Paradox Of Tragedy Research Articles

The Living Dying Body: Arriving at the Awareness of All Life’s Interdependencies through a Video Artwork

In this article, I ask how an artwork handling mortality can address human belongingness to the rest of nature. I develop my argument from my video work, which I discuss through the concepts of ecosocialization and the "paradox of tragedy." The orientation of curiosity in artistic experiences may aid in generating a more welcoming relationship with the diverse affects of life's complexities and vulnerabilities. As a result of my artistic journey, I propose that art can help us abandon our aspirations of refuting human mortality and separating humans from the rest of nature and aid in recognizing all life's interdependencies vital for adopting the ecosocial life orientation.

Virtue and the Paradox of Tragedy

What accounts for our pleasure in tragic art? In a widely-cited essay, Susan Feagin argues that this pleasure has moral roots; it arises when we discover ourselves to be the sort of people who respond sympathetically to another’s suffering. Although critical of Feagin’s particular solution to the tragedy paradox, I too believe that our pleasure in tragedy often has moral roots. I trace those roots differently, however, by placing the concept of virtue front and center. I argue that a noble pleasure arises when we perceive virtue in tragic characters and when we practice it ourselves as audience members. My account draws on insights from the history of philosophy, most notably Aquinas’s conception of the virtues of charity and mercy in the Summa.

Art and painful emotion

AbstractThis essay updates Aaron Smuts', 2009 Philosophy Compass piece, “Art and Negative Affect” in light of recent work on the topic. The “paradox of painful art” is the general problem of how it is possible to enjoy or value experiences of art that involve painful emotions. It encompasses both the paradox of tragedy and the paradox of horror. Section lays out a taxonomy of solutions to the paradox of painful art and argues that we should opt for a pluralistic approach rather than seeking a unified solution. Section surveys recent work on the topic, with an emphasis on views holding that it is possible for an experience of art to be pleasant partly in virtue of involving painful emotion. Section suggests a range of phenomena that are not usually considered under the umbrella of the paradox of painful art but that offer promising directions for further research.

독특한 현상으로서 비극의 역설: 인과적 접근과 동기 접근

독특한 현상으로서 비극의 역설: 인과적 접근과 동기 접근

Will we become more compassionate or empathic intensive care professionals by watching films and documentaries about suffering?

Will we become more compassionate or empathic intensive care professionals by watching films and documentaries about suffering?

The Problem of Tragedy and the Protective Frame

We explore the classical philosophical problem of the “paradox of tragedy”—the problem of accounting for our apparent pleasure in feeling pity and terror as audiences of staged tragedies. After outlining the history of the problem in philosophy, we suggest that Apter’s reversal theory offers great potential for resolving the paradox, while explaining some of the central intuitions motivating philosophical proposals—an ideal starting point to bridge a narrowing gap between philosophy and psychology.

The paradox of tragedy and emotional response to simulation.

The insightful analysis of Menninghaus et al. could be deepened and rendered more systematic by recognizing that our emotional enjoyment of tragedy-and our response to fiction more generally-are versions of what happens with simulation. They derive from the operation and evolutionary function of simulation. Once we understand emotion in simulation, we largely understand emotion in tragedy (and fiction).

Poetry and Hedonic Error in Plato’s Republic

This paper reads Republic 583b-608b as a single, continuous line of argument. First, Socrates distinguishes real from apparent pleasure and argues that justice is more pleasant than injustice. Next, he describes how pleasures nourish the soul. This line of argument continues into the second discussion of poetry: tragic pleasures are mixed pleasures in the soul that seem greater than they are; indulging them nourishes appetite and corrupts the soul. The paper argues that Plato has a novel account of the ‘paradox of tragedy’, and that the Republic and Philebus contain complementary discussions of tragic and comic pleasure.

Acknowledgement and the paradox of tragedy.

We offer a new answer to the paradox of tragedy. We explain part of the appeal of tragic art in terms of its acknowledgement of sad aspects of life and offer a tentative explanation of why acknowledgement is a source of pleasure.

