Suffering Gladly Also by Jerrold Levinson

MUSIC, ART, AND METAPHYSICS THE OF 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 ) Art Gladly The Paradox of Negative in Art

Edited by

Jerrold Levinson Department of , 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. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2014 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martins Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.

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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 3 Pierre Destrée 2 The Resolution and Dissolution of the Paradox of Negative in the Aesthetics of the Eighteenth Century 28 Carole Talon-Hugon 3 A of the Mind: 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 : Pleasure in Painful Art 153 Jonathan Gilmore 9 Playing with Fire: Art and the Seductive Power of 171 Iskra Fileva

v vi Contents

10 Heavenly Hurt: The 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 , 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, -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 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. Those in Part Two, whose emphasis is primarily contemporary, and in which the tendencies and tools of contemporary analytic philosophy are much in evidence, are by Rafael DeClercq, Aaron Smuts, Jonathan Gilmore, Iskra Fileva, Anna Ribeiro, Derek Matravers, Cain Todd, and David Davies. Notwithstanding that basic contrast of emphasis, the chapters in the first part regularly keep in view the bearing of historically influential treatments of the problem on contemporary approaches to it, and the chapters in the second part regularly acknowledge important historical antecedents of the problem as it presents itself for philosophical reflection today. In other words, the division between these two sets of chapters is not airtight, and that is all to the good. Apart from the contrast of historical and contemporary orientation, the chapters assembled differ saliently in another respect. Some of them, such as those by Fileva and Davies, and to a lesser extent those by Shapshay and Ribeiro, examine in detail particular emotionally difficult works of art and our responses to them. But the majority of the chapters xii Jerrold Levinson in the volume simply offer a variety of artistic examples from a variety of art forms to illustrate aspects of the problem of negative emotion in art which they address, rather than dwelling at length on particular works of art. The bringing together of work on this problem with historical and contemporary emphases is a distinctive feature of the present volume, whose rationale is twofold. On the one hand, to show the roots of the problem in the philosophical tradition beginning with ancient Greece, and to argue the continuing pertinence of the approaches to the problem offered by that tradition; on the other hand, to give an idea of the progress that has been made in coming to terms with the problem from a range of contemporary philosophical perspectives. Another distinc- tive feature of the volume, one may note, is the significant diversity of backgrounds of its 13 contributors: though unsurprisingly most of the contributors come from English-speaking countries, there are also contributors who hail from Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, and France. I take the liberty of calling the attention of readers to a survey essay of mine on the issue of emotional response to art containing a discus- sion of the specific paradox that now concerns us, and which sketches a rough taxonomy of approaches to it, classified there as compensatory, conversionary, organicist, revisionary, and deflationary explanations of the paradox (see Levinson 2006). The approaches to the paradox offered by the contributors to the present volume can mostly be assembled under one or another of those classifications, whose natures are fairly transparently indicated by the labels given them. Compensatory expla- nations hold that something in the experience of negative emotion from art compensates for the negativity of the experience; conversionary explanations hold that in the context of artistic appreciation the nega- tivity of the emotion experienced is somehow converted into something positive; organicist explanations maintain that in our engagement with negatively emotional art neither compensation nor conversion occurs, but that the negativity of the emotion experienced instead plays an ineliminable role in the value of the experience as a whole; revisionary explanations insist that what are called negative emotions are in fact not intrinsically unpleasant or undesirable; deflationary explanations flatly deny that negative emotions really are aroused in us by art of negatively emotional character. Rather than retrace my steps in that survey any further, I will now try to shed light in a different way on the problem of negative emotion from art, by highlighting the presuppositions and implications of different approaches to the problem. The manner in which one conceives the Introduction xiii paradox – in particular, whether one is inclined to dissolve it or to resolve it, and how, in either case, one proposes to do so – depends on a number of factors. Here are some of the most important of them: One’s view of art . The position taken on the difference between art and non-art, and whether there is a sharp distinction between works of art and works of fiction or entertainment that are not accorded the status of art has a bearing on the problem. The paradox of explaining the appeal of negative emotion from engagement with works of human invention may seem more problematic in the case of works of art than other arte- facts, given the longstanding though hardly unchallenged assumption that works of art call for aesthetic appreciation, appreciation charac- terized by some measure of disinterestedness or detachment, which would tell against the appropriateness of even having strong emotional responses to them, let alone responses that one might take satisfaction in even when negative emotional responses are involved. One’s view of fiction. How one conceives of fictionality may be relevant to one’s approach to the paradox, and the fact that a representation – whether pictorial, dramatic, novelistic, or cinematic – is fictional rather than factual may matter to its resolution. It is at least plausible that one’s involvement with a representation recognized as fictional will have a character, a dynamic, and an upshot different from what it would have with a representation that is taken to reflect reality or to present what is actually occurring or has occurred. One’s view of emotion . How one conceives of emotion will have a signifi- cant impact on one’s approach to the paradox. Under this rubric at least the following issues deserve mention. First, what distinguishes emotions proper, if anything, from , moods, , and related psycho- logical states? Second, to what extent do emotions necessarily involve intentional objects, felt affects, cognitive stances, evaluative assessments, physiological disturbances, and/or behavioural dispositions? Third, what is meant exactly by a negative emotion? More specifically, is this a matter of the tone of the emotion, of the sort of thought that might be constitutive of the emotion, of the emotion’s aversive character, or of the undesirability of the object on which the emotion is directed? One’s view of pleasure. What is pleasure, and how does that relate to satisfaction and enjoyment? Is there something odd about being moti- vated to have experiences that are not in any obvious sense pleasurable? How might an experience be rewarding or valuable without being pleas- urable? Might an engagement that is not first-order pleasurable be yet second-order pleasurable? To what extent is it oxymoronic to think of taking pleasure in experiences that involve negative ? xiv Jerrold Levinson

