Suffering Art Gladly Also by Jerrold Levinson MUSIC, ART, AND METAPHYSICS THE PLEASURES OF AESTHETICS MUSIC IN THE MOMENT CONTEMPLATING ART AESTHETICS AND ETHICS ( editor ) THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF AESTHETICS ( editor ) AESTHETIC CONCEPTS ( co-editor with Emily Brady ) ART AND PORNOGRAPHY ( co-editor with Hans Maes ) Suffering Art Gladly The Paradox of Negative Emotion in Art Edited by Jerrold Levinson Department of Philosophy, University of Maryland, USA ISBN 978-1-349-34598-4 ISBN 978-1-137-31371-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137313713 Selection, introduction and editorial matter © Jerrold Levinson 2014 Chapters © Contributors 2014 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-0-230-34983-4 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. 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Contents List of Figures vii Acknowledgements viii Notes on Contributors ix Introduction x Jerrold Levinson Part I Historical Perspectives 1 Aristotle on the Paradox of Tragic Pleasure 3 Pierre Destrée 2 The Resolution and Dissolution of the Paradox of Negative Emotions in the Aesthetics of the Eighteenth Century 28 Carole Talon-Hugon 3 A Lust of the Mind: Curiosity and Aversion in Eighteenth-Century British Aesthetics 45 Carolyn Korsmeyer 4 On Mere Suffering: Hume and the Problem of Tragedy 68 Christopher Williams 5 The Problem and Promise of the Sublime: Lessons from Kant and Schopenhauer 84 Sandra Shapshay Part II Contemporary Perspectives 6 A Simple Solution to the Paradox of Negative Emotion 111 Rafael De Clercq 7 Painful Art and the Limits of Well-Being 123 Aaron Smuts 8 That Obscure Object of Desire: Pleasure in Painful Art 153 Jonathan Gilmore 9 Playing with Fire: Art and the Seductive Power of Pain 171 Iskra Fileva v vi Contents 10 Heavenly Hurt: The Joy and Value of Sad Poetry 186 Anna Christina Ribeiro 11 Negative Emotions and Creativity 207 Derek Matravers 12 Attention, Negative Valence, and Tragic Emotions 224 Cain Todd 13 Watching the Unwatchable: Irréversible , Empire , and the Paradox of Intentionally Inacessible Art 246 David Davies Index 267 List of Figures 5.1 Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog , 1818 94 5.2 Julian Rosefeldt, My home is a dark and cloud-hung land , 2011 95 5.3 Christo & Jeanne-Claude, Running Fence, Sonoma and Marin Counties 1972–76 97 vii Acknowledgements I thank above all my good friend and colleague Pierre Destrée, and in three respects. First, for the original and excellent idea for this volume, one that would encompass chapters with both historical and contempo- rary emphases on the theme of negative emotion in art. Second, for his efforts in organizing the conference held in Belgium in March 2009 at which some of the essays here assembled were first presented. And third, for his valuable counsel and advice throughout the rather protracted editing period. I next thank the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and the Université Catholique de Louvain for their hosting and support of the aforementioned conference. Thanks are also due to the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique and the Fondation Francqui for important financial support. I am grateful, finally, to all the contributors for their valuable contributions, and I thank especially those who were part of the project from the beginning for their patience during the process of bringing this volume to fruition. Jerrold Levinson viii Notes on Contributors Rafael De Clercq is Associate Professor and Head, Department of Visual Studies at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. David Davies is Professor of Philosophy at McGill University, Canada. Pierre Destrée is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium. Iskra Fileva is Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA. Jonathan Gilmore is Visiting Scholar at Columbia University, USA. Carole Talon-Hugon is Professor of Philosophy at the Université de Nice, France. Carolyn Korsmeyer is Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo, USA. Derek Matravers is Professor of Philosophy at the Open University, UK. Anna Christina Ribeiro is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Texas Tech University, USA. Sandra Shapshay is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Indiana University, Bloomington, USA. Aaron Smuts is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Rhode Island College, USA. Cain Todd is Lecturer in Philosophy at Lancaster University, UK and Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Christopher Williams is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Nevada, Reno, USA. ix Introduction Jerrold Levinson A friend goes to see Bresson’s Mouchette or Haneke’s Piano Teacher or Kubrick’s The Shining at the local repertory cinema. Why not go see Duck Soup or All About Eve or Singing in the Rain instead? Another friend chooses a chamber music programme featuring Shostakovich’s Quartet No. 8 in C minor and Beethoven’s Quartet in A minor op. 132. Why not choose the programme with Haydn’s ‘Sunrise’ Quartet and Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence? A third friend decides to attend a performance of Shakespeare’s wrenching Othello rather than one of his delightful Twelfth Night, while a fourth friend opts for a performance of Verdi’s heart-rending Otello rather than a performance of his amiable Falstaff. This behaviour is, at least at first blush, mildly puzzling. What moves people to choose to experience works of art that are wrenching, depressing, exhausting, horrifying, distressing, soul-searing, angst-in- ducing, and so on, when there are so many others, of perhaps equal worth, that are, by contrast, amusing, uplifting, charming, exalting, entrancing, heart-warming, life-affirming and the like? The strange fact is that we do hardly shy away from, but instead often seek out, relish, and take satisfaction in the experience of negative emotions from art of a tragic, fearful, pessimistic, or disturbing nature. How can we explain the satisfaction taken in experiencing art when it is the vehicle of nega- tive emotions, ones that are at least apparently unpleasant or undesir- able, and that one normally tries to avoid experiencing? Why works of art that arouse negative emotions have a value and an appeal for us that are at least as powerful as the appeal and value of works that either arouse positive emotions or do not engage us emotionally, is an enduring conundrum, one whose interest outstrips the narrow confines of professional philosophy, as it is likely to have troubled the spirit of almost any person who is interested in art at some time or other. The chapters in this volume all address, from a variety of angles, more or less that conundrum. As a problem in philosophical aesthetics it has traditionally been labelled ‘the paradox of tragedy’, though the problem goes well beyond that of explaining our attitudes and responses to x Introduction xi tragic theatre narrowly speaking, since it also arises in relation to horror films, melodramas, tearjerkers, blues songs, as well as certain sympho- nies, paintings, novels, and poems – in short, any work of art, whether high art or low, whose character or content is such as to raise negative, hence ostensibly unwelcome, emotions in those who appreciate it. The problem already figures prominently in the first important treatise on aesthetic theory in Western thought, namely Aristotle’s Poetics , where the doctrine of catharsis is proposed to deal with it, and is subsequently addressed in varying ways by Hume, Burke, Diderot, Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, evolving in some of those thinkers into a meditation on the quasi-paradoxical phenomenon of the sublime and our experience of it, whether in nature or in art. I should note at this point that not all theorists who have addressed the problem that concerns us regard it as a paradox, since it possibly does not fit a strict definition of that term, as it involves a set of jointly incompatible yet individually plausible propositions. For convenience, however, I will continue to refer to the problem as a paradox, though ‘puzzle’, ‘enigma’, and ‘conundrum’ are perhaps equally apt designa- tions for it. The present volume is divided into two parts, corresponding to the two primary emphases displayed by the chapters brought together here. The chapters in Part One, having primarily historical emphasis and focusing on a number of important figures in the history of aesthetic thought, are by Pierre Destrée, Carole Talon-Hugon, Carolyn Korsmeyer, Christopher Williams, and Sandra Shapshay.