Art and emotion

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In psychology of art, the relationship between art and emotion has newly been the
subject of extensive study thanks to the intervention of esteemed art historian Alexander
Nemerov. Emotional or aesthetic responses to art have previously been viewed as
basic stimulus response, but new theories and research have suggested that these
experiences are more complex and able to be studied experimentally.[1] Emotional
responses are often regarded as the keystone to experiencing art, and the creation of
an emotional experience has been argued as the purpose of artistic expression.
[2]
Research has shown that the neurological underpinnings of perceiving art differ from
those used in standard object recognition. [3] Instead, brain regions involved in the
experience of emotion and goal setting show activation when viewing art. [3]

Basis for Emotional Responses to Art[edit]

Evolutionary ancestry has hard-wired humans to have affective responses for certain
patterns and traits. These predispositions lend themselves to responses when looking at
certain visual arts as well. Identification of subject matter is the first step in understanding
the visual image. Being presented with a visual stimuli creates initial confusion. Being able
to comprehend a figure and background creates closure and triggers the pleasure centers
of the brain by remedying the confusion. Once an image is identified, meaning can be
created by accessing memory relative to the visual stimuli and associating personal
memories with what is being viewed.[4]

Other methods of stimulating initial interest that can lead to emotion involves pattern
recognition. Symmetry is often found in works of art, and the human brain unconsciously
searches for symmetry for a number of reasons. Potential predators were bilaterally
symmetrical, as were potential prey. Bilateral symmetry also exists in humans, and a
healthy human is typically symmetrical. This attraction to symmetry was therefore
advantageous, as it helped humans recognize danger, food, and mates. Art containing
symmetry therefore is typically approached and positively valenced to humans. [4]

Another example is to observe paintings or photographs of bright, open landscapes that

often evoke a feeling of beauty, relaxation, or happiness. This connection to pleasant
emotions exists because it was advantageous to humans before today's society to be able
to see far into the distance in a brightly lit vista. Similarly, visual images that are dark and/or
obscure typically elicit emotions of anxiety and fear. This is because an impeded visual field
is disadvantageous for a human to be able to defend itself. [5]
Meta-Emotions[edit]

The optimal visual artwork creates what Noy & Noy-Sharav call "meta-emotions." These are
multiple emotions that are triggered at the same time. They posit that what people see when
immediately looking at a piece of artwork are the formal, technical qualities of the work and
its complexity. Works that are well-made but lacking in appropriate complexity, or works that
are intricate but missing in technical skill will not produce "meta-emotions." [6] For example,
seeing a perfectly painted chair (technical quality but no complexity) or a sloppily drawn
image of Christ on the cross (complex but no skill) would be unlikely to stimulate deep
emotional responses. However, beautifully painted works of Christ's crucifixion are likely
make people who can relate or who understand the story behind it weep.

Noy & Noy-Sharav also claim that art is the most potent form of emotional communication.
They cite examples of people being able to listen to and dance to music for hours without
getting tired and literature being able to take people to far away, imagined lands inside their
heads. Art forms give humans a higher satisfaction in emotional release than simply
managing emotions on their own. Art allows people to have a cathartic release of pent-up
emotions either by creating work or by witnessing and pseudo-experiencing what they see
in front of them. Instead of being passive recipients of actions and images, art is intended
for people to challenge themselves and work through the emotions they see presented in
the artistic message ./..[6]

Types of elicited emotions[edit]

Art is a human activity, consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external
signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these
feeling and also experience them.

--Leo Tolstoy, What Is Art? (1897)[7]

There is debate among researchers as to what types of emotions works of art can elicit;
whether these are defined emotions such as anger, confusion or happiness, or a general
feeling of aesthetic appreciation.[8] The aesthetic experience seems to be determined by
liking or disliking a work of art, placed along a continuum of pleasuredispleasure.
[8]
However, other diverse emotions can still be felt in response to art, which can be sorted
into three categories: Knowledge Emotions, Hostile Emotions, and Self-Conscious
Emotions.[8]

Liking and comprehensibility[edit]

Pleasure elicited by works of art can also have multiple sources. A number of theories
suggest that enjoyment of a work of art is dependent on its comprehensibility or ability to be
understood easily.[9] Therefore, when more information about a work of art is provided, such
as a title, description, or artist's statement, researchers predict that viewers will understand
the piece better, and demonstrate greater liking for it. [9] Experimental evidence shows that
the presence of a title for a work increases perceived understanding, regardless of whether
that title is elaborative or descriptive. [9] Elaborative titles did affect aesthetic responses to the
work, suggesting viewers were not creating alternative explanations for the works if an
explaining title is given.[9] Descriptive or random titles do not show any of these effects. [9]

Furthering the thought that pleasure in art derives from its comprehensibility and processing
fluency, some authors have described this experience as an emotion. [10] The emotional
feeling of beauty, or an aesthetic experience, does not have a valence emotional
undercurrent, rather is general cognitive arousal due to the fluent processing of a novel
stimuli.[10] Some authors believe that aesthetic emotions is enough of a unique and verifiable
experience that it should be included in general theories of emotion. [10]

Art is the emotional expression of human personality.

--Eugne Vron, L'Esthetique (1882)[11]

Knowledge emotions[edit]

Knowledge emotions deal with reactions to thinking and feeling, such as interest, confusion,
and surprise.[8] They often stem from self-analysis of what the viewer knows, expects, and
perceives.[8][12] This set of emotions also spur actions that motivate further learning and
thinking.[8]

Interest[edit]

Interest in a work of art arises from perceiving the work as new, complex, and unfamiliar, as
well as understandable.[8][12] This dimension is studied most often by aesthetics researchers,
and can be equated with aesthetic pleasure or an aesthetic experience. [8] This stage of art
experience usually occurs as the viewer understands the artwork they are viewing, and the
art fits into their knowledge and expectations while providing a new experience. [12]

Confusion[edit]

Confusion can be viewed as an opposite to interest, and serves as a signal to the self to
inform the viewer that they cannot comprehend what they are looking at, and confusion
often necessitates a shift in action to remedy the lack of understanding. [8][12] Confusion is
thought to stem from uncertainty, and a lack of one's expectations and knowledge being met
by a work of art.[12] Confusion is most often experienced by art novices, and therefore must
often be dealt with by those in arts education. [8]
Surprise[edit]

Surprise functions as a disruption of current action to alert a viewer to a significant event.

[8]
The emotion is centered around the experience of something new and unexpected, and
can be ellicied by sensory incongruity.[8] Art can ellicit surprise when expectations about the
work are not met, but the work changes those expectations in an understandable way.

Hostile emotions[edit]

Hostile emotions toward art are often very visible in the form of anger or frustration, and can
result in censorship, but are less easily described by a continuum of aesthetic pleasure-
displeasure.[8] These reactions center around the hostility triad: anger, disgust, and
contempt.[8] These emotions often motivate aggression, self-assertion, and violence, and
arise from perception of the artist's deliberate trespass onto the expectations of the viewer. [8]

Self-conscious emotions[edit]

Self-conscious emotions are responses that reflect upon the self and one's actions, such as
pride, guilt, shame, regret and embarrassment. [8] These are much more complex emotions,
and involve assessing events as agreeing with one's self-perception or not, and adjusting
one's behavior accordingly.[8] There are numerous instances of artists expressing self-
conscious emotions in response to their art, and self-conscious emotions can also be felt
collectively.[8]

Sublime feelings[edit]

Researchers have investigated the experience of the sublime, viewed as similar to aesthetic
appreciation, which causes general psychological arousal. [13] The sublime feeling has been
connected to a feeling of happiness in response to art, but may be more related to an
experience of fear.[13] Researchers have shown that feelings of fear induced before looking
at artwork results in more sublime feelings in response to those works. [13]

Aesthetic chills[edit]

Another common emotional response is that of chills when viewing a work of art. The
feeling is predicted to be related to similar aesthetic experiences such as awe, feeling
touched, or absorption.[14] Personality traits along the Big 5 Inventory have been shown to be
predictors of a persons experience of aesthetic chills, especially a high rating on Openness
to Experience.[14] This counters the effect of fluid intelligence, where those with higher
amounts of fluid intelligence are less likely to experience chills. [14] Experience with the arts
also predicts someone's experience of aesthetic chills, but this may be due to them
experiencing art more frequently.[14]
Effects of expertise[edit]

The fact that art is analyzed and experienced differently by those with artistic training and
expertise than those who are artistically naive has been shown numerous times.
Researchers have tried to understand how experts interact with art so differently from the
art naive, as experts tend to like more abstract compositions, and show a greater liking for
both modern and classical types of art.[15] Experts also exhibit more arousal when looking at
modern and abstract works, while non-experts show more arousal to classical works. [15]

Other researchers predicted that experts find more complex art interesting because they
have changed their appraisals of art to create more interest, or are possibly making
completely different types of appraisals than novices. [16] Experts described works rated high
in complexity as easier to understand and more interesting than did novices, possibly as
experts tend to use more idiosyncratic criteria when judging artworks. [16] However, experts
seem to use the same appraisals of emotions that novices do, but these appraisals are at a
higher level, because a wider range of art is comprehensible to experts. [16]

Expertise and museum visits[edit]

Due to most art being in museums and galleries, most people have to make deliberate
choices to interact with art. Researchers are interested in what types of experiences and
emotions people are looking for when going to experience art in a museum. [17] Most people
respond that they visit museums to experience 'the pleasure of art' or 'the desire for cultural
learning', but when broken down, visitors of museums of classical art are more motivated to
see famous works and learn more about them. [17] Visitors in contemporary art museums
were more motivated by a more emotional connection to the art, and went more for the
pleasure than a learning experience.[17] Predictors of who would prefer to go to which type of
museum lay in education level, art fluency, an socio-economic status. [17]

Theories and models of elicited emotions[edit]

Researchers have offered a number of theories to describe emotional responses to art,

often aligning with the various theories of the basis of emotions. Authors have argued that
the emotional experience is created explicitly by the artist and mimicked in the viewer, or
that the emotional experience of art is a by-product of the analysis of that work. [1][2]

Appraisal theory[edit]

The appraisal theory of emotions centers on the assumption that it is the evaluation of
events, and not the events themselves, that cause emotional experiences. [1] Emotions are
then created by different groups of appraisal structures that events are analyzed through.
[1]
When applied to art, appraisal theories argue that various artistic structures, such as
complexity, prototypically, and understanding are used as appraisal structures, and works
that show more typical art principles will create a stronger aesthetic experience . [1]Appraisal
theories suggest that art is experienced as interesting after being analyzed through a
novelty check and coping-potential check, which analyze the art's newness of experience
for the viewer, and the viewer's ability to understand the new experience. [1] Experimental
evidence suggests that art is preferred when the viewer finds it easier to understand, and
that interest in a work is predictable with knowledge of the viewer's ability to process
complex visual works, which supports the appraisal theory.[1] People with higher levels of
artistic expertise and knowledge often prefer more complex works of art. Under appraisal
theory, experts have a different emotional experience to art due to a preference for more
complex works that they can understand better than a naive viewer.[1]

Appraisal and negative emotions[edit]

A newer take on this theory focuses on the consequences of the emotions elicited from art,
both positive and negative. The original theory argues that positive emotions are the result
of a biobehavioral reward system, where a person feels a positive emotion when they have
completed a personal goal.[18] These emotional rewards create actions by motivating
approach or withdrawal from a stimuli, depending if the object is positive or negative to the
person.[18] However, these theories have not often focused on negative emotions, especially
negative emotional experiences from art.[18] These emotions are central to experimental
aesthetics research in order to understand why people have negative, rejecting,
condemning, or censoring reactions to works of art. [18] By showing research participants
controversial photographs, rating their feelings of anger, and measuring their subsequent
actions, researchers found that the participants that felt hostile toward the photographs
displayed more rejection of the works. [18] This suggests that negative emotions towards a
work of art can create a negative action toward it, and suggests the need for further
research on negative reactions towards art. [18]

Minimal model[edit]

Other psychologists believe that emotions are of minimal functionality, and are used to
move a person towards incentives and away from threats. [19] Therefore, positive emotions
are felt upon the attainment of a goal, and negative emotions when a goal has failed to be
achieved.[19] The basic states of pleasure or pain can be adapted to aesthetic experiences
by a disinterested buffer, where the experience is not explicitly related to the goal-reaching
of the person, but a similar experience can be analyzed from a disinterested distance.
[19]
These emotions are disinterested because the work of art or artist's goals are not
affecting the person's well being, but the viewer can feel whether or not those goals were
achieved from a third-party distance.
Five-step aesthetic experience[edit]

Other theorists have focused their models on the disrupting and unique experience that
comes from the interacting with a powerful work of art. An early model focused on a two-
part experience: facile recognition and meta-cognitive perception, or the experience of the
work of art and the mind's analysis of that experience. [20] A further cognitive model
strengthens this idea into a five-part emotional experience of a work of art. [20] As this five-
part model is new, it remains only a theory, as not much empirical evidence for the model
had been researched yet.

