This paper endeavours to unravel the dialectical structure embedded within St. John of the Cross’ delineation of the phase of purgation in the economy of mysticism. Two correlative opposites that figure prominently in some systems of theistic mysticism are infinite-finite and grace-effort. The premise of this paper is that those pairings are not dichotomous contraries but are opposites that are amenable to some form of reconciliation. With the aid of a triadic dialectical scheme it is possible to map out (...) the dialectical relations between relevant concepts within mystical purgation, characterized as ‘night’ by St. John, and perhaps achieve some advance in the elucidation of the pairings’ constitutive elements. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to give a new interpretation of Aristotle's account of the emotions evoked in the course of engaging with tragic narratives that would give rise to a coherent account of catharsis. Very briefly, the proposal is that tragedy triggers vicarious emotions and catharsis is the purgation of such emotions. I argue that this interpretation of “fear and pity” as vicarious emotions is consistent with both Aristotle's account of emotions and his account of catharsis and (...) also with his choice of examples for tragedies that trigger catharsis. (shrink)

Jonathan Lear argues that the established purgation, purification, and cognitive stimulation interpretations of Aristotle’s concepts of catharsis and tragic pleasure are off the mark. In response, Lear defends an anti-cognitivist account, arguing that it is the pleasure associated with imaginatively “living life to the full” and yet hazarding nothing of importance that captures Aristotle’s understanding of catharsis and tragic pleasure. This analysis reveals that Aristotle’s account of imagination in conjunction with his understanding of both specific intellectual virtues and rational (...) emotions of an educated citizen not only tells against Lear’s anti-cognitivist construal, but also divulges an alternative cognitive stimulation reading. (shrink)

Historically, Western philosophy has struggled to accommodate, or has simply denied, the moral value of spontaneous, non-reflective action. One important exception is in the work of K.E. Løgstrup, whose phenomenological ethics involves a claim that the ‘ethical demand’ of care for the other can only be realized through spontaneous assent to ‘sovereign expressions of life’ such as trust and mercy. Løgstrup attacks Kierkegaard for devaluing spontaneous moral action, but as I argue, Kierkegaard too offers an implicit view of spontaneous moral (...) response as a regulative ideal. In attempting to articulate the model of character-formation that such an ethics requires, we can see both Løgstrup and Kierkegaard as engaging with an ancient problematic, running from Classical Daoism to medieval mysticism, of achieving spontaneity through purgation rather than edification—not building the subject up, but demolishing personality in order to become a conduit for a transcendent normativity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 27.1 (2003) 211-222 [Access article in PDF] Criticism and the Terror of Nothingness C. Jason Lee DESTINY IS OFTEN ANOTHER NAME for narrative, it being the order we retrospectively find in scattered events. It is traditionally the role of the storyteller to create a believable narrative, with the reader investing attention into believing the story while the critic dissects the results to ascertain whether the magic (...) works. As Wallace Stevens put it, "we orchestrate a whole history and then imprison ourselves in the score, as if someone else had written it." 1 In the author's note to the second edition (1962) of Wise Blood (1949) Flannery O'Connor makes the point that her novel is a comic novel, yet its comedy does not lessen the depth of understanding it offers concerning the complexity of freedom. 2 The obsession with fate and destiny that swamps her characters, leads the reader into a gothic nightmare where humans in their attempt to re-create themselves dig themselves further into the graves of their dead relatives. For O'Connor free will does not mean one will but many wills conflicting in one man, and she explains the integrity of the central character of Wise Blood, Hazel Motes, as stemming from his vigorous attempts to rid himself of the "ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of his mind."This figure is the Jesus of his grandfather, and it is also the religious preoccupation of the Deep South. Destiny has shaped his features and his character in the mold of his grandfather, and whomever he meets believes he too is a preacher. After establishing the Church Without Christ, like many sons attempting to shake off their origin, Hazel Motes realizes that his new way of behaving is in some sense being controlled [End Page 211] by his past and that he must shake off all vestiges to possess freedom. One might argue that, by eventually blinding himself, Hazel Motes is behaving as a soul who has given into the temptation of purgation, as if this is destiny. But it can be argued that this act is going against destiny, as it is an act that is perhaps trying to persuade God of something, despite the Oedipal connotations.Questioned by his landlady why he blinded himself he says to pay, and when asked to pay for what, he replies it does not matter what. Mrs. Flood is frightened of death, particularly death being one long blind existence, and Hazel Motes is a reminder to her of her destiny. This can be read as a judgment on life also. Yet she eventually decides to take care of him, for both altruistic and materialistic reasons, believing that his widow would inherit his war pension. Mrs. Flood, her name evocative of apocalyptic occurrences and Old Testament punishment, is a critic of the text; the text in this instance is nothing written but rather Motes himself. It seems that Hazel Motes, his name a reference to taking the mote out of one's own eye before you try and take the splinter out of another's, is punishing himself for his previous denial of Christ and for his sins, such as fornication, as with Mrs. Watts the prostitute and Sabbath Hawks, and murder, but also something more primal.After trying desperately to break the curse of his biological inheritance, his wise blood, just like the character Enoch Emery, it forces him to once again take on roles that deny him freedom. Hazel Motes may seem to a contemporary reader as a caricature, the mad preacher/antipreacher of the American South, but as V. S. Pritchett puts it, Hazel Motes is "entirely real" (p. viii). His self-blinding is part of his further alienation from the world, the world he has come back to after the "Great War." O'Connor shows how this watershed in human history was so devastating, Motes's new theology entirely rational. After having an insight into the world in reality through war, Hazel Motes is now "going to do some things... (shrink)

