Abstract
Two seemingly contradictory aspects have marked art’s appreciation – and aesthetic appreciation in general. While an experience of pleasure seems to ground judgments of aesthetic value, some artworks seem to gain our praise by the very negative – unpleasant – experience they provoke. Known as the paradox of negative emotions, aestheticians have, at least since Aristotle, tried to deal with these cases and offer different explanations of the phenomenon. In this article, María José Alcaraz León does not directly offer an alternative explanation; rather she focuses on the apparent tension between an understanding of aesthetic experience in terms of a certain kind of pleasure and the negative aspect that is necessarily involved in our appreciation of painful art. The purpose of her article is to show that cases of artistic appreciation that involve negative emotions do not need to give up on the idea that aesthetic value is ultimately grounded upon an experience of pleasure.
Highlights
Two seemingly contradictory aspects have marked art’s appreciation – and aesthetic appreciation in general
The conundrum arises because (i) aesthetic experience is usually characterized in terms of some pleasurable experience, (ii) good tragedies, horror films, etc., seem to be better – as artworks – when the negative emotions aroused by them are intense or fully accomplished, and (iii) the value of an artwork as an artwork is based upon the aesthetic experience it affords
These accounts can be divided into two groups. There are those which try to explain how the negative emotional response does not preclude a more general positive experience[5]; and, on the other hand, there are proposals which hold we should give up the idea that aesthetic experience or aesthetic value are primarily linked to pleasure6 – solving the puzzle by rejecting the idea (i)
Summary
Two seemingly contradictory aspects have marked art’s appreciation – and aesthetic appreciation in general. In his view this is non-paradoxical and historically required.[19] his notion of aesthetic value is not just the reverse of beauty but it contains the elements that explain why there is value in painful art: By frustrating the viewer’s expectations and by precluding her attempts to make (aesthetic) sense of what she contemplates, the work elicits reflection and makes the viewer become aware of the impossibility of reconciliation.
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