Part one: Pre-expectations and self-image[edit]

The first stage of this model focuses on the viewer's expectations of the work before seeing
it, based on their previous experiences, their observational strategies, and the relation of the
work to themselves.[20] Viewers who tend to appreciate art, or know more about it will have
different expectations at this stage than those who are not engaged by art. [20]

Part two: Cognitive mastery and introduction of discrepancy [edit]

After viewing the work of art, people will make an initial judgment and classification of the
work, often based on their preconceptions of the work. [20] After initial classification, viewers
attempt to understand the motive and meaning of the work, which can then inform their
perception of the work, creating a cycle of changing perception and the attempt to
understand it.[20] It is at this point any discrepancies between expectations and the work, or
the work and understanding arise.[20]

Part three: Secondary control and escape[edit]

When an individual finds a discrepancy in their understanding that cannot be resolved or

ignored, they move to the third stage of their interaction with a work of art. [20] At this point,
interaction with the work has switched from lower-order and unconscious processes to
higher-order cognitive involvement, and tension and frustration starts to be felt. [20] In order to
maintain their self-assumptions and to resolve the work, an individual will try to change their
environment in order for the issue to be resolved or ignored. [20] This can be done by re-
classifying the work and its motives, blaming the discrepancy on an external source, or
attempting to escape the situation or mentally withdraw from the work. [20]

Part four: Meta-cognitive reassessment[edit]

If viewers cannot escape or reassess the work, they are forced to reassess the self and
their interactions with works of art. [20] This experience of self-awareness through a work of
art is often externally caused, rather than internally motivated, and starts a transformative
process to understand the meaning of the discrepant work, and edit their own self-image. [20]
Part five: Aesthetic outcome and new mastery[edit]

After the self-transformation and change in expectations, the viewer resets their interaction
with the work, and begins the process anew with deeper self-understanding and cognitive
mastery of the artwork.[20]

Pupillary response tests[edit]

In order to research emotional responses to art, researchers often rely on behavioral data.
[21]
But new psychophysilogical methods of measuring emotional response are beginning to
be used, such as the measurement of pupillary response. [21] Pupil responses have been
predicted to indicate image pleasantness and emotional arousal, but can be confounded by
luminance, and confusion between an emotion's positive or negative valence, requiring an
accompanying verbal explanation of emotional state. [22] Pupil dilatations have been found to
predict emotional responses and the amount of information the brain is processing,
measures important in testing emotional response ellicted by artwork. [21] Further, the
existence of pupillary responses to artwork can be used as an argument that art does ellicit
emotional responses with physiological reactions. [21]

An example Cubist work by Juan Gris

Pupil responses to art[edit]

After viewing Cubist paintings of varying complexity, abstraction, and familiarity, participants'
pupil responses were greatest when viewing aesthetically pleasing artwork, and highly
accessible art, or art low in abstraction. [21] Pupil responses also correlated with personal
preferences of the cubist art.[21] High pupil responses were also correlated with faster
cognitive processing, supporting theories that aesthetic emotions and preferences are
related to the brain's ease of processing the stimuli. [21]

Left-cheek biases[edit]

Minerva Rembrandt. Female portrait showing left-cheek orientation

These effects are also seen when investigating the Western preference for left-facing
portraits. This skew towards left-cheek is found in the majority of Western portraits, and is
rated as more pleasing than other portrait orientations. [23] Theories for this preference
suggest that the left side of the face as more emotionally descriptive and expressive, which
lets viewers connect to this emotional content better.[23]Pupil response tests were used to
test emotional response to different types of portraits, left or right cheek, and pupil dilation
was linearly related to the pleasantness of the portrait, with increased dilations for pleasant
images, and constrictions for unpleasant images. [23] Left-facing portraits were rated as more
pleasant, even when mirrored to appear right-facing, suggesting that people are more
attracted to more emotional facial depictions.[23]

This research was continued, using portraits by Rembrandt featuring females with a left-
cheek focus and males with a right-cheek focus. [22] Researchers predicted Rembrandt chose
to portray his subjects this way to elicit different emotional responses in his viewers related
to which portrait cheek was favored.[22] In comparison to previous studies, increased pupil
size was only found for male portraits with a right-cheek preference. This may be because
the portraits were viewed as domineering, and the subsequent pupil response was due to
unpleasantness.[22] As pupil dilation is more indicative of strength of emotional response than
the valence, a verbal description of emotional responses should accompany further
pupillary response tests.[22]
Art as emotional regulation[edit]

Art is also used as an emotional regulator, most often in Art Therapy sessions. Studies have
shown that creating art can serve as a method of short-term mood regulation.[24][25] This type
of regulation falls into two categories: venting and distraction. [24] Artists in all fields of the arts
have reported emotional venting and distraction through the creation of their art. [24][25]

Venting[edit]

Venting through art is the process of using art to attend to and discharge negative emotions.
[24]
However, research has shown venting to be a less effective method of emotional
regulation. Research participants asked to draw either an image related to a sad movie they
just watched, or a neutral house, demonstrated less negative mood after the neutral
drawing.[24] Venting drawings did improve negative mood more than no drawing activity.
[24]
Other research suggests that this is because analyzing negative emotions can have a
helpful effect, but immersing in negative emotions can have a deleterious effect. [25]

Distraction[edit]

Distraction is the process of creating art to oppose, or in spite of negative emotions. [24] This
can also take the form of fantasizing, or creating an opposing positive to counteract a
negative affect.[25] Research has demonstrated that distractive art making activities improve
mood greater than venting activities.[24] Distractive drawings were shown to decrease
negative emotions more than venting drawings or no drawing task even after participants
were asked to recall their saddest personal memories. [24] These participants also
experienced an increase in positive affect after a distractive drawing task. [24] The change in
mood valence after a distractive drawing task is even greater when participants are asked
to create happy drawings to counter their negative mood. [25]

Tolstoys What is Art?

Leo Tolstoys What is Art? (1896) is a treatise concerning the nature and purpose of
art, describing how art can express moral values. Tolstoy does not define art in terms
of its ability to express form and beauty, but instead defines art in terms of its ability
to communicate concepts of morality. For Tolstoy, aesthetic values are defined by
moral values.

According to Tolstoy, art cannot be defined as an activity which produces beauty.

Beauty cannot be defined objectively, and therefore cannot be used as a criterion to
define what is, or is not, art. The aim of art is not merely to produce beauty, or to
provide pleasure, enjoyment, or entertainment. Art is a means of communication, and
is an important means of expression of any experience, or of any aspect of the human
condition.

Tolstoy defines art as an expression of a feeling or experience in such a way that the
audience to whom the art is directed can share that feeling or experience. Art does not
belong to any particular class of society. To limit the subject matter of art to the
experiences of a particular class of society is to deny that art can be important for all
of society. Tolstoy criticizes the belief that art is only relevant to a particular class of
society, saying that this is a misconception which can lead to obscurity and decadence
in art.

Elements of Art

The elements of art are components or parts of a work of art that can be isolated and
defined. They are the building blocks used to create a work of art.

The list below describes each element of art. Learn about the principles of design here.

Download a student handout containing a list of the elements of art and their definitions.
(PDF, 168KB)

Line

Shape and form

Space

Color

Texture

Line
A line is an identifiable path created by a point moving in space. It is one-dimensional and
can vary in width, direction, and length. Lines often define the edges of a form. Lines can be
horizontal, vertical, or diagonal, straight or curved, thick or thin. They lead your eye around
the composition and can communicate information through their character and direction.

Download a worksheet that introduces students to the concept of line. (PDF, 398KB)

Horizontal lines suggest a feeling of rest or repose because

objects parallel to the earth are at rest. In this landscape,
horizontal lines also help give a sense of space. The lines
delineate sections of the landscape, which recede into space.
They also imply continuation of the landscape beyond the
picture plane to the left and right.

A Storm on the Mediterranean

Coast, Claude-Joseph Vernet,
1767

Vertical lines often communicate a sense of height because

they are perpendicular to the earth, extending upwards
toward the sky. In this church interior, vertical lines suggest
spirituality, rising beyond human reach toward the heavens.

Saint Bavo, Haarlem, Pieter

Jansz. Saenredam, 1634
Horizontal and vertical
lines used in combination communicate
stability and solidity. Rectilinear forms with 90-
degree angles are structurally stable. This stability suggests
permanence and reliability.

Cabinet, French, about 1785

Diagonal lines convey a feeling of movement. Objects in a

diagonal position are unstable. Because they are neither
vertical nor horizontal, they are either about to fall or are

A Storm on the Mediterranean

Coast, Claude-Joseph Vernet,
1767
already in motion. The angles of the ship and the rocks on the shore convey a feeling of
movement or speed in this stormy harbor scene.

The curve of a line can convey energy. Soft, shallow

curves recall the curves of the human body and often have a
pleasing, sensual quality and a softening effect on the
composition. The edge of the pool in this photograph gently
leads the eye to the sculptures on the horizon.

Pool, Saint-Cloud, Eugne

Atget, 19151919

Shape and form

Shape and form define objects in space. Shapes have two

dimensionsheight and widthand are usually defined by lines.
Forms exist in three dimensions, with height, width, and depth.

Download a worksheet that introduces students to the concept of

shape. (PDF, 372KB)

Shape has only height and width. Shape is usually, though not
always, defined by line, which can provide its contour. In this
image, rectangles and ovals dominate the composition. They
describe the architectural details for an illusionist ceiling fresco.
Studies for a Ceiling
Decoration, Charles de
la Fosse, about 1680
Form has depth as well as width and height. Three-dimensional
form is the basis of sculpture, furniture, and decorative arts.
Three-dimensional forms can be seen from more than one side,
such as this sculpture of a rearing horse.

Rearing Horse, Adriaen

de Vries, 16101615

Geometric shapes and forms include

mathematical, named shapes such as squares,
rectangles, circles, cubes, spheres, and cones.
Geometric shapes and forms are often man-made.
However, many natural forms also have geometric shapes.
Commode, Jean-Franois
This cabinet is decorated with designs of geometric
Oeben, about 1760
shapes.

