Hume, although it’s clear from his essay that by his time it was already
an established topic for philosophical discussion. He begins:
It seems an unaccountable pleasure, which the spectators of a well-wrote
tragedy receive from sorrow, terror, anxiety, and other passions, which are
in themselves disagreeable and uneasy. The more they are touched and affec-
ted, the more they are delighted with the spectacle, and as soon as the uneasy
passions cease to operate, the piece is at an end.^21This quotation gives us the basics of the problem, although it’s worth
noting straight away that Hume seems wrong to say that we are more
pleased, the more we are affected.^22 After all, some tragedies may well be
too painful to watch. More generally, plenty of people don’t like tragedies
precisely because they are so miserable and, judging by box office sales for
long-running shows, comedies of various kinds continue to be far more
popular than tragedies. Indeed, Hume’s essay is remarkable mostly for its
lack of interest in tragedy (not to mention its lack of insight), and also for
its peculiar solution, which has been given far too much philosophical
attention, perhaps because its author was writing in English.^23 So rather
than spending too much time on Hume’s particular account, let us begin
with two claims, both of which require our assent if the paradox of
tragedy is even to get off the ground:
1 Tragic events, when real, are not pleasing to us.
2 Tragic events, when theatrical, are pleasing to us.
There is more to the paradox than these two claims. But it is clear that
a denial of either would render the problem immaterial. The paradox rests
on there being a difference in our response to tragic events, when those
events are on and off the stage. A denial of 1 would suggest that tragic
events, whether real or theatrical, are pleasing; a denial of 2 would suggest
that tragic events, whether real or theatrical, are not pleasing. In each
case, there would be nothing special about theatre. Broadly speaking, we
may divide responses to the paradox of tragedy into three categories: those
that deny 1; those that deny 2; those that deny neither 1 nor 2, but seek
to resolve the problem in another way. We shall look at examples of each
of these approaches.
Denying thefirst commitment: sadism
It has become almost a custom in recent writings on the paradox of tra-
gedy to open by saying that, obviously, we simply don’t take pleasure in
watching suffering. However, given the kinds of entertainment humans
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