The pleasures of suppositions

I argue that the very act of supposing something contrary to fact, and entertaining some possible consequences, is in itself pleasurable. That is, I contend that it is not solely our emotional reaction to the content of our suppositions that motivates us to suppose, but that it is pleasurable to suppose regardless of the content of the supposition. This position helps explain why we spend so much time entertaining such a wide variety of counterfactual situations (in forms such as pretend play, fantasies, or engagement with fictions). It also helps explain suppositions that are not motivations to act, and why we enjoy entertaining so many suppositions to which we would react neutrally, or even negatively, if they were to be truly the case. It provides the seeds of an answer to the paradox of tragedy: why should we find fictional tragedies pleasurable? An account of our motivations to engage in supposing that relies solely on our reaction to the content of a supposition is incapable of explaining all of the phenomena associated with supposing. A position that the very act of supposing is pleasurable provides a better explanation.

Fiction, Pleasurable Tragedy, and the HOT Theory of Consciousness

The ‘feeling fiction problem’ asks: is it rational to be moved by what happens to fictional characters? The so-called ‘paradox of tragedy’ is embodied in the question: Why or how is it that we take pleasure in artworks which are clearly designed to cause in us such feelings as sadness and fear? My focus in this paper is to examine these problems from the point of view of the so-called ‘higher-order thought theory of consciousness’ (HOT theory) which says that the best explanation for what makes a mental state conscious is that it is accompanied by a thought that one is in that state. I examine the feeling fiction problem in light of the HOT theory and through a critique of Colin Radford's view. For example, I argue that Radford equivocates in his use of the term ‘aware’ in his response to some of the proposed solutions to the feeling fiction problem. Finally, I show how Susan Feagin's approach to the paradox of tragedy can be analysed and supported by the HOT theory.

Nietzsche's Paradox of Tragedy

Nietzsche's Paradox of Tragedy

Discussion: Hume and Others on The Paradox of Tragedy

Discussion: Hume and Others on The Paradox of Tragedy

Hume and Others on the Paradox of Tragedy

Hume and Others on the Paradox of Tragedy

Dissolving The Paradox of Tragedy

Dissolving The Paradox of Tragedy

Dissolving the Paradox of Tragedy

Dissolving the Paradox of Tragedy

Theology and Tragedy

It is now some years since Professor D. Daiches Raphael published his interesting book, The Paradox of Tragedy, which represented one of the first serious attempts made by a British philosopher to assess the significance of tragic drama for ethical, and indeed metaphysical theory. Since then we have had a variety of books touching on related topics: for instance, Dr George Steiner's Death of Tragedy and Mr Raymond Williams’ most recent, elusive and interesting essay, Modern Tragedy. To entitle an essay Theology and Tragedy might be thought to invite needless trouble for oneself; to indulge to a dangerous degree the human intellectual obsession (so thoroughly castigated by Wittgenstein) of supposing that ‘the meaning of a word is an object’. After all, if one confines one's regard to the Greeks, one has to recognise that between the treatments of their common theme of Electra, Sophocles and Euripides are in fact doing very different things. There is no gainsaying the significance for Euripides of the postponement of the murder of Clytemnestra till after that of Aegisthus, still less of his introduction into the play of the morally upright peasant, who has had the banished Electra in his keeping, and whose simple integrity contrasts both with the corruption of the court and the obsessive preoccupation with a dreadful, supposed duty of brother and sister. The element of propaganda is unmistakable; while in Sophocles’ Electra it is altogether absent, although Dr Victor Ehrenberg in his very interesting monograph on Sophocles and Pericles has argued strongly for an element of subtle political commentary in the treatment of Oedipus in the Oedipus Tyrannus, and of Pocreon in the Antigone. These remarks may serve to show that the title does not express a blind indifference to the multiple complexity of those works which we class together as tragedies. They are inherently complex, and various in emphasis; at best we can discern a family resemblance between them, and, in an essay like this, the author runs the risk not only of selecting examples tailor-made to his thesis, but also of imposing an appearance of similarity of conception where it is at least equally important to stress differences.

Nietzsche's Paradox of Tragedy

Nietzsche's Paradox of Tragedy