Organic shapes and forms are typically irregular or

asymmetrical. Organic shapes are often found in nature, but
man-made shapes can also imitate organic forms. This
wreath uses organic forms to simulate leaves and berries.
Gold Wreath, Greek, 300100
B.C.

Space

Real space is three-dimensional. Space in a work of art refers to a

feeling of depth or three dimensions. It can also refer to the artist's use
of the area within the picture plane. The area around the primary
objects in a work of art is known as negative space, while the space
occupied by the primary objects is known as positive space.

Positive and negative space

The relationship of positive to negative space can greatly affect the
impact of a work of art. In this drawing, the man and his shadow
He Can No Longer
at the Age of 98,
Francisco Jos de
Goya y Lucientes,
18191823
occupy the positive space, while the white space surrounding him is the negative space. The
disproportionate amount of negative space accentuates the figure's vulnerability and
isolation.

Three-dimensional space
The perfect illusion of three-dimensional space in a two-
dimensional work of art is something that many artists, such
as Pieter Saenredam, labored to achieve. The illusion of
space is achieved through perspective drawing techniques
and shading.

Color
Saint Bavo, Haarlem, Pieter
Jansz. Saenredam, 1634
Light reflected off objects. Color
has three main
characteristics: hue (red, green, blue, etc.), value (how light or
dark it is), and intensity (how bright or dull it is). Colors can be
described as warm (red, yellow) or cool (blue, gray), depending on
which end of the color spectrum they fall.

Value describes the brightness of color. Artists use color value to

create different moods. Dark colors in a composition suggest a
lack of light, as in a night or interior scene. Dark colors can often
convey a sense of mystery or foreboding.
Christ Crowned with
Light colors often describe a light source or light reflected within Thorns, Gerrit van
the composition. In this painting, the dark colors suggest a night Honthorst, about 1620
or interior scene. The artist used light colors to describe the light
created by the candle flame.
Intensity describes the purity or strength of a color. Bright
colors are undiluted and are often associated with positive
energy and heightened emotions. Dull colors have been diluted
by mixing with other colors and create a sedate or serious
mood. In this image the artist captured both the seriousness
and the joy of the scene with the dull gray stone interior and the
bright red drapery. The Annunciation, Dieric
Bouts, 14501455

Texture

The surface quality of an object that we sense through touch. All objects have a physical
texture. Artists can also convey texture visually in two dimensions.

In a two-dimensional work of art, texture gives a visual sense of how an object depicted
would feel in real life if touched: hard, soft, rough, smooth, hairy, leathery, sharp, etc. In
three-dimensional works, artists use actual texture to add a tactile quality to the work.

Texture depicted in two-dimensions

Artists use color, line, and shading to imply textures. In this painting,
the man's robe is painted to simulate silk. The ability to convincingly
portray fabric of different types was one of the marks of a great
painter during the 17th century.

Portrait of Agostino
Pallavicini, Anthony
van Dyck, 1621
1623

According to Tolstoy, good art is intelligible and comprehensible. Bad art is

unintelligible and incomprehensible. The more that art restricts itself to a particular
audience, the more obscure and incomprehensible it becomes to people outside that
particular audience. Good art is not confusing and incomprehensible to most people.
To the contrary, good art can communicate its meaning to most people, because it
expresses its meaning in a way which can be understood by everyone.

Tolstoy believes that art is good if it is judged to be good by the majority of people.
Indeed, he claims that a great work of art is only great if it can be understood by
everyone.1 He also argues that if it is not admitted that art must be intelligible and
comprehensible, then any unintelligible or incomprehensible expression of thoughts or
feelings may be called "art." If any incomprehensible form of personal expression
may be called "art," then the definition of art gradually loses its meaning, until it has
no meaning at all.2

"Good art" has a form and content which are in unity with the ideas and feelings
which it evokes or represents. In contrast, "bad art" lacks unity of form and content
with the ideas and feelings which it tries to evoke or represent. "Bad art" is shallow,
repetitious, crude, clumsy, contrived, melodramatic, pretentious, or banal.

According to Tolstoy, the most important quality of any work of art is its
sincerity.3 Any true work of art expresses original thoughts and feelings. The "highest"
feelings which art may express are related to religious perception.

Tolstoy claims that professionalism causes a lack of sincerity in the artist, and argues
that if an artist must earn a living by producing art, then the art which is produced is
more likely to be false and insincere. Tolstoy also claims that interpretation or
criticism of art is irrelevant and unnecessary, because any good work of art is able to
express thoughts and feelings which can be clearly understood by most people.
Tolstoy argues that any explanation of such thoughts and feelings is superfluous,
because art ultimately communicates feelings and experiences in a way which cannot
be expressed by any words.

Tolstoy does not believe that art can be taught, or that instruction in the practice of art
can help people to communicate their thoughts and feelings more sincerely. He argues
that to teach art is to destroy its spontaneity. To teach art is to destroy the individuality
of the artist. Any attempt to teach art leads to an attempt to imitate other works of art.

Tolstoys concept of "universal" art affirms that art is relevant to everyone. Art is
relevant to every aspect of the human condition. Therefore, art must aim to be
"universal." Art is "universal" if it expresses thoughts and feelings which can be
experienced by every human being.

According to Tolstoy, everyone may experience religious thoughts or feelings. Thus,

art is "universal" if it expresses religious feelings. The religious perception, or insight,
which may be expressed by art is that the well-being of humanity depends on social
harmony and understanding. Art which is truly "universal" expresses the perception
that human beings must respect each other, must try to understand each other, and
must share a feeling of brotherhood and sisterhood with each other.

Tolstoys view of art reflects the very idiosyncratic and independent nature of his
personal interpretation of Christianity. While he attempts to define a "universal" art as
an art of inclusion, his aesthetic theory is narrowly focused on his own theory of
morality, and thus defines an art of exclusion. He excludes many forms of art from
what he considers to be "universal" art, because he believes that "universal" art must
conform to standards that are not strictly aesthetic, but moral and social.

This aesthetic theory makes it necessary to consider the question of whether aesthetic
values are the same as moral and social values. Tolstoy excludes many forms of art
from what he considers to be "good" art, because he believes that "good" art must
communicate some form of religious experience. For example, he refers to the music
of Bach and Mozart, the comedies of Molire, the poetry of Goethe and Hugo, and the
novels of Dickens and Dostoyevsky as examples of "good" art. However, he refers to
the poetry of Baudelaire and Mallarm, the plays of Ibsen, and the music of Wagner
and Liszt as examples of "bad" art.

Tolstoy argues that good art must be religious art. He assumes that religious art must
conform to his own religious standpoint, and that his personal form of Christianity is
the only true form of Christianity. His deeply personal but very narrow viewpoint may
be disputed, however, by the argument that good art may not necessarily be religious
art. His argument that aesthetic values must be moral and religious values leads him to
the false conclusion that the ultimate aim of art must be defined by his own moral
viewpoint.

Mark Rothko, an American artist who described

himself as an abstract painter, once said about
art that he was not the kind of person interested
in the relationship of form, color or similars. He
didnt define himself as an abstractionist, but
rather as a person interested only in expressing
basic human emotions such as doom, tragedy,
ecstasy and so on. This was one persons vision of
art, but what do we mean by art today? Why is
defining the concept so difficult? [Links checked
February/10/2017] Art and Emotion
It is widely thought that the capacity of artworks to arouse emotions
in audiences is a perfectly natural and unproblemmatic fact. It just
seems obvious that we can feel sadness or pity for fictional
characters, fear at the view of threatening monsters on the movie
screen, and joy upon listening to upbeat, happy songs. This may be
why so many of us are consumers of art in the first place. Good art,
many of us tend to think, should not leave us cold.

These common thoughts, however natural they are become

problematic once we start to make explicit other common ideas
about both emotion and our relationship with artworks. If some
emotions, such as pity, require that the object of the emotion be
believed to exist, even though it actually doesnt, how would it then
be possible to feel pity for a fictional character that we all know does
not exist? A task of fundamental importance, therefore, is to explain
the possibility of emotion in the context of our dealings with various
kinds of artworks.

How are we motivated to pursue, and find value in, an emotional

engagement with artworks when much of this includes affective
states that we generally count as negative or even painful (fear,
sadness, anger, and so on)? If we would rather avoid feeling these
emotions in real life, how are we to explain cases where we pursue
activities, such as watching films, that we know may arouse similar
feelings? Alternatively, why are so many people eager to listen to
seemingly deeply distressing musical works when they would not
want to feel this way in other contexts? Are most of us guilty of
irrational pleasure in liking what makes us feel bad? Answering
these and related questions is of prime importance if we wish to
vindicate the thought that emotion in response to art is not only a
good thing to have, but also valuable in enabling us to appreciate
artworks.
____________________________________________________________________

Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Emotion in Response to Representational Artworks: The
Paradox of Fiction
1. Denying the Fictional Emotions Condition
2. Denying the Belief Condition
3. Denying the Disbelief Condition: Illusion and Suspension
of Disbelief
b. Emotion in Response to Abstract Artworks: Music
1. Moods, Idiosyncratic Responses and Surrogate Objects
2. Emotions as Responses to Musical Expressiveness
1. Music as Expression of the Composers Emotions
2. Reacting Emotionally to Musics Persona
3. Contour Accounts of Expressiveness and Appropriate
Emotions
ii. Music as Object
b. Art and Negative Emotion: The Paradox of Tragedy
i. Pleasure-Centered Solutions
1. Negligible Pain
1. Conversion
2. Control
3. No Essential Valence
2. Compensation
1. Intellectual Pleasure
2. Meta-Response
3. Catharsis
4. Affective Mixture
ii. Non-Pleasure-Centered Solutions
1. Relief from Boredom and Rich Experience
2. Pluralism about Reasons for Emotional Engagement
b. The Rationality of Audience Emotion
c. Conclusion
d. References and Further Reading
1. Introduction
That emotion is a central part of our dealings with artworks seems
undeniable. Yet, natural ideas about emotion, at least taken
collectively, make it hard to see why such an assumption should be
true. Once we know a bit more about emotion, it isnt clear how we
could feel genuine emotion towards artworks in the first place.
Furthermore, if it were possible to find a plausible theory of emotion
that would vindicate the claim that we experience genuine emotion
towards artworks, questions arise as to why most of us are
motivated to engage in artworks, especially when these tend to
produce negative emotions. How can the emotion we feel towards
artworks be rationally justified? Overall, a proper understanding of
our emotional responses to art should shed light on its value.

Although the general question of what an emotion consists in is

highly debated, it is nonetheless possible to address a list of fairly
uncontroversial general features of emotions that are most relevant
to the present discussion.

Cognitive thesis: Emotions are cognitive states in the sense that

they purport to be about things in the world. This means they
require objects, they have intentionality, and they ascribe certain
properties to them. For instance, fear can be thought to be
attributed to an objects dangerous nature or quality. Given that
emotions are representational states, they are subject to norms of
correctness. A case of fear is inappropriate if the object is not in fact
dangerous or threatening. The nature of the relevant statewhether
it is a judgment, a perception, or something elseis a matter of
debate (see Deonna & Teroni, 2012, for an excellent introduction).
Depending on the answer one gives on this issue, ones views on the
nature of our affective states towards artworks may differ.

