conveys more truth with less distress.^33 This seems all wrong: we often
praise tragedies for being moving in a‘tragic’way.
Compensation
Going to the tragedy does notfit the model of a non-pleasing activity
undertaken for the sake of some other benefit. But we can still deny (2)
while accepting that tragedy pleases. We engage in plenty of activities
that please us overall, but that have unpleasant elements. One could make
this claim for tragedy: that it produces unpleasant, negative emotions that
wefind displeasing, but it also offers other compensating factors that
make the experience, as a whole, a positive one. This would neatly dis-
solve the problem, because there’s nothing all that strange about the
benefits or pleasures of an activity outweighing the costs: so, just as one
might enjoy visiting a friend despite having to make the unpleasant
journey to see her, so one might go to the theatre to enjoy certain features
(the beautiful lines, the performances, the complex plots, the universal
themes), despite the negative emotions one will be forced to endure. But
although the independence of the pleasure from the pain is an analytic
possibility, it doesn’t quite do justice to our experience. So, for example,
it would be difficult to imagine a successful tragedy–a tragedy that we
appreciated and enjoyed as a tragedy, rather than as a farce or as a play
starring someone we know–that did not make us feel in any way sad or
compassionate (and so on). As James Shelley points out, if we enjoy the
tragedy despite the negative emotions it produces, then one wonders why
we couldn’t watch plays that retained the pleasing features, but that
didn’t make us feel sad at all.^34 What seems more likely is that there is
something about the negative emotions themselves that is pleasing; but,
with that, the problem of tragic pleasure has returned.
Accepting both commitments?
Could we solve the paradox of tragedy, while accepting both that tragic
events are pleasurable in the theatre and that tragic events are unpleasant
when not in the theatre? A number of solutions have been proposed along
these lines. A prominent solution appeals to the pleasure taken in emotional
catharsis. Because we shall be treating this in a separate section, I shan’t
discuss it here. But note that catharsis, as a concept, is just as problematic
as tragic pleasure itself, so catharsis certainly can’t be wheeled out, with-
out discussion, to settle what it is we enjoy about tragedies. Nor can it be
offered, with any certainty, as Aristotle’s‘solution’to the paradox of tra-
gedy: although Aristotle thinks that tragedy involves taking pleasure in
pity and fear, he neither formulates the paradox, nor makes it sufficiently
144 From the Stage to the World