Résumé — Contrairement à la plupart des interprétations de type “ moral ”, je défends une interprétation morale du sens de la tragédie pour Aristote à partir d’une compréhension médicale de la catharsis. Cela, en défendant une autre interprétation des pathêmata dont il y a catharsis : c’est la purgation d’un vécu donné par les émotions de peur et de pitié, ce vécu étant fondamentalement la peur que le spectateur éprouve de se voir dans une situation analogue à celle (...) qui est représentée. Le théâtre tragique est ainsi vu par Aristote comme une mise à l’épreuve de la vertu morale du lecteur ou du spectateur et, par cette catharsis, comme un moyen de la renforcer. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.2 (2001) 364-367 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Hamlet in Purgatory Hamlet in Purgatory, by Stephen Greenblatt; xii & 322 pp. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001, $29.95. Hamlet in Purgatory is both more and less than literary criticism of Shakespeare's most haunting and most critically belabored play. Greenblatt has captured an evolving culture of belief which informs the play and goes far beyond source studies (...) or the history of ideas. He assays to show how the Medieval doctrine of Purgatory and the rejection of it by Protestant Reformers shaped the structure of Hamlet and the world of Hamlet's spiritual agony.Central to the argument is the notion that the rejection of Purgatory, and ritual practices associated with the doctrine, threatened to disrupt community and sever the relations between the living and the dead. Thus, the senior Hamlet's plea to "Remember me" takes precedence over his injunction to revenge; traditional preoccupations of Hamlet criticism become secondary to the concern for spiritual community which Reformation doctrine threatened. The exegesis is scholarly and the prose is engaging, yet the book suffers from the new historicist tendency to become absorbed more with context than with criticism and to assume too readily the relevance of the context to the criticism. Put another way, Greenblatt, like other new historicists, is not always rigorous in his inferences.Greenblatt warns that his book "requires a certain hermeneutical patience, a willingness to suspend direct literary analysis, in order to examine more thoroughly what has been treated as mere background for the canonical work of art" (p. 5). Although the book culminates in a description of the migration of discarded religious ritual into the theater, and a thoughtful commentary on Hamlet, Greenblatt cautions that "... for the book to work properly, the reader should understand literary analysis, and specifically the analysis of Hamlet, to be suspended in another sense as well, that is, distributed in tiny, almost invisible particles throughout my account" (p. 5). Amen. The caveats are essential for anyone who might expect an "interpretation" of Hamlet. Rather, Greenblatt has evoked the conflict of enduring beliefs and Reformist critiques which animated Shakespeare's imagination and Hamlet's suffering.Hermeneutical patience certainly is demanded of the reader, because more than half of the book presents commentaries on the doctrine of Purgatory from the late Middle Ages to the early seventeenth century. Greenblatt begins with Simon Fish's 1529 "Supplication for the Beggars," (p. 15) an anti-purgatorial (and anti-clerical) tract addressed to Henry VIII. Fish argued that the doctrine of Purgatory is at the heart of ecclesiastical corruption and is a danger to the state, because the fear that the doctrine can generate enables the clergy to extort enormous wealth in the form of "suffrages," donations for trentals, anniversary Masses, and other perpetual penitential memorials on behalf of the dead. Fish's argument is double: its theological burden is that Purgatory is a non-scriptural superstition; its rhetoric is that it is an abuse of the [End Page 364] poor and a danger to the economic solvency of the kingdom. Fish invokes both doctrinal error and political danger; this is thus an excellent tract to begin the elucidation of the complexity of Reformist objections to Purgatory in sixteenth-century England. Greenblatt adds that other Reformers saw Purgatory as a poetic creation, a fable, and therefore a vain imagining. John Donne's "Devotions upon Emergent Occasions" is cited to show that post-Catholic divines believed that purgation must be completed in this life.According to Greenblatt, an unintended consequence for the laity of the rejection of Purgatory is the creation of a radical divide between the living and the dead. If we pray for the dead, they are not as absent from us as if they had passed on to the timeless worlds of Heaven or Hell. Even if Purgatory is expensive or fabulous, its loss destroys a community with the dead that involved a reciprocal and continuing relationship, whereby the living can aid the dead towards Heaven and saved souls can eventually become intercessors in Heaven for the living... (shrink)