Belief requirement: Even though emotions are probably not belief-

states, they may always depend on beliefs for their existence and
justification. One cannot, it seems, grieve over someones death if
one doesnt believe that they actually died. Or one cannot hope that
it will be sunny tomorrow if one believes that the world is going to
end tonight. More relevantly for the rest of the discussion, it may be
difficult to make sense of why someone is genuinely afraid of
something that does not exist.

Phenomenological thesis: Emotions are typically felt. There is

something it is like to be experiencing an emotion; they are
qualitative states). Moreover, emotions are experienced with
various levels of intensity. Sometimes it is possible to be in a
situation where a given emotion is experienced at a high/low level of
intensity where a higher/lower level is considered appropriate,
suggesting that the correctness conditions of emotion should
include a condition to the effect that the emotion is
appropriately proportionate to its object.

Valence thesis: Emotions have valence or hedonic tone. Their

phenomenology is such that some of them are experienced as
negative and some as positive. Some emotion types seem to be
essentially positive or negative. For example, fear, sadness, and pity
are paradigmatic negative emotions, whereas joy and admiration
are paradigmatic positive emotions.

All of these features, taken either individually or in combination,

raise issues with respect to the alleged emotional relationship we
entertain with artworks. Here are a couple of examples.
The cognitive thesis and belief requirement make it difficult to see
how our affective responses to things we believe to be non-existent,
or to strings of meaningless (without representational content)
soundsas in instrumental musiccould be genuine emotions.
Alternatively, they require us to give a cogent account of the objects
of the relevant emotions if these are to count as genuine.
The valence thesis, combined with the plausible claim that
negative emotions are frequently felt in response to artworks, raise
the question of how we can be motivated to pursue an engagement
with artworks that we know are likely to arouse painful experiences
in us. Finally, if the claims that we experience genuine emotions
towards artworks, and that we are not irrational in seeking out
unpleasant experiences, can be made good, the question whether
these emotional responses themselves are rational, justified, or
proportional remains to be answered.

2. Emotion in Response to
Representational Artworks: The Paradox
of Fiction
Artworks can be roughly divided into those that are representational
and those that are non-representational or abstract. Examples of the
former include works of fiction, landscape paintings and pop music
songs. Examples of the latter include expressionist paintings and
works of instrumental or absolute music. Both kinds of artworks are
commonly thought to arouse affective responses in audiences. The
basic question is how best to describe such responses.

Starting with representational artworks, it isnt clear how we can

undergo genuine emotional responses towards things we believe not
to exist in the first place (creating a tension with the belief
requirement above). Taking the case of fiction as a paradigm case,
we seem to come to the following paradox (first formulated by
Radford, 1975):

1. We experience genuine emotions directed at fictional

characters and situations (fictional emotions condition).
2. In order to experience an emotion towards X, one must
believe that X exists (belief requirement).
3. We do not believe that fictional characters and situations exist
(disbelief condition).

Claims (1)-(3) being inconsistent, most theorists have tried to solve

the paradox of fiction by rejecting one or more of these premises.
a. Denying the Fictional Emotions Condition
The fictional emotions condition (claim (1)) can be denied in two
main ways. On the one hand, one could deny that the affective
states we experience in the context of an encounter with fiction are
genuine emotions. On the other hand, accepting that the affective
states in question are genuine emotions, one could deny that such
mental states are in fact directed at fictional characters and
situations.

Regardless of how the debate over the nature of our affective

responses to fiction turns out, one thing is clear: we can
be moved by an encounter with fiction. It is difficult to deny that
works of fiction tend to affect us in some way or other. One solution
to the paradox of fiction is therefore to claim that the relevant
affective states need not be genuine emotions but affective states
of some other kind (for example, Charlton, 1970, 97). Some affective
states or moods (like cheerfulness) and, perhaps, reflex-like
reactions (surprise and shock), do not seem to require existential
beliefs in order to occur and are in fact compatible with the
presence of beliefs with any given content. There is certainly no
contradiction in a state of mind involving both a gloomy mood and
the belief that the characters described in fiction are purely fictional.
An advantage of this view is that it explains why the responses we
have towards fiction are very much emotion-like. Moods, for
instance, are not typically cold mental states but have a
phenomenal character.

The major difficulty with approaches appealing to such seemingly

non-cognitive or non-intentional states is that they only seem to
account for a small part of the full range of affective states we
experience in response to fiction (Levinson, 1997, 23, Neill, 1991,
55). It is quite clear that many of the affective states we have in
response to fiction are experienced as directed towards some object
or other. Ones sadness upon seeing a storys main character die is,
at the very least, felt as directed towards someone, be it the
character himself, a real-world analogue of himself (for instance, a
best friend), or any other known reference. An adequate solution to
the paradox of fiction, therefore, should allow the affective states
one feels in response to fiction to be genuinely intentional.

Another solution that denies that we experience genuine emotions

towards fictional characters is the one given by Kendal Walton
(1978). According to Walton, it is not literally true that we
experience pity for the fictional character Anna Karenina, and it is
not literally true that we experience fear at the view of the
approaching green slime on the movie screen. Rather, we are in
some sense pretending to be experiencing such emotions. It is only
fictionally the case that we feel pity or fear in such contexts. As a
result, the affective states we actually experience are not genuine
emotions, but what Walton calls quasi-emotions. Just as one
makes-believe that the world is infested with heartless zombies
when watching Night of the Living Dead, or that one is reading the
diary of Robinson Crusoe, one only makes-believe that one feels fear
for the survivors, or sadness when Crusoe is having a bad day.
Watching films and reading novels turn out very much like childrens
games where objects are make-believedly taken to be something
else (for example, children pretend to bake cookies using cakes of
mud). In engaging with both fiction and childrens games, for
Walton, we can only be pretending to be experiencing emotion.

Walton does not deny that we are genuinely moved byor

emotionally involved withthe world of fiction; he only denies that
such affective states are of the garden-variety, that they should be
described as genuine states of fear, pity, anger, and so on. This
denial is backed up by two main arguments. First, in contrast with
real-life emotions, quasi-emotions are typically not connected to
behavior. We, indeed, do not get up on the theater stage in order to
warn Romeo that he is about to make a terrible mistake. Second, in
line with the belief requirement, Walton appeals to what seems to
him a principle of commonsense, one which ought not to be
abandoned if there is any reasonable alternative, that fear must be
accompanied by, or must involve, a belief that one is in danger.
(1978, 6-7)

Waltons theory can be attacked on several fronts, but the most

common strategy is to reject one or both of the arguments Walton
gives. In response to the first argument, one could argue that
emotions in general are not necessarily connected to motivation or
behavior. For instance, emotions directed at the past, such as regret,
are not typically associated with any particular sort of behavior. Of
course, emotions can lead to behavior, and many of them include a
motivational component, but it is not clear that such a component is
a defining feature of emotion in general. Moreover, it is important to
note that most works of fiction are composed of representations of
certain events, and do not purport to create the illusion that we are
in direct confrontation with them. The most natural class of real-
world emotions comparable to the relevant affective states, is
therefore, emotions experienced towards representations of real-
world states of affairs (documentaries and newspapers), and not in
contexts of direct confrontation with the relevant objects. Once this
distinctionbetween emotion in response to direct confrontation and
emotion in response to representations of real-world eventsis
made, it becomes apparent that the lack of distinctive behavioral
tendencies in affective states produced by fiction should not count
against the claim that they constitute genuine emotions. Assuming
the claim that it is possible to feel genuine pity, sadness or anger
upon reading or hearing the report of a true story, the relevant
emotions need not, and typically do not, include a motivational
component whose aim is to modify the world in some way. One can
read the story of a Jewish family deported in the 1940s, feel deep
sadness in response to it, yet lack the desires to act, as in sadness
that is evoked in contexts of direct confrontation. (See Matravers,
1998, Ch. 4, for elaboration.)

The second argument, relying on (something like) the belief

requirement, can be rejected by denying the requirement itself. A
reason in favor of rejecting the belief requirement instead of
the fictional emotions conditions is that rejecting the latter leads to
a view with the highly revisionary consequence that it is never the
case that we respond to fictions with genuine emotion. This sort of
strategy will be introduced in Section 2.b.

If one accepts the claim that fiction can trigger genuine emotions in
audiences, but nonetheless does not wish to reject either the belief
requirement or the disbelief condition, one can deny that the
relevant emotions are directed at fictional entities in the first place.
An alternative way to describe our emotions in response to fiction is
to say that, although such emotions are caused by fictional entities,
they are not directed at them. As Gregory Currie summarizes what is
sometimes called the counterpart theory (defended in, for
instance, Weston, 1975 and Paskins, 1977),

we experience genuine emotions when we encounter fiction, but

their relation to the story is causal rather than intentional; the story
provokes thoughts about real people and situations, and these are
the intentional objects of our emotions. (1990, 188)

Given that the objects of the relevant emotionsparticular people

and situations, types of people and situations, the fictional work
itself, certain real-world properties inspired by the fictional
characters, as well as real human potentialities (Mannison,
1985)both exist and are believed to exist, the view satisfies the
belief requirement. In addition, the view is compatible with the
plausible claim that we do not believe in the existence of fictional
characters and situations (that is, the disbelief condition). Appealing
to surrogate objects is in fact a way to do justice to it.

Despite its elegance and simplicity, this solution to the paradox of

fiction does not find a lot of proponents. It manages to
capture some of the affective states, but not all. More specifically,
the example of appealing to objectless affective states, fails to
capture those affective states that are experienced as directed at
the fictional characters and situations themselves. To many
philosophers, it is simply a datum of the phenomenology of our
responses to fiction that these are sometimes directed at the
characters and situations themselves. It is precisely these responses
that initially called for explanation.
"For we do not really weep for the pain that a real person might
suffer, says Colin Radford, and which real persons have suffered,
when we weep for Anna Karenina, even if we should not be moved
by her story if it were not of that sort. We weep for her." (Radford,
1975, 75) An adequate theory of our emotional responses to fiction
that appeals to surrogate objects, as a result, owes us an account of
why we may be mistaken in thinking otherwise.

b. Denying the Belief Condition

The rejection of the claim that we can respond to fictional characters
and situations with genuine emotions, and that such emotions can
be genuinely directed at the latter, seems to clash with a rather
stable commitment of commonsense. In recent years, the dominant
approach has rather been to reject the belief requirement (claim
(2)).

One reason why one might deny that the affective states we have in
response to fiction are genuine emotions is an acceptance, explicit
or implicit, of a certain theory of emotion. According to the so-called
cognitive theory of emotion (sometimes called judgmentalism),
an emotion necessarily involves the belief or judgment that the
object of the emotion instantiates a certain evaluative property (see
examples in Lyons, 1980. Solomon, 1993). In this view, an episode of
fear would necessarily involve the belief or judgment that one is in
danger. This resembles the principle of commonsense that Walton
speaks of when he claims that fear must be accompanied by, or
must involve, a belief that one is in danger (1978, 6-7). If emotions
are, or necessarily involve, evaluative beliefs about the actual, it is
no wonder that they require existential beliefs. The belief that a
given big dog constitutes a threat, for instance, seems to entail the
belief that the dog exists. Rejecting the cognitive theory, as a result,
may seem to be a way to cast doubt on the belief requirement.

The cognitive theory of emotion is widely rejected for well-known

reasons. One of them is the counterintuitive consequence that one
would be guilty of a radical form of irrationality every time ones
emotions turn out to conflict with ones judgments, as in cases of
phobic fears (Tappolet, 2000, Dring, 2009). Another reason to reject
the cognitive theory is that it may lead to the denial that human
infants and non-human animals cannot experience emotions, since
they plausibly lack the necessary level of cognitive sophistication
(Deigh, 1994). Ultimately, many people seem to think, the theory is
too intellectualist to be plausible (Goldie, 2000, Robinson, 2005).

