαρτικοὺ ⋯πò τ⋯ς ὕλης.

47 See Tracy, pp. 126–32, for an excellent discussion of the medical basis for Plato's prescription of wine as a remedy for the dysthymia of old age.

48 On Plato's negative views of drugs in the Timaeus and Republic 3 see Taylor, A. E., A Commentary on Plato's Timaeus (Oxford, 1928), on Tim. 89a–dGoogle Scholar. I cannot agree with Joly, ‘Platon et la médecine’, pp. 444–6, that the Rep. has more positive views on drugs than the Tim. The more positive views on drugs in the Laws are in line with those of Ancient Medicine 19, on which see MacKinney, op. cit., p. 84.

49 Some good discussions of Plato's concepts of catharsis are those of Moulinier, L., Le Pur et l'impur dans la pensée des Grecs (Paris, 1952), pp. 323–410Google Scholar; Laín Entralgo, op. cit.; Ničev, A., L'Enigme de la catharsis tragique dans Aristote (Sofia, 1970), pp. 159–69Google Scholar; Golden, L., ‘The Clarification Theory of Katharsis’, Hermes 104 (1976), 444–5Google Scholar.

50 I follow Linforth, I.'s interpretation and translation of this passage, in The Corybantic Rites in Plato (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1946), pp. 129–34Google Scholar.

51 Olym. in. Plat. Alcib. pr.54.17 and 19 Westerink. This passage is cited by Janko, R., Aristotle on Comedy (London, 1984), p. 147Google Scholar, who refers to the discussions of Olympiodorus by Ničev, op. cit., pp. 183–4.

52 On the Anthesteria see Pickard-Cambridge, pp. 10–25; Burkert, op. cit., pp. 237–42 and his Homo Necans (Berlin, 1972), trans. Bing, P. (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1983), pp. 213–47Google Scholar; Parke, H., Festivals of the Athenians (Ithaca, New York, 1977), pp. 107n–24Google Scholar; Deubner, L., Attische Feste (1932, 2nd ed., Berlin, 1966), pp. 93–122Google Scholar; Hoorn, G. Van, Choes and Anthesteria (Leiden, 1951)Google Scholar.

53 I follow the account of the Pithoigia given by Parke, op. cit., p. 108. He cites Phanodemus 325 F 12 Jac. (see above, p. 430 and note 33) on the importance of mixture, and Plutarch, Quest. Conv. 665e on the prayer. Plato explicitly refers to Dionysus as the god of mixture in Philebus 61b11–c2, a passage called to my attention by Bertier, p. 62 n. 24.

54 I follow the account of Burkert, , Homo Necans, p. 218 n. 11Google Scholar.

55 One these aspects of wine and of Dionysus see Jeanmaire, H., Dionysos (Paris, 1951), esp. pp. 5–56Google Scholar. Euripides, calls Dionysus ‘most terrible and most gentle to mortals’ (Bacchae 861)Google Scholar.

56 Jeanmaire, op. cit., p. 121.

57 The usual view, that Plato's symposia are based on the custom of convivial symposia, is held, for example, by Jaeger, ii. 176–8; iii.222–30 and Morrow, p. 316. The only scholar who connects the symposia of the Laws with the Anthesteria, is S. Karouzou in ‘Choes’, AJA 50 (1946), 139Google Scholar.

58 See the discussion in Pickard–Cambridge, pp. 15–17.

59 Callimachus, fr. 178.2.I owe the reference to Burkert, , Homo Necans, p. 222Google Scholar.

60 Pangle, p. 516 n. 40. While this account seems most likely, Plato's phrase ⋯ν ⋯μάξαις; (637b2–3) is puzzling, since the ‘wagons’ are not attested for the Greater Dionysia, according to Pickard-Cambridge, pp. 12–13.

61 See Euripides, ' Bacchae 302–5Google Scholar.

62 To the Alexandrians 32.55–6, translated by Stanford, W. B., Greek Tragedy and the Emotions (London and Boston, 1983), pp. 6–7Google Scholar. On wine-drinking at Dionysian festivals Stanford cites (p. 13) Laws 775b and Philochoros in Athen. 11.464f. Stanford has many excellent remarks on the connections between wine and dramatic performances, pp. 1–20.

63 On Plato's attitude towards Dionysus see Vicaire, P., ‘Platon et Dionysos’, BAGB 3 (1958), pp. 15–26Google Scholar, who has many excellent remarks, though I disagree with his conclusions.

64 This passage was bracketed by Newman but not by Ross and many others. G. Morrow includes it (p. 148) in his thorough examination of Aristotle's debt to the Laws, ‘Aristotle's Comments on Plato's Laws’, in Aristotle and Plato in the Mid-Fourth Century, eds. Düring, I. and Owen, G. E. L. (Göteborg, 1960), pp. 145–62Google Scholar.

65 See above, note 22. Fortenbaugh, W., Aristotle on Emotion (London, 1975), p. 23Google Scholar, argues that ‘the Laws seems to be working towards a psychology that Aristotle ultimately made his own and exploited within his political and ethical writings’.

66 See, for example, EN 2.5. I argue that this sort of distinction is essential to Aristotle, 's views on tragedy in ‘Pleasure, Tragedy and Aristotelian Psychology’, CQ 35 (1985), 349–61Google Scholar.

67 On the intellectual aspects of catharsis see especially the articles of L. Golden, ‘The Clarification Theory…’, 437–52; ‘Catharsis’, TAPA 93 (1962), 51–60Google Scholar; ‘Mimesis and Katharsis’, CP 64 (1969), 145–53Google Scholar.

68 This is done, for example, by Lucas, D. W., Aristotle: Poetics (Oxford, 1968), pp. 273–90Google Scholar; Koller, H., Die Mimesis in der Antike (Bern, 1954), pp. 68–78Google Scholar; Pfister, F., ‘Katharsis’, RE Suppl. Bd. 6, 147–9Google Scholar.

69 See above, p. 434.

70 Eur. Ba. 861. A version of this paper was read at the annual meeting of the American Philological Association in Toronto, Dec. 1984. I wish to thank Leon Golden, Kenneth Reckford and the referee of CQ for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper, and the Graduate School of the University of Minnesota for a Faculty Summer Research Grant that helped make it possible for me to complete this project.