In this paper I focus on features of Aristotle's work (discussed in the Poetics) that can enhance our appreciation of Classical Greek tragedies and some of Shakespeare's works. Most important of these features is the production of the tragic effect, which consists of two parts: (1) the arousal of pity and fear to their maximum and (2) the katharsis or purgation of these emotions. The concept of katharsis has been interpreted in many ways and I will seek the most (...) appropriate interpretation. I argue that the maximisation of fear and pity that leads to the katharsis of these emotions can only be achieved by the unfolding of a well structured tragic plot and the revelation of character qualities in the tragic play. The successful tragedies from Classical Greece and the Shakespearean era possess the plots that were structured in a manner so as to produce the tragic effect to its maximum. I pay particular attention to Oedipus Rex of Sophocles and King Lear of Shakespeare to illustrate my point. (shrink)

Journey Back to God explores Origen of Alexandria's creative, complex, and controversial treatment of the problem of evil. It argues that his layered cosmology functions as a theodicy that deciphers deeper meaning beneath cosmic disparity. Origen asks: why does God create a world where some suffer more than others? On the surface, the unfair arrangement of the world defies theological coherence. In order to defend divine justice against the charge of cosmic mismanagement, Origen develops a theological cosmology that explains the (...) ontological status and origin of evil as well as its cosmic implications. Origen's theodicy hinges on the journey of the soul back to God. Its themes correlate with the soul's creation, fall and descent into materiality, gradual purification, and eventual divinization. The world, for Origen, functions as a school and hospital for the soul where it undergoes the necessary education and purgation. Origen carefully calibrates his cosmology and theology. He portrays God as a compassionate and judicious teacher, physician, and father who employs suffering for our amelioration. Journey Back to God frames the systematic study of Origen's theodicy within a broader theory of theodicy as navigation, which signifies the dynamic process whereby we impute meaning to suffering. It unites the logical and spiritual facets of his theodicy, and situates it in its third-century historical, theological, and philosophical context, correcting the distortions that continue to plague Origen scholarship. Furthermore, the study clarifies his ambiguous position on universalism within the context of his eschatology. Finally, it assesses the cogency and contemporary relevance of Origen's theodicy, highlighting the problems and prospects of his bold, constructive, and optimistic vision. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The fifth chapter of Saint Bonaventure's Long Life of Saint Francis, the Legenda maior , is a veritable blazon of the body of Francis and its senses, physical and spiritual. The first chapter in the so-called "Inner Life" – the sequence of eight chapters on the virtues of St. Francis – Chapter Five is notable for its insistent focus on sensory experience, due both to Francis's physical mortifications and (...) to his consciousness of the world's beauty, the "comfort" provided to him by the "creatures" he touched, tasted, heard, and saw. The chapter opens with a declaration of Francis's choice to "carry in his own body the armor of the cross" by holding "in check his sensual appetites," practicing self-denial lest he give in "to the earthbound inclinations of the senses," and they impede his spiritual progress. It ends, after an account of four miracles involving tactile, gustatory, auditory, and visual experience, respectively, with a laud of God, the "entire fabric of [whose] universe / came to the service / of the sanctified senses of the holy man." The pivot upon which the narrative turns from deprivation to gratification is, as editors of the Legenda have noted, "a carefully crafted paragraph" on Francis's freely flowing tears, a paragraph "which needs to be understood in light of Bonaventure's theology of the spiritual senses."That theology has been interpreted, however, in vastly different ways by two major twentieth-century theologians, Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar, as the comparative work of Stephen Fields has shown, and as Balthasar himself, writing partly in response to Rahner, emphatically points out. Curiously, neither Rahner nor Balthasar pay particular attention to Chapter Five of the Legenda maior. In this essay I read that chapter closely, partly in light of the questions raised by the disagreement between Rahner and Balthasar . I argue that the operation of the spiritual senses in Francis's soul already at the purgative stage is understood by Bonaventure to have affected Francis's corporeal sensory experience, not as a general habitus but in isolated, expressive acts or perceptions involving particular senses at particular times and places. These corporeal perceptions of God's presence and glory in his creatures are, furthermore, an impressive means and safeguard for Francis's eternal beatitude: "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted" .For this reason Chapter Five singles out four episodes in Francis's life that correspond to the four dotes or endowments of the glorified body. These four episodes explicitly highlight four of the five physical senses, but omit, significantly, any direct reference to the fifth sense, that of olfaction. Represented indirectly in Chapter Five, I propose, through a decisive act of charitable discretion, the spiritual sense of smell becomes explicit in Bonaventure's Legenda maior in Chapter Fifteen, when Francis's body is laid to rest in the odor of sanctity. Linked to his earlier exodus from a worldly to a virtuous life, the descriptions of Francis's "passing" from this mortal life in Chapter Fourteen and of the "transferal" of his body in the immediately following final chapter return to, complete, and perfect the imagistic pattern of sensory experience established in Chapter Five. As a figure for the virtue of discretion and thus for the free exercise of the rational will at the core of the human personality , the obscure and seemingly unimportant olfactory sense proves to be a vital key for unfolding Bonaventure's Christocentric anthropology.Purgation, the Spiritual Senses, and the DotesChapter Five is incontestably associated with the purgative stage of St. (shrink)