It is one thing to reject the cognitive theory of emotion, however,

quite another to reject the belief requirement. Although the two
views are closely related and are often held together (since the
cognitive theory implies the belief requirement, at least understood
as a requirement of rationalitysee below), the falsity of the
cognitive theory does not entail the falsity of the belief requirement.
What the latter says is that, no matter how an emotion is to be
ultimately defined, the having of one requires that the subject
believe that its object exists. As Levinson says,

The sticking point of the paradox of fiction is the dimension of

existence and nonexistence, as this connects to the cognitive
characterization that emotions of the sort in question minimally
require. When we view or conceive an object as having such and
such properties, whether or not we strictly believe that it does, we
must, on pain of incoherence, be taking said object to exist or
be regarding it as existence. For nothing can coherently be viewed
or conceived as having properties without at the same time being
treated as existent. (1997, 24-25)
It is a mistake, therefore, to think that a simple rejection of the
cognitive theory of emotion can solve the paradox of fiction. What
one must do is confront the belief requirement directly.

The main way to challenge the belief requirement is to claim that,

although our emotional responses to events in the world require the
presence of some cognitive states, such states need not be beliefs.
On such a view, sometimes called the thought theory (Lamarque,
1981, Carroll, 1990), one need not believe that an object O exists in
order to be afraid of it; rather, one must at least entertain the
thought that O exists (Carroll, 1990, 80), or imagine what O would
be like if it existed (Novitz, 1980), or alieve O being a certain way
(see Gendler, 2008, for the distinction between alief and belief). We
surely are capable of responding emotionally as a result of thought
processes that fall short of belief, as when we are standing near a
precipice and entertaining the thought that we may fall over
(Carroll, 1990, 80. Robinson, 2005).

Thoughts, according to Lamarque and Carroll, can generate genuine

emotions. On their view, the vivid imagining of ones lovers death
can produce genuine sadness. It is important, however, to note that
what the emotion is aboutits intentional objectis not the thought
itself, but what the thought is about (its content). In the case just
given, ones sadness is about ones lovers death, and not about the
thought that ones lover may die. Here, as in many everyday
instances of emotion, the cause of ones emotion need not coincide
with its object, and the object of ones emotion need not exist. As a
result, the view preserves the claim that we can have genuine
emotions directed towards fictional characters and situations.

Despite the fact that the thought theory (and its cognatesfor
example, Gendlers view) enjoys a great deal of plausibility, in that it
meshes quite well with recent orthodoxy in both the philosophy and
the psychology of emotion in its claim that existential beliefs are not
necessary for emotion in general (for a review, see Deonna & Teroni,
2012). It nonetheless appears to naturally lead to the claim that
there is something utterly irrational, unreasonable, or otherwise
wrong, in feeling fear, pity, joy, grief, and so on, both in response to
mere thoughts, and for things that we know not to exist. If feeling
pity for a fictional character is like feeling fear while imagining the
possible crash of the plane one is taking (assuming flying the plane
is a perfectly safe activity and one knows it), it becomes hard to see
how one can be said to be rational in engaging emotionally with
fiction, perhaps even to see where the value of doing so could lie.
See Section 5 below.

When first presenting the paradox of fiction, Colin Radford decided

to accept all the three premises of the alleged paradox and declared
us irrational in being moved by fiction. If one interprets the
paradox as a logical paradox, that is as one in which the claims
cannot all be true, then one would be led to the unpalatable thought
that the world in itself includes some form of incoherence (Yanal,
1994). A more reasonable way to understand Radfords decision to
accept the three premises of the paradox, and in turn to declare us
irrational, is to say that, as he understands them, they are not really
inconsistent (they in fact can all be true). What interests Radford
may not be so much how it is possible for audiences to feel
emotions in response to fiction (although he must presuppose an
answer to that question) than how it is possible for us to feel such
emotions and be rational in doing so. An alternative way to read
the belief requirement is, therefore, as a norm of rationality (Joyce,
2000). On such a reading, in order for an emotion to be fully
appropriate or rational, it is necessary that the subject believe that
the emotions object exists. A childs fear of monsters in his bed at
night may be irrational if the child does not believe that monsters in
fact exist. Our emotional responses to fiction, although genuine,
may be akin to such irrational fears of unreal entities.

It remains to be seen whether the belief requirement formulated as

a norm of rationality (of a sort to be elucidated) is acceptable in the
context of emotion in general, and in the context of emotion in
response to artworks in particular. (See Section 5 below for further
details.)

c. Denying the Disbelief Condition: Illusion

and Suspension of Disbelief
Among all the strategies that have been adopted in response to the
paradox of fiction, the least popular is the one that rejects
the disbelief condition. There are two main ways to reject this
condition.

The first way to reject the disbelief condition is to claim that, while
watching films and reading novels, we are in some way under the
illusion that the characters and situations depicted in them are real
and we willfully suspend our disbelief in their existence (Coleridge,
1817), or simply forget, temporarily, that they do not exist.

The main problem with this solution is the notable behavioral

differences between real-world responses and responses to fiction. If
we were really suspending our disbelief we would behave differently
than we actually do in our dealings with fictions. Another problem is
the notion that we can suspend our disbelief at will in the context of
fiction, seems to presuppose a capacity of voluntary control over our
beliefs in the face of opposing evidence - a claim that surely needs a
proper defense. See Doxastic Voluntarism, and Carroll, 1990, Ch.2,
for further discussion. Finally, it may be partly due to the fact that
we are aware that we are dealing with fiction that we can find
pleasure, or some worth, in experiencing negative emotions towards
fictional entities in the first place. (See section on Art and Negative
Emotion: The Paradox of Tragedy.)

Currie (1990, 10) provides an alternative understanding of the

notion of willful suspension of disbelief whereby it is occurrent, as
opposed to dispositional disbelief that should be suppressed. What
suspension of disbelief requires, for Currie, is merely that one, while
engaged in a work of fiction, does not attend to the fact that the
story is literally false. On such a view, a proper engagement with
fictional stories, while allowing one to believe at some level that
these stories are non-actual requires that one not bring this belief to
consciousness. This solution, however, remains rather sketchy and
may need to be supplemented with further details about the
workings of the relevant mechanism. See Todd, forthcoming, for a
proposal (in particular for the notion of bracketed beliefs).

The second way to reject the disbelief condition is by arguing that in

some sense we do actually believe what the relevant stories tell us
(rather than merely suspend our disbelief in the reality of their
content), and therefore that the characters at play in them exist in
some way. A plausible way to do so is to say that beliefs need not be
directed at propositions about the actual and sometimes can be
directed at propositions about what is fictionally the case. For
instance, there does not seem to be anything wrong with the
utterance I believe that Sherlock Holmes lives in London, and with
the possibility of a genuine disagreement between the speaker and
someone who believes that Holmes lives in Manchester. The fact
that the relevant states are about a fictional entity does not give us
a reason to deny them the status of beliefs. According to Alex Neill
(1993), many of the types of emotion (pity, for example) we
experience in response to fiction, require the presence of certain
beliefs while leaving open the ontological status (actual vs. non-
actual) of the entities involved in its content. On this account, what
matters for pity, for instance, is not that a given character is
believed to have actually existed, but that she is having a miserable
time (in the fiction).

Whether an appeal to belief (as opposed to an appeal to make-

beliefs, imaginings, attention mechanisms, and so on.) is the right
way to capture the phenomenon is open for debate. Still, this
solution not only seems to accommodate some of our intuitions, but
also prompts us to further investigate the nature of the kinds of
belief, if any, found in the context of an engagement with works of
fiction. See Suits (2006) for further discussion.
3. Emotion in Response to Abstract
Artworks: Music
Representational artworks are not the only ones capable of eliciting
affective states in audiences; non-representational artworks can do
so, too. One surely can be moved by a Beethovens Fifth
Symphony or a Jackson Pollocks No.5, 1948. A problem analogous
to the problem of fiction can however be found in the case of
abstract art. How can it be the case that we are moved by strings of
sounds, or configurations of colors, when such entities do not
represent anything, strictly speaking? Here, the question of what is
the object of the relevant emotions is even more pressing than for
fiction, as in this case there seems to be no characters and
situations for an emotion to be about. Focusing on the case of
(instrumental or absolute) music, two main questions should
therefore be addressed. First, how should we classify our affective
responses to music? Second, if such affective responses can be
genuine emotions, what are their objects?

a. Moods, Idiosyncratic Responses and

Surrogate Objects
As in the case of fiction, there are affective responses to music that
may not pose any substantial philosophical problem. Such responses
include seemingly non-cognitive or non-intentional states such as
moods and feelings. Since moods are not directed at anything in
particular, and can be triggered by a variety of things, including
events, thoughts, and even certain chemical substances (such as
caffeine), they do not constitute a problem in the context of our
dealings with musical works. However, can genuine emotions be
experienced in response to music? Intuitively, the answer is of
course. The problem is precisely what kinds of emotion these can
be and towards what they can be directed.
Some cases of genuine emotion in response to music that do not
seem to be philosophically significant, moreover, are those emotions
that we experience in response to music which can be explained by
idiosyncratic facts about the subject. This is what Peter Kivy calls the
our-song phenomenon (Kivy, 1999, 4). A piece of music, for
instance, may bring to one a host of memories that produce
sadness. Here, as elsewhere, the intentional object of the emotion
turns out not to be the music itself but what the memories are about
(a lost love, say). Such cases are not philosophically puzzling,
therefore, because they involve emotions whose object is not (or at
least not exclusively) the music or the musics properties.

Alternatively, one may fear that the loudness of a performance of

Vivaldis Four Seasons might cause severe auditory damage. In such
a case, although the music is the object of the emotion, the emotion
is not in any way aesthetically relevant. It is not a response that is
made appropriate by the musics aesthetic properties. Furthermore,
it is not a response that everyone is expected to experience in
response to Vivaldis piece, as opposed to the particular
performance of it in a specific context. (By analogy, one may be
angry at the sight of a stain on the frame of the Mona Lisa; this,
however, does not make anger an appropriate response to the
painting as an object of aesthetic appraisal.)

What we need to know is whether there are cases of emotion that

can claim to be aesthetically relevant in this intuitive way.

b. Emotions as Responses to Musical

Expressiveness
It is commonly thought that musical works can be sad, happy,
melancholy, perhaps even angry. In short, music appears capable
of expressing, or being expressive of, emotions. One line of thought
is that, just as we can respond to human expressions of emotion
with genuine emotions, we can respond to musics expressive
properties with genuine emotions. In the case of human expressions
of emotion, one can for instance react to someones sadness with
genuine sadness, pity, or anger, the person (or the persons
distress) being the intentional object of ones emotion. Likewise, if
music can express sadness, one may respond to it by being sad
(Davies, 1994, 279), something that seems to accord with common
experience. The problem, of course, is in what sense music can be
said to express emotion in a way that would cause appropriate
corresponding emotions in audiences. (The addition of the word
appropriate here is important, as one could agree that the relevant
properties sometimes cause emotionjust as any (concrete) object
can happen to cause emotionbut nonetheless consider them
irrelevant to a proper appreciation of the work. For the view that all
emotion elicited by musical works is pure distraction, see Zangwill,
2004.)