One’s view of value. What is it for an experience of or engagement with a work of art to have value? How does the pleasurability of an experi- ence of or engagement with a work of art relate to the value of such an engagement? Is the satisfaction somehow taken in painful emotion from art a distinctive phenomenon, or just an instance of something more general, with no special connection to art? Might the value of an experience be in some or all cases unrelated to its hedonic tone, that is, its degree of pleasurability or agreeableness? Might it, in particular, reside partly in some insight into human nature that it enables or some ethical benefit that it affords? One’s view of motivation. When is motivation rational and when irra- tional? Is it irrational to seek out experiences from art that appear to involve distressing emotions? If not irrational, is this owing to some- thing specific to the context of artistic appreciation, or is it an instance of something more general? If indeed irrational, might such behaviour yet be justified from some other perspective for evaluating action? Is there a masochistic aspect to the appeal to appreciators of negatively emotional art? One’s view of the mental attitudes and processes involved in responding emotionally to works of art. The view taken on the extent to which imagi- nation as opposed to belief is central to our appreciation of art, and more specifically, the roles played by mechanisms of , , and identification in such appreciation, will substantially influence how one views the problem and the prospects for its solution. In particular, if our engagement with the contents of works of art is held to occur fundamentally under the sign of imagination, rather than under that of belief, this may incline one to think that our emotional responses to such contents when negative might be less than full-fledged, hence less paradoxical than they would otherwise appear to be. One’s view of empirical studies of emotional response to art. The degree to which proposals are based on available evidence from cognitive psychology and neurophysiology concerning our emotional responses to works of art distinguishes some approaches to our problem from others. Though it would clearly be foolish to take no note of such studies, it would be equally foolish not to view such studies with a healthy dose of scepticism as to the sort of subjects on which experiments were run, the experimental conditions of exposure to the art in question, and the extent of prior experience and background knowledge of the genres and art forms on the part of such subjects. As one might expect, the contributors to this volume make differing assumptions, and adopt differing positions, with regard to the issues Introduction xv just reviewed, and those differences naturally condition the sorts of solutions or dissolutions of our paradox which they recommend for our consideration. It remains for me now only to make way for the chapters that consti- tute the substance of this book, and to wish readers the best of luck in thinking their way through the intriguing enigma to which they are all, in one way or another, devoted. But in closing I offer a guide to further reading that should prove of use to readers seeking to broaden their background in this area of philosophical reflection.