There are archetypal parallels between the shamanic African, and ‘diviner detectives' like Hercule Poirot, when it comes to tracking down homicidal sorcerers, and witches, on the one hand, and direct Western-style murderers on the other. The Ndembu diviner uses the fall of symbolic figurines or images, and the canny questioning of his clients and suspects to pierce the veil of deceit and reveal the sorcerer or witch. Hercule Poirot uses chance clues, questioning, and his intuition to identify the murderer. Both (...) processes culminate in the binding up of an evil, or at least the yearned for revelation of its source. As such they supply a form of purgation or cure to their respective congregations or guilds of readers. When the practices of diviner and detective are compared at an archetypal level, a universal dramatic pattern or model emerges which reveals that the adventitious clues commonly powering the modern detective narrative along, could have developed from what was, or still is in Africa, the old axiomatic belief that an African god is manipulating the images of divination. (shrink)

The supposed difficulties of this famous passage are set forth in Conington's notes. In reality they have been created by a misunderstanding, and chiefly through forgetfulness that the English of pauci is ' only a few.' In vv. 743–747 the sense is not that the souls dwell in Elysium ' until lapse of time hath removed the ingrown corruption.' This would surely require donee … exemerit …purumque reliquerit.The fact is that Anchises is explaining his own presence in Elysium at so (...) early a date after his death. If souls require a prolonged purgation before reaching Elysium and the laeta arua, how comes it that he himself is already there? The answer is—because he is one of the few in whose case the process was a short one.Quisque suos patimur Manes, says he, and the length and nature of the purgation depend upon what your Manes deserve and require.?‘ All souls go through such punishment and refining as are necessary.We each suffer our own Manes, and only a few of us are so fortunate as to enjoy the happy fields before a long period has removed the impurities.’ He is himself one of those who have so escaped, and hence his presence here to meet Aeneas so soon after decease. (shrink)

Aristotle's Poetics has come down to us in a form that is fragmented and incomplete. For example, its famous definition of tragedy begins by stating that it is a summation of what has come before:Let us now discuss Tragedy, resuming its formal definition, as resulting from what has been already said. Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being (...) found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions.1But nothing has been said previously about the purgation of pity and fear.... (shrink)

In explanation of a noble and misunderstood profession -- First lesson -- The philosophic neurosis: or, The psychiatrist's story -- The private thinker and the public world: or, A short history of a diffident philosopher -- The great purgation: a moral tale presumably written in 2060 -- The undistracted -- America's own philosopher: a parable -- The unconvinced -- The unawakened -- High thinking below the Equator -- End of the term -- In explanation of the absence of a (...) conclusion. (shrink)

What Aristotle meant by katharsis has tantalised philosophers, psychologists, and literary critics alike for centuries - from metaphors of purgation, purification and ritual cleansing, to claims that katharsis is not an experience of the audience but a property of the play1, a release of feeling, or a kind of pleasure 2. Some authors, such as Daniels and Scully3, even deny that katharsis is essentially an aspect of the emotional experiences of an audience. This paper will provide an attempt at (...) gaining insight into the “singular phenomenon”4 of tragic katharsis via the lens of the psychoanalyst Hanna Segal. My paper will begin by looking at some of the arguments I find most persuasive regarding the nature of katharsis; I shall then turn my attention to Segal’s discussion of tragedy. The final part of the paper will attempt to show how Segal’s discussion can shed light on the analysis of tragedy that Aristotle provides in his Poetics. (shrink)