Of course, it is one thing to ask what musical expressiveness

consists in; it is another thing to wonder about the nature of our
affective response to musical works. One question addresses what
makes it the case that a piece of music can be said to be sad,
joyful or melancholy, the other asks what makes it the case
that we can feel emotions, if any, in response to a piece of music. As
a result, nothing prevents one from answering these questions
separately. Nevertheless, the various answers one might give to the
question about musical expressiveness plausibly can have
implications regarding the nature and appropriateness of our
emotional responses to musics expressive properties. If, for
instance, the answer we give is that music can express emotions in
roughly the same way humans do, then we are likely to count
experiences of sadness in response to sad music as appropriate. If,
by contrast, we take the answer to be that music is expressive in an
analogous way colors and masks can be expressive, we are likely to
consider the affective states the relevant features tend to trigger
either inappropriate (when feeling sadness directed at a works
sadness) or of a sort that we dont typically find in our responses to
paradigmatic expression of human emotion.
Lets call the claim according to which it is appropriate to react
emotionally to musics expressive properties in an analogous way it
is appropriate to react emotionally to the expression of other
peoples emotions, the expression-emotion link thesis (E), and the
sorts of responses we typically (and appropriately) experience in
response to the expression of human emotionssuch as pity,
sadness, compassion, or sympathy when someone is in a state of
distressempathetic emotions. Accounts of musical expressiveness
divide into those that naturally lead to the acceptance of (E) and
those that naturally lead to its rejection (and perhaps to the denial
that empathetic emotions are ever really felt in the context of an
engagement with musical works).

i. Music as Expression of the Composers

Emotions
The most obvious way to do justice to the thought that musics
expressiveness can appropriately arouse in its audience emotions
that are analogous to those one would feel in response to a real
person expressing her emotions is to say that music itself is a
medium by which human emotions can express themselves. Music,
on one such view, can express the emotions of the composer. So, if
when we listen to music we listen to what we take to be the direct
expression of the emotions of some real human being, then the
usual emotions we can feel towards someone expressing emotion
through facial expression, gestures, voice, and so on, are emotions
we can feel in response to music. One problematic feature of this
view is the highly robust link it makes between the mental states of
the artist and the expressive properties of the music he or she
produces. Little reflection suggests that it is just not true that
whenever a musical work is cheerful, its composer was cheerful
when composing it; a sad composer could have created the work
just as well. Moreover, the view does not seem to do justice to our
experience of musical works, as we typically do not, and need not,
construe them as expressions of human emotion in order to be
moved by them; our experience of musical works does not typically
go beyond the sounds themselves, and probably not to the artist
who produced them.

ii. Reacting Emotionally to Musics Persona

One way to preserve the attractive thought that music can
genuinely express emotions, and therefore that it may sometimes
be appropriate to respond to it with empathetic emotions, is to claim
that music can express emotion, not by virtue of it being produced
by an artist experiencing emotion, but imagined as something or
someone that expresses emotion. According to Jerrold Levinson
(1990), when we listen to music that is expressive of emotion, we
hear it as though someonewhat he calls the musics
personawere expressing the emotion of the music. Of course, the
persona is not something that is or ought to be imagined in great
detail; for instance, there is no need to attribute any specific
physical characteristics to it. All that is needed is that something
very much human-like be imagined as expressing human-like
emotions. Now, if Levinson is right in claiming that musics
expressive properties are to be explained by an appeal to a persona
that we imagine to be in the music, then there is less mystery in the
possibility for audiences to experience genuine emotions in
response to these properties. At the very least, there may be here
as much mystery as in our ability to experience genuine emotions in
response to the expression of emotion by fictional characters, and
the solution one gives to the paradox of fiction may as a result be
expandable so as to include the case of music. See Kivy, 2002, 116-
117, for doubts about this strategy.

iii. Contour Accounts of Expressiveness and

Appropriate Emotions
Regardless of the appeal of its conclusions, the persona theory relies
on a psychological mechanismimagining hearing a persona in the
musicwhose nature may need to be further clarified (see Davies,
1997, for problems for the persona account). An account of musics
expressive properties that posits no seemingly mysterious
mechanism, and therefore that may seem less controversial, is what
is sometimes called the contour or resemblance theory (examples
can be found in Davies, 1994, Kivy, 1989). According to this view,
music can be expressive of emotion in virtue
of resembling characteristic expressions of human emotion, a
resemblance that we seem pretty good at picking out. A heavy,
slow-paced piece of music may, for instance, resemble the way a
sad, depressed person would walk and behave, and it may be why
we are tempted to call it sad or depressing in the first place.
Musical works, on such a view, are analogous to colors, masks, and
other things that we may call happy, sad, and so on, on the basis
of their perceptible properties. A happy song is similar to a smiling
mask in that they both resemble in some way characteristic
behavioral expressions of human emotion.

The contour theorist does not claim that music genuinely expresses
emotion in the way that paradigmatically humans do (that is, by first
experiencing an emotion, and then expressing it); rather, she claims
that music can resemble expressions of human emotion, just as
certain other objects can. Given that musical expressiveness is, on
this view, different from paradigmatic human expression, we are led
to conclude one of two claims: either the emotions we typically
experience in response to musics expressive properties are
generally not of the same sort as the emotions we typically
experience in response to other peoples expressions of emotion, or,
whenever they are, they are inappropriate. The former claim is a
descriptive claim about the nature of our emotional responses to
musics expressive properties; the latter claim is a normative claim
about the sorts of responses musics expressive properties require, if
any. We will consider the descriptive claim in the next section.

Why does the contour theory naturally lead to the normative claim?
The answer is that, just as it would be inappropriate to feel
empathetic emotions in response to the sadness of a mask or the
cheerfulness of a color, it would be inappropriate to feel such
emotions in response to the sadness, or the cheerfulness, of a piece
of music. Unless we believe that what one is sad about when looking
at a mask is not really the mask, we should be puzzled by ones
response, for, after all, nobody is (actually or fictionally) sad. (Of
course, the mask may produce certain moods in one; this, however,
would not constitute a problem, as we have seen.) The sadness, as a
result, would count as an inappropriate response to its object.

Something similar may hold in the music case. Although there may
be cases where sadness is an appropriate response to a musical
works sadness (for idiosyncratic reasons), this may not be a
response that is aesthetically appropriate, that is, appropriate given
the works aesthetic properties. No matter how often we respond
emotionally to musics expressive properties, these ultimately may
count as mere distractions (Zangwill, 2004).

The plausibility of the contour account remains to be assessed. See

Robinson, 2005, Ch. 10, for a critique. See also Neill, 1995, for the
possibility of a positive role for feelings in attaining a deeper
understanding of musics expressiveness.

c. Music as Object
According to Peter Kivy (1990, 1999), there is an obvious object that
can produce genuine emotions in audiences, namely
the music itself. On his view, in addition to moods (with
qualificationssee Kivy, 2006) and idiosyncratic emotions (the our-
song phenomenon), music is capable of eliciting emotions in
audiences that are both genuine (not quasi-emotions),
aesthetically appropriate, and of the non-empathetic sort. When one
is deeply moved by a musical work, one may be moved by its
beauty, complexity, subtlety, grace, and any other properties
predicated by the work (including its expressive properties,
construed in terms of the contour account). According to Kivy, these
emotions, which can collectively be put under the label being
moved, are the only ones that count as appropriate in the relevant
way. Moreover, they are not the empathetic responses that were
put forward in the aforementioned accounts. When we are moved by
sad music, what may move us is how beautifully, or gracefully the
music is expressive of sadness, rather than by an alleged persona
we may pity. This allows Kivy to explain why we can (rightly) fail to
be moved by a musical work that is surely expressive of some
emotion but is at the same time mediocre, a phenomenon that is left
unexplained on alternative accounts (Kivy, 1999, 12). In addition,
the account explains how music can be moving even when it lacks
expressive properties altogether (ibid.).

According to Kivy, we are simply mistaken when thinking that

whenever we experience a genuine emotion in response to a
musical work, this emotion is of the same sort as the emotions we
would feel in response to the expression of emotion in other people.
It is simply not true, on his account, that musics sadness produces
in audiences a state of sadness (or other empathetic emotions)
whose intentional object is its expressive property (or the entity, real
or imagined, that allegedly produced it). What they feel instead is an
emotion that, although directed at the musics sadness, should not
be characterized as sadness but instead as exhilaration, wonder,
awe, enthusiasm, and other non-empathetic emotions. Even if the
emotion is felt in response to musics sadness, and may on occasion
even feel like garden-variety empathetic emotions, Kivy states that
first appearances may be deceptive.

Whether Kivys solution to the original problem (including his

rejection of (E)), and its accompanying error theory, are adequate, is
a matter of significant debate. (In any case, all parties may agree
that it adequately captures some emotions that we can confidently
count as appropriate responses to music.)
4. Art and Negative Emotion: The
Paradox of Tragedy
Lets assume that we regularly experience genuine emotions in
response to fictional characters and situations, and that among the
emotions we commonly experience are paradigmatic negative
emotions. (If one thinks that music can arouse such emotions as
well, the following problem is a problem about music, too.) Now, to
the extent that many of us are inclined to regularly pursue an
engagement with works of fiction, and thereby things that tend to
produce negative emotions in audiences, we have a problem in
explaining how many of us could be motivated in pursuing activities
that elicit in us such unpleasant states.

The paradox of tragedy (called the paradox of horror in the specific

context of horrorCarroll, 1990) arises when the three following
theses are held simultaneously:

1. We commonly do not pursue activities that elicit negative

emotions.
2. We often have negative emotions in response to fictional
works.
3. We commonly pursue an engagement with fictional works that
we know will elicit negative emotions.

Notice that the so-called paradox is not a formal paradox. Unless

one defends a strong form of motivational hedonismnamely, the
view that all we are motivated to pursue is pleasure and nothing
else; see Hedonismthe fact that many of us pursue activities that
produce painful experiences is not logically problematic. Rather, the
problem is that of explaining why many of us are so eager to seek
out an engagement with works of fiction when they know it will
result in negative emotions and negative emotions are things they
generally wish to avoid (all other things being equal). Alternatively,
there is a problem in explaining the presence of the relevant
motivation in the context of fiction when such motivation is arguably
lacking in everyday life.

The solutions to the paradox of tragedy can be divided into two

broad classes: those that appeal to pleasure in solving the paradox
and those that appeal to entities other than pleasure.

a. Pleasure-Centered Solutions
A common way to characterize the paradox of tragedy is by asking
how we can derive pleasure from artworks that tend to
elicit unpleasant states in its audience. One solution is to say that
the pain that may result from an engagement with fictional works is
relatively insignificant or negligible. Another solution is to say that,
although the pain that may result in such an engagement can be
significant, it is nonetheless compensated by pleasure derived from
either the work or some other source.

i. Negligible Pain
1. Conversion

Various mechanisms have been postulated in the history of

philosophy in order to explain how we can sometimes derive
pleasure from activities, such as watching tragedies and horror
films, that tend to elicit unpleasant experiences in audiences. David
Hume provides one such mechanism in his famous essay Of
Tragedy. According to Hume, unpleasant emotional experiences are
converted into pleasant ones in response to positive aesthetic
properties of the work such as the eloquence with which the events
of the narrative are depicted. Ones overall initially unpleasant
emotional state is thereby converted into a pleasant emotional state
thanks to the predominance of a positive emotion.

One of the main problems with this proposal is the absence of a

clear account of the mechanism by which such conversion is made
(Feagin, 1983, 95). Presumably, part of the initial overall
experiencethe painis removed and replaced by another partthe
pleasure. This, however, demands explanation as to how such an
operation can be performed. If the operation is not that there is first
a negative emotion and thereafter a positive emotion that somehow
compensates for the firsts unpleasantness (which would make
Humes view a variant of the compensation solution; see below),
then what is it precisely?

