Abstract

In Republic X Plato dismisses any possibility for dramatic genres to be useful, not even for a controlled release of passions. Therefore, the Aristotelian approach of catharsis has been comprehended as a response to this refusal. However, in the Laws, Plato reconsiders and suggests a sense in which the tragedy, or put in a better way, the tragic character, has a place in the good life. But at the same time it implies a restructuring of his positions on the nature of the soul and the relationship between its parts. This paper aims to evidence these two Platonic approaches and to show that instead of a contradiction, what underlies to this tension is the recognition of the crucial and paradoxical role of emotion in human life.