pain, or suffer in our presence. We can do nothing to respond to them (other
than read, watch, or listen). Our interactions with them are wholly unlike
our interactions with actual human subjects, about whom we do care as a
matter of course. As Arthur Danto trenchantly comments,the sorts of things that philosophy [of this possible-worlds kind] has laid down
to connect literature [to us] in order to give it meaning–Gegenstände,
intensions, fictive worlds–are themselves as much in need of ontological
redemption as the beings to whose rescue they were enlisted–Don Quixote,
Mr. Pickwick, Gandalf the Grey.^7Hume on tragedy: denying (1)
A second, more plausible way out of the paradox is suggested by Hume in his
discussion of the problem of tragedy: why do we enjoy the distressing events
that a tragedy presents, when we would not enjoy the same events were they
to occur in real life? Hume proposes in his moral philosophy that we are by
nature sympathetic creatures who tend to take pleasure in the pleasures of
others and pain in their pains. This can explain why we are moved to pity by
the fate of Anna Karenina: a sad story is a representation of something that
is, for us, naturally sadness-inducing. But while this account may explain
why we feel sadness in, as it were, stumbling across someone in pain in life, it
does not yet explain why we deliberately produce, seek out, and enjoy
sadness-inducing representations. As Hume puts it,It seems an unaccountable pleasure which the spectators of a well-written
tragedy receive from sorrow, terror, anxiety, and other passions that are in
themselves disagreeable and uneasy...The whole art of the poet is employed
in rousing and supporting the compassion and indignation, the anxiety and
resentment, of his audience. They are pleased in proportion as they are
afflicted, and never are so happy as when they employ tears, sobs, and cries, to
give vent to their sorrow, and relieve their heart, swoln with the tenderest
sympathy and compassion.^8(^7) Danto,“Philosophy as/and/of Literature,”Grand Street3, 3 (spring 1984), pp. 151–76 at p. 159.
(^8) Hume,“Of Tragedy,”in David Hume,Essays Moral, Political and Literary(Oxford University
Press, 1963), pp. 221–30 at p. 221.
204 An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art