Another problem with the conversion theory is that it seems to fail

to allow for cases where people are motivated to engage with works
of fiction that they know will on the whole lead to more pain than
pleasure, but that may still provide them with some valuable
experience (Smuts, 2007, 64). (See section on Non-Pleasure-
Centered Solutions below.)

2. Control

Humes theory is meant to account for the possibility of deriving

pleasure from an engagement with fictional works eliciting negative
emotions. This view assumes that we do tend to experience
unpleasant emotions in response to fiction; it is just that the
unpleasant part of the emotions is modified in the course of the
engagement so as to make the overall experience a pleasant one.

An alternative way to view our engagement with works of fiction is

as in fact rarely involving any significantly unpleasant states in the
first place. On a recent family of solutions, it is a fact of life that we
are able to enjoy, under certain conditions, putative negative
emotions. According to one version of this solution, the control
theory (Eaton, 1982, Morreall, 1985), the relevant conditions are
those where we enjoy some suitable degree of control over the
situation to which we are attending. The thought is that, whenever
we think that the situation is one over which we can have a fair
degree of control, the negative emotions that we may feel in
response to it would be felt as less painful than they would
otherwise be. For instance, the fear that a professional mountain
climber, a skydiver, a roller-coaster user, or a horror film lover, may
feel, may be painful to such an insignificant extent that it may turn
out to be enjoyable. The reason why the relevant experiences are
enjoyable, on this view, is that the subjects are confident that they
can handle the situation appropriately. In the fictional case, one can
certainly leave the movie theater, or close the book, at any time,
and therefore stop being confronted with the work, whenever it
becomes unbearable (for example, when it depicts extreme
violence).

One worry with the present solution is that, in its current form at
least, it still leaves it rather mysterious why we are able to derive
pleasure from even mildly unpleasant affective states. The control
theorist does not deny that the relevant emotions are to some
degree unpleasant. The problem is that she fails to provide us with
an account as to why we would want to have such experiences in
the first place. Whats so enjoyable about feeling a little pain? As
Aaron Smuts puts it, If we feel any pain at all, then the question of
why we desire such experiences, why we seek out painful art, is still
open. (Smuts, 2007, 66)

Another worry is that the view may not have the resources to
explain why some people, and not others, pursue activities that tend
to elicit unpleasant experiences, when everyone enjoys the relevant
control (Gaut, 1993, 338). The fact that people have some control
over their responses may well be a prerequisite for the possibility of
finding pleasure in them, but it does not seem to explain why such
pleasure is to be had in the first place. As alternatively put, although
confidence that one will have the capacity to exercise some degree
of control may be necessary in order to have the relevant
motivation, it is surely insufficient. The control theory therefore
requires further elaboration.
3. No Essential Valence

One way to solve the paradox of tragedy by relying on the idea that
we can enjoy negative emotions is by denying an assumption that
was made when we initially posed the problem, namely that the
negative emotions we feel in response to fiction are necessarily
unpleasant states (Walton, 1990, Neill, 1993). One problem with
control theories, we saw, is that they fail to explain why we should
even enjoy mild instances of pain. The present solution, by contrast,
does not claim that the emotions we experience involve any such
pain. More generally, the view denies that emotion as such
essentially involves valence (as in the valence thesis above).
According to Kendall Walton and Alex Neill, when responding
emotionally to an undesirable situation, we may confuse the
undesirability of the situation with the perceived nature of the
emotion, thereby thinking that it is the emotion that is unpleasant.
What is clearly disagreeable, Walton says, what we regret, are
the things we are sorrowful about the loss of an opportunity, the
death of a friendnot the feeling or experience of sorrow itself.
(Walton, 1990, 257) Neill goes a step further, making the claim that
what we actually mean when we say that an emotion is painful or
unpleasant, is that an emotion in these terms is in fact attributing
the relevant properties (painfulness, unpleasantness, and so on) to
the situations themselves (Neill, 1992, 62).

The major problem for such a view, of course, is that it seems to

radically run counter to common sense in holding that emotions do
not in themselves feel good or bad. There certainly appears to be a
fairly robust conceptual connection between certain emotion types
and felt qualities that can be described as pleasure and pain.
Perhaps, however, one could maintain that, although such a
conceptual connection exists, it is not so strong as to rule out
exceptions. For such a possibility, see Gaut, 1993.
ii. Compensation
The second class of solutions that appeal to pleasure, in solving the
paradox of tragedy, take the pain involved in our engagement with
fiction to be genuine, sometimes even significant, but take this pain
to be compensated by some pleasure experienced in response to
either the work or some other source.

1. Intellectual Pleasure

One general solution to the paradox of tragedy is to say that,

although works of fiction can surely elicit unpleasant states in
audiences, they can also elicit pleasant ones. An explanation for why
we are motivated to engage with such works is that they usually
elicit states that are on the whole more pleasant than unpleasant.

A version of this solution is the one defended by Noel Carroll in his

book on horror (Carroll, 1990). Carroll argues that monsters, such as
vampires and werewolves, often violate our categorial schemes. In
doing so, they unsurprisingly can look threatening, scary, and
disgusting, explaining in turn why we can experience emotions such
as fear and disgust towards them. However, in challenging our
categorial schemes, monsters can also trigger our curiosity.
Monsters are indeed things that fascinate us. According to Carroll,
the pleasure that is derived from our getting to know more about
them can compensate for the unpleasant states we may initially
experience, particularly when the narration is such as to arouse our
curiosity. The pain is for Carroll the price to be paid for the pleasure
of [the monsters] disclosure (1990, 184).

One problem with Carrolls view is that not all horror stories involve
monsters, that is, things that challenge our categorial schemes in
the way that werewolves do. Psychopaths and serial killers, for
instance, do not seem to be monsters in this sense; they are, as
Berys Gaut says, instances of an all-too-real phenomenon (Gaut,
1993, 334). Carroll, however, could give up his appeal to monsters
in particular, and claim rather that the relevant characters in the
horror genre have the ability to elicit our curiosity and the resulting
intellectual pleasures.

A more serious problem is that Carrolls explanation does not seem

to be adequate when we go beyond the particular case of horror.
The fact that we enjoy watching drama films does not seem to be
explainable solely in terms of our curiosity and fascination for odd
characters. One possible response to this worry is that intellectual
pleasures need not be derived from the satisfaction of our curiosity,
and that such pleasures can rather be derived from a variety of
sources, including things that do not elicit our curiosity. One problem
with this solution would be why the relevant pleasures should be
exclusively intellectual, rather than (say) both intellectual and
affective. (See Affective Mixture.) In addition, the proponent of this
solution may need to motivate the thought that it is in virtue of the
pleasures they produce that the relevant intellectual states (such as
learning about the characters) are valuable to us, as opposed to the
fact that such states are intrinsically valuable. Why should it be the
pleasure that one has as a result of learning about the personality of
a works characters that is the primary motivating factor in our
engaging with fiction? Why can it not be the fact that one, say, is
able to get a new perspective on what it is to be human, regardless
of whether the painful experiences that one may undergo are
compensated by pleasant ones? (See Non-Pleasure-Centered
Solutions.)

2. Meta-Response

Susan Feagin (1983), another proponent of the compensatory

solution, argues that we are motivated to engage with works of
fiction that elicit negative emotions, not because the works
themselves elicit pleasant experiences in greater proportion, but
because of certain responses that we have towards the negative
emotions themselves. In a nutshell, for Feagin, an awareness of the
fact that we are the kind of people to experience, for instance, pity
for Anna Karenina, results in a pleasurable state that compensates
for the painful emotions that we have. It feels good, on this view, to
realize that we care about the right things.

This solution suffers from a number of problems. First, it does not

appear to be applicable to all the relevant cases, such as horror
fictions. Many works of horror fiction certainly do not involve
sympathetic emotions such as pity, and involve rather fear and
disgust. Furthermore, it doesnt seem right to say that, when we
experience fear and disgust in response to horror, we enjoy the fact
that we are the kind of people to feel fear and disgust.

A second problem with Feagins view concerns its appeal to the

notion of a meta-response. One thing to notice is that it does not sit
well with the phenomenology of our engagement with many fictions.
When watching a movie involving a serial killer, our attention is
mostly focused on the events depicted, and rarely on ourselves;
when we feel sad for an innocent character that has been killed, we
do not seem to be sad for her and enjoy being the kind of person
who can be sad for innocent people who have been murdered. Such
a thought, it seems, rarely occurs to us. Of course, such self-
congratulatory thoughts may occur, and may sometimes contribute
to ones overall enjoyment of the work, but they dont seem
necessary for it to be the case that one enjoys fictional works that
elicit unpleasant experiences.

3. Catharsis

On one popular understanding of Aristotles famous theory of

catharsis (see Lucas, 1928), the major motivation behind our desire
to watch tragedy is that, by experiencing negative emotions, we are
in turn able to expel them (by letting them go away), which
somehow provides us with a pleasurable state. It is not, on such a
view, the negative emotions that are pleasurable, but the fact that,
after having been experienced, they are purged.
One issue this solution fails to address is that the pleasure that one
derives from the experience of an unpleasant state terminated (as
when one stops having a toothache after taking medicine)
compensates for the unpleasantness of the state one was initially in.
Moreover, the proponent of the catharsis solution must tell us why
the relief that one gets from the extinction of the painful
experiences is what typically motivates us in pursuing an
engagement with the relevant fictional works. The fact that one will
suffer for some time but then be healed in a way that is very
pleasant hardly sounds like a reason for one to accept to undergo
the suffering in the first place. (For further reading, see Smuts,
2009, 50-51.)

Perhaps Aristotle meant to capture a different phenomenon by

appealing to the notion of purgation, however. For instance, he could
have taken purgation to involve emotions that people unconsciously
had before engaging with the work, and that the work would help
express themselves, leading to a pleasurable release of some inner
tension. Despite its possible intuitive appeal, such a solution
remains to be developed in a clear and convincing way.
(See Aristotle: Poetics for further details.)

4. Affective Mixture

The final pleasure-centered compensatory view that is worth

mentioning holds that it does not really matter what kind of
experience is supposed to compensate for the pain involved in the
negative emotions; what is important is that there be some such
experience. For instance, the negative emotions that we feel in
response to a drama may be compensated by the joy we experience
in realizing that it has a happy ending. Relief may often play a role
as well, as when we are relieved that the main character is not going
to die after all, something we were afraid would happen throughout
the movie or novel.
The view, moreover, does not deny that something like the
purgation of certain negative emotions may sometimes elicit
pleasurable states. As Patricia Greenspan, a defender of this view,
says, it is not the release of fear that is pleasurable, at least in
immediate terms, but that fact that one is soon released from it.
(1988, 32) However, the view denies that this is the only way painful
states can be compensated. Such states can be compensated by
any positive affective state that is called for by the work: joy, relief,
a pleasant sense of immunity, the pleasure of having had a
meaningful experience, admiration, and perhaps even self-
congratulatory meta-responses. What matters, on this view, is the
fact that some pleasant state or other is sufficiently strong to
compensate for any unpleasant state the audience may otherwise
have.