The history of ethical reasoning in Slovakia1 dates back to the beginning of the 16th century, a period when ethics and morals came to the fore of intellectual and philosophical thinking––owing to the influence of the humanism that prevailed during the Reformation2. This cultural and intellectual climate led to the revival of ancient culture, education, philosophy, and ethics, while a focus on purgation encouraged writers to ponder over the questions traditionally raised in ancient ethics: How should we live? How (...) can we live well or have a proper life? (shrink)

This article examines how the recently introduced law on assisted reproduction in Italy, which gives symbolic legal recognition to the embryo, came about, and how a referendum, which would have repealed large sections of it, failed. The occupation of the legal space by the embryo is the outcome of a crusade by a well-organised alliance of theo-conservatives. These groups see in reproductive medicine an uncontrolled interference with their notion of the natural order of things. Such a worldview requires a total (...) ban on stem cell research, limitation of access to reproductive technologies and repressive laws to govern the area. This conservative dream scenario has come closer to being realised by the introduction of a law doing all of these things in the name of the protection of “Life”. In the case of this law, the “life” to be protected is the embryo. In the name of “Life”, scientific advances and individual liberty have been curbed. The politics of embryo citizenship is a politics which values the yet to come over the here and now, purgation over pleasure, and the transcendent over the material. (shrink)

Capital punishment—the legally authorized killing of a criminal offender by an agent of the state for the commission of a crime—stands in special need of moral justification. This is because execution is a particularly severe punishment. Execution is different in kind from monetary and custodial penalties in an obvious way: execution causes the death of an offender. While fines and incarceration set back some of one’s interests, death eliminates the possibility of setting and pursuing ends. While fines and incarceration narrow (...) one’s routes to happiness, death eliminates its possibility. Not surprisingly, there is much debate about the moral permissibility of capital punishment. This entry maps the terrain of this debate. The first section discusses justifications of the death penalty as they appear in major theories of punishment. The second section surveys moral objections to execution that apply to most justifications. The third addresses procedural criticisms, which do not target the morality of execution so much as the justice of its implementation. (shrink)

This paper seeks to add a new facet to the definition (s) of fascism, that amorphous social, cultural, political, and aesthetic conception that has inspired no small degree of controversy over the years since the defeat of the Nazis—indeed, even since the ascension of Mussolini. I argue that the conception of “decadence” by ruling or vanguard party circles, and the expression of a need for such decadence to be purged for the health of the society, is a central tenet of (...) fascist or crypto-fascist ideology in either its rise to power or renewed consolidation of power. In this view, “fascim”, does not necessarily mean the Nazis, and “decadence” need not signify a circumscribed artistic definition, connoting a certain circle of late-nineteenth-century painters in poets, especially in France. Though I regard period-circumscribed views of fascism and decadence as informative, I hope to offer a new framework in which the two concepts, seen in perpetual, relation to each other, break historical bonds and tell us about deeper, transhistorical political trends. In doing so, we may be better equipped to guard against the renewed emergence of crypto-fascist ideology by taking this rhetoric of a “purgation of decadence,” wherever it comes from, as a serious warning. Thus I will use historical cases outside of the standard Hitler-Mussolini axis that I view to exhibit overtly fascist tendencies, such as Khmer Rouge Cambodia and Cultural Revolution Maoist China, and I will make normative claims about current ideological currents that, while certainly not neo-Nazi, may also contain fascist or crypto-fascist tendencies. (shrink)

This article defends my 2011 book “The Ethics of Capital Punishment” against the thoughtful critiques written by Carol Steiker and John Danaher respectively. It does not attempt to respond to every point of contention in the two critiques, but concentrates instead on a few of the main points from each of them.

The goal of this work is writing about the importance of the poetic art, especially the tragedy to understand the psyche. The literature, besides showing an epoch, represents in a clear and poetic way the human conflicts. To reach this goal, we went through some literary works – Edipo King, by Sofocles, Hamlet and Macbeth by Shakespeare; Goriot Father by Balzac; Twenty Four Hours in a Woman’s Life by Stefan Zweig – extracting from them some fragments in which human sufferings (...) are explicit. We checked the importance of the speech in the emotions relief. We verified in the psychoanalytic and literary speeches that the poetic art seems to illuminate Freud’s steps in such a way that the poets anticipated the technical and psychoanalytic theory. (shrink)