I might not have said, unprompted, that‘I really enjoyed it’. There’s
nothing particularly surprising about this: the best philosophy, the best
political systems and the best computers (however one were to measure such
things) would not obviously be the most pleasurable in any straight-
forward sense. So it may be that what we like about tragedy should be
separated from what we value about it, why we accord it a high status
among art forms, or what we think it, in particular, has to offer us.^31
Indeed, some discussions of the paradox of tragedy appear to assume that we
onlydo things if we enjoy them; this assumption–sometimes called‘the
hedonistic theory of motivation’–has rightly been called into question.^32
But although this is an important qualification, it does not actually
amount to a denial that wefind tragedy pleasurable: it’s just that taking
pleasure isn’t the most important thing.
To see why there is a problem with the full-strength claim that tragedy
does not please us, it may help to recall a distinction made in Chapter 5
between pleasure as a kind of physical sensation (the opposite of pain) and
a more general notion of something being pleasing to us. Some activities–
such as eating, when we are hungry–bring us a physical sensation of
pleasure. But there are plenty of things we do that please us, but that do
not obviously give us a physically pleasurable sensation: learning, gossip-
ing, travelling and so on. Then, of course, there are things that we take
part in, which do not please us at all: household chores, perhaps certain
kinds of paid labour, or unpleasant medical examinations. In such cases,
we are doing something unpleasant for the sake of something else that we
value (hygiene, money, health). It is unlikely that anyone would claim
that tragedy is pleasurable in thefirst of these senses. It doesn’t give us a
physically pleasurable sensation akin to that of eating when hungry or
warming up when too cold. The claim is, rather, that tragedy pleases us
in a more general sense. Of course, there may be all sorts of benefits to
watching a play that do not reduce to pleasure: but, if one wants to claim
that tragedy doesn’t please us at all, then (as with household chores or
medical appointments), one had better explain why it is that we go.
Normally, when I pay some money to do something that I don’tfind at
all pleasurable, I am able to offer some plausible account of why.
It’s not hard to think of possible candidates for benefits from tragedy
that are independent from pleasure: truth, beauty, moral edification. It’s
just that, if tragedy is not at all pleasing, then we would expect going to
the tragedy to be something that we perhaps felt neutral about, disliked,
dreaded, or simply were bored by. This doesn’t seem like a good
description of those who frequent tragedies. What’s more, if tragedies
were not pleasurable at all, but useful for the sake of some other benefit,
then, just as we praise a doctor who performs some procedure less painfully
than the rest, so we would expect spectators to praise a tragedian who
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