One advantage of the view is that it readily explains why people

sometimes have to close the book theyre reading, or leave the
movie theater: they have reached a point where the unpleasant
emotions they experience have attained such a level of intensity
that they dont think the work could in any way compensate for
them. In addition, the account has a straightforward explanation of
why some of us do not like genres, such as horror, that tend to elicit
negative emotions in audiences: the positive experiences they have,
if any, do not typically compensate for the negative ones.

Another advantage of the present account is its ability to be applied

to a wide range of cases, from horror and tragedy to drama and
soap opera. Given that it allows a variety of mental states to play
the compensatory role, it is less vulnerable to counter-examples.

The main problem with such a view, as with all pleasure-centered

views, is simply that not all works of fiction that we are motivated to
engage with succeed in compensating for the unpleasant states
they elicit in the relevant way and may even leave us utterly
depressed or disturbed. For example, Albert Camus The
Stranger does not seem to elicit many pleasant experiences in
readers, at any rate none that are likely to compensate for the pain
elicited; many people who fully know what to expect may
nevertheless be motivated to read it, suggesting that pleasure is not
always what we are trying to get when pursuing an engagement
with works of fiction. Pleasure may not be the only thing that
negative emotions can buy.

b. Non-Pleasure-Centered Solutions
According to recent proposals, we beg the question if we assume
that the paradox of tragedy asks us to explain how we can
take pleasure in response to artworks eliciting negative responses in
audiences. Unless we are committed to a form of motivational
hedonism according to which nothing other than pleasure can
account for the pervasiveness of the motivation to engage with
works of fiction eliciting negative emotions, the question arises as to
whether some other factor(s) may play the relevant motivating role.

We may sometimes find ourselves in conflict between going to see a

movie that, although depressing, may teach us some valuable
lessons about life, and doing some less painful activity (such as
watching comedy). If we end up choosing to see the depressing
movie, it is clearly not because one is hoping that it will give one
more pleasure than pain. The pain may indeed be the cost of
gaining something of value, regardless of whether the having of that
thing turns out to be pleasurable.

Below are examples of theories that do not take pleasure to be the

main, or the only, factor that explains our willingness to engage with
works of fiction eliciting negative emotions. Notice that they can be
viewed as compensatory theories that do not primarily appeal to
pleasure.
i. Relief from Boredom and Rich Experience
A clear example of the kind of view under discussion is one that
Hume introduces and rejects in his essay on tragedy, and that he
attributes to LAbb Dubos. According to Dubos, the thing that we
most want when we pursue an engagement with tragedy is a relief
from boredom. As life can sometimes be dull, he thinks, we may
find it better to feel any emotion, even negative ones, as long as it
delivers us from our boredom.

Dubos view is attractive for a number of reasons. First, it is very

simple in that it explains the motivation we have to engage with
tragedy by appealing to a single overarching desire: the desire to
avoid boredom. Second, it makes it possible for people to pursue an
engagement with works of fiction that they know will not elicit
positive experiences that would compensate for the negative ones.

Of course, it is doubtful that a desire to avoid boredom is actually

the underlying motivation behind all engagements with tragedy.
Even if Dubos proposal does not work, it still provides a recipe for
constructing a number of plausible views. If the desire to avoid
boredom is not the relevant overarching desire, this does not mean
that there is no such desire to be found. For instance, it could be the
case that the relevant desire is the desire to have meaningful
experiences, whatever their specific nature. According to a recent
proposal (Smuts, 2007), when we engage in works of fiction such as
tragedies and horror films, what we essentially desire is to get a
rich experience out of it. This experience, moreover, can be
provided by a variety of mental states, including learning about
certain characters, having our desire to avoid boredom fulfilled,
having a sense of security (since, after all, the events depicted in
fictional works are not real), feeling alive, and any other valuable
mental state that can be had in the context of an encounter with the
work. In addition, such mental states need not be particularly
pleasant ones, as when one is being made aware of certain nasty
truths about human nature.
One might wonder why there is a focus on experience here, in
addition to what the notion of experience at play here is supposed to
amount to. It is perfectly conceivable that some consumers of
painful fiction are motivated to engage with it for non-experiential
reasons. It is not the fact that they will have valuable
experiences per se that may motivate them, but the fact that they
will acquire certain valuable states whose phenomenology need not
be experienced as intrinsically valuable. For instance, one can be
reluctant to learn sad truths about the world via literature, but
nonetheless pursue this activity because the relevant knowledge is
valuable in its own right. Of course, the acquisition of the relevant
knowledge may be experienced as meaningful or valuable, but it
may not be what one ultimately pursues. One possible response
from the rich response theorist is that, by and large, people (or,
perhaps, people who are motivated by distinctively aesthetic or
artistic considerations) are predominantly motivated to pursue an
engagement with artworks eliciting unpleasant emotions because
they will provide them with some valuable experience. This,
however, would prevent the rich experience theorist from
generalizing her account to all cases of painful activities that we are
motivated in pursuing. (See next section.)

ii. Pluralism about Reasons for Emotional

Engagement
An alternative way to solve the paradox of tragedy is not by
appealing to an overarching desire, though such a desire may
ultimately exist, but to simply accept that there are many
motivating reasons for which we pursue an engagement with the
relevant fictions. Like the rich experience theory, such a pluralist
solution does not deny that pleasure may sometimes be a
motivating factor. What matters however is that we expect from an
engagement with any particular work of fiction more benefits than
costs, benefits that can be realized by a variety of things: knowledge
(including sad truths), a sense of being alive, an avoidance of
boredom, an appreciation of aesthetic propertiesany value that
can be gained from an interaction with the relevant work. Pluralism
about the reasons motivating our engagement with tragedy,
therefore, differs from the rich experience theory in that it remains
non-committal regarding the existence of an overarching desire
under which all these reasons may fall.

The pluralist solution, notably, not only explains why we are

motivated to engage with works of fiction that elicit negative
emotions in audiences, it also seems to have the resources to
provide an explanation for why we are motivated to
pursue any activity that tends to elicit negative emotions. Why are
some motivated to practice bungee jumping, mountain climbing,
fasting, and any other activity that one can think of and that
involves displeasure to some non-negligible extent? Because,
presumably, it has some positive value that compensates for the
displeasure that one may experience, positive value that need not
be realized by pleasure. In contrast to the rich experience theory,
furthermore, the pluralist solution does not place any constraint on
the kind of thing whose positive value may compensate for the
displeasure we may experience in the relevant contexts; it indeed
does not even have to be a mental state. This is partly what makes
an extension of the pluralist solution possible. To take a mundane
case, getting ones wisdom teeth removed may be valuable, and
therefore something we may be motivated to pursue, despite the
unpleasant side-effects, not merely because one will have
pleasurable or other valuable experiences in the future, but partly
because doing so contributes positively to ones health.

Whether the paradox of tragedy may ultimately be part of a broader

phenomenon, and, if so, whether it should nonetheless be solved in
a way that is special to it, are matters for further discussion.
5. The Rationality of Audience Emotion
As hinted at in our discussion of the paradox of fiction, it is one thing
to establish that we are capable of experiencing genuine emotions
in response to fictional characters and situations (and perhaps in
response to expressive properties of musical works, depending on
ones view on the matter); it is quite another thing to establish that
such responses are rational. Colin Radford, lets recall, attempted to
solve the paradox by declaring us irrational in experiencing the
relevant emotions. After all, for him, since there is nothing to be
afraid, sad, or angry about, having such emotions in the context of
an encounter with fictional characters cannot be as rational as
having them in the context of an encounter with real people. If our
emotions in response to artworks fall short of being fully rational,
the worry therefore goes, it becomes hard to see where their
apparent value could really lie. Are our emotional responses to
fiction in any way justifiable?

Lets distinguish two broad kinds of justification that emotions can

be thought to have. On the one hand, emotions can
be epistemically justified in the sense that they give us an accurate
representation of the world; the fact that emotions can be rational in
this way (at least in principle) is a straightforward consequence of
their being cognitive or representational states. On the other hand,
emotions can be justified by non-epistemic reasons. For instance, a
given instance of anger, with its characteristic expressions, can turn
out to be useful in scaring potential threats away.

Presumably, when Radford declared us irrational in experiencing

emotions in response to entities that we believe do not exist, he
meant that there is something epistemically wrong with them. By
analogy, there is arguably something wrong from an epistemological
standpoint with someone who is afraid of a harmless spider
precisely because the spider does not constitute a real threat.
One way to deny that emotions in response to fiction (and
representational artworks generally) are irrational in the relevant
sense is by saying that the epistemic norms to which they ought to
comply are in some way different from those at play in the case of
belief. Whereas it would be wrong to believe that there is such a
person as Sherlock Holmes after having read Conan Doyles novels,
it may nonetheless be epistemically acceptable to experience
admiration for him. The difference between the epistemic norms
governing belief and those governing emotion may lie in the fact
that those governing the latter put a lower threshold on what counts
as adequate evidence than those governing the former. (See
Greenspan, 1988, and Gilmore, 2011, for discussion.)

It seems plausible that some emotions at least are epistemically

appropriate responses to the content of fictional stories. In many
cases, emotions seem required for a proper appreciation and
understanding of the work. Reading War and Peace without
experiencing any emotion whatsoever hardly makes possible the
kind of understanding that is expected of the reader. Furthermore, it
appears quite intuitive to say that, without emotion, an appreciation
of the aesthetic qualities of certain artworks, such as those
possessed by their narrative structure, would be at best highly
impoverished. Radford could reply however that such emotions are
uncontroversial, as they are directed at properties of the work rather
than at its fictional content. The problem with this response is that
even such emotions may need to rely on prior emotions that have
been directed at the content of the work.

Even if the emotions we experience in response to fictional artworks

are epistemically irrational, they still may be rational in respects that
are not epistemic. The point of departure of such a claim is that
there is a sense in which the relevant emotions are
not completely irrational; they sometimes make perfect sense. As a
result, perhaps their value lies in their enabling us to achieve either
non-epistemic goods or knowledge about the actual world (as
opposed to some putative fictional world). An example of a non-
epistemic good may be what can be roughly called spiritual growth.
It is commonly thought that literature can somehow educate its
audience, not by giving it information about the world, but by
playing with its emotions in a way that is beneficial. It seems
certainly right that fictions, by presenting us novel situations, can
condition our emotions by making us feel what we would not have in
real-life situations. Moreover, fiction may enable its audiences to
experience empathetic emotions towards types of characters (and
their situations) of which they may have no significant knowledge
prior to the engagement with the work, contributing potentially to
certain openness to the unknown. (It is worth noting that this may
provide an additional reason to favor the non-pleasure-centered
solutions to the paradox of tragedy introduced above.) Additionally,
given the capacity of fictions to modify our emotional repertoire,
thereby potentially modifying our values, some philosophers have
emphasized the genuine possibility of acquiring moral knowledge by
means of an engagement with fiction. See Nussbaum, 1992, for a
discussion on the ways literature can contribute to moral
development.

It is worth pointing out dangers that are commonly thought to be at

play in the fact that we regularly engage emotionally with fictional
entities. Certain works of fiction, for instance, such as some works of
drama, are designed to arouse very intense emotional responses in
audiences. Some of us may feel that there is something wrong,
indeed highly sentimental, with indulging in such activities. Perhaps
this is because of a norm of proportionality that is at play in our
judgment; perhaps this is because of another norm. In any case,
sentimentality is often taken to be a bad thing. See Tanner, 1976, for
a classic discussion.

In addition to sentimentality, one may worry that works of fiction

have the ability to arouse in audiences sympathetic feelings for
morally problematic characters (see Feagin, 1983), and perhaps in
the long run be detrimental to ones moral character. Whether this is