Recent work on negative emotion in art: a selective bibliography

Bantinaki, Katrina (2012). ‘The Paradox of Horror: as a Positive Emotion’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 70: 383–392. Bicknell, Jeanette (2009). Why Music Moves Us (Palgrave Macmillan). Carroll, Noël (1990). The Philosophy of Horror, or Paradoxes of the Heart (Routledge). Currie, Gregory (2010). ‘Tragedy’, Analysis 70: 632–638. Dadlez, Eva (1997). What’s Hecuba to Him? (Penn State Press). Davies, Stephen (1997). ‘Why Listen to Sad Music If It Makes One Feel Sad?’, in J. Robinson (ed.), Music and Meaning (Cornell University Press, 1997), 242–253. Davies, Stephen (2011). ‘ from Music to Listener’, in Musical Understandings and Other Essays on the (Oxford University Press), 47–65. Elkins, James (2004). Pictures and Tears (Routledge). Feagin, Susan (1992). ‘Monsters, , and Fascination’, Philosophical Studies 65 (1992): 75–84. Gaut, Berys (1993). ‘The Paradox of Horror’, British Journal of Aesthetics 33: 333–345. Gilmore, Jonathan (2013). ‘ and Belief’, British Journal of Aesthetics 53: 103–115. Hjort, Mette, and Laver, Sue (eds) (1997). Emotion and the (Oxford University Press). Kieran, Matthew, and Lopes, Dominic (eds) (2003). Imagination, Philosophy and the Arts (Routledge, 2003). Kivy, Peter (1989). Sound Sentiment: An Essay on the Musical Emotions (Temple University Press). Kivy, Peter (2001). New Essays on Musical Understanding (Oxford University Press). Kivy, Peter (2002). Introduction to a Philosophy of Music (Oxford University Press). Korsmeyer, Carolyn (2011). Savoring Disgust: The Foul and the Fair in Aesthetics (Oxford University Press). Lamarque, Peter (1995). ‘Tragedy and Moral Value’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 73 (1995): 239–249. Levinson, Jerrold (1991). ‘Horrible Fictions’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 49 (1991): 253–258. xvi Jerrold Levinson

Levinson, Jerrold (2006). ‘Emotion in Response to Art’, in Contemplating Art (Oxford University Press), 38–55. [Originally published as “Emotion in Response to Art: A Survey of the Terrain”, in Hjort and Laver (1997)] Matravers, Derek (1998). Art and Emotion (Oxford University Press). Moran, Richard (1994). ‘The Expression of Feeling in Imagination’, Philosophical Review 103: 75–106. Neill, Alex (1992). ‘On a Paradox of the Heart’, Philosophical Studies 65: 53–65. Neill, Alex (1998). ‘“An Unaccountable Pleasure”: Hume on Tragedy and the Passions’, Hume Studies 24: 335–354. Neill, Alex (1999). ‘Hume’s “Singular Phaenomenon”’, British Journal of Aesthetics 39: 112–125. Neill, Alex (2003). ‘Art and Emotion’, in J. Levinson (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics (Oxford University Press), 421–435. Nussbaum, Martha (2001). Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge University Press). Packer, Mark (1989). ‘Dissolving the Paradox of Tragedy’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 49: 211–219. Ridley, Aaron (1993). ‘Tragedy and the Tender-Hearted’, Philosophy and Literature 17: 234–245. Ridley, Aaron (1995). Music, Value and the Passions (Cornell University Press). Ridley, Aaron (2003). ‘Tragedy’, in J. Levinson (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics (Oxford University Press), 408–420. Robinson, Jenefer (2005). Deeper Than Reason: Emotion and Its Role in Literature, Music, and Art (Oxford University Press). Schier, Flint (1989). ‘The Claims of Tragedy: An Essay in Moral Psychology and Aesthetic Theory’, Philosophical Papers 18: 7–26. Smuts, Aaron (2007). ‘The Paradox of Painful Art’, Journal of Aesthetic Education 41: 59–76. Smuts, Aaron (2009). ‘Art and Negative Affect’, Philosophy Compass 4: 39–55. Talon-Hugon, Carole (2003). Gout et degout: L’art peut-il tout montrer? (Editions Jacqueline Chambon). Todd, Cain (2012). ‘Attending Emotionally to Fiction’, Journal of Value Inquiry 46: 449–465. Trimble, Michael (2012). Why Humans Like to Cry (Oxford University Press). Walton, Kendall (1997). ‘Spelunking, Simulation, and Slime: On Being Moved by Fiction’, in Hjort and Laver, 37–49. Wilson, Catherine (2013). ‘Grief and the Poet’, British Journal of Aesthetics 53: 77–91. Yanal, Robert (1999). Paradoxes of Emotion and Fiction (Penn State Press).