For how is it that one can derive pleasure from what Aristotle himself describes elsewhere (notably in the
Rhetoric) as painful feelings? This question is a more difficult relative of one prompted by Plato's reference to the fact that "when we hear Homer or one of the tragic poets representing the sufferings of a hero and making him bewail them at length … even the best of us enjoy it" (1987, 605c-d): How is it that in engaging with a work of tragedy one is able, or is enabled by the work, to enjoy the depiction of human suffering?
Debate surrounding these and related questions was particularly prevalent in eighteenth-century British philosophy and criticism, attracting contributions from such figures as Lord Kames, James Beattie, and Joseph Priestley, as well as, more influentially, David Hume, Adam Smith, and Edmund Burke.
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