Abstract
The paradoxes of negative emotions — most notoriously the paradoxes of tragedy and horror — challenge us to explain why receivers are attracted to works of art that seem bound to elicit affective responses that are unpleasant. If one answers that the attraction lies in some pleasure that attends engagement with such works, the challenge is to explain in what that pleasure consists. Writers on the paradoxes often cite David Hume’s formulation of the problem as it arises in the case of tragedy. How, he asks, are we to explain the ‘unaccountable pleasure which the spectators of a well-written tragedy receive from sorrow, terror, anxiety and other passions that are in themselves disagreeable and uneasy’?1
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© 2014 David Davies
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Davies, D. (2014). Watching the Unwatchable: Irréversible, Empire, and the Paradox of Intentionally Inaccessible Art. In: Levinson, J. (eds) Suffering Art Gladly. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137313713_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137313713_13
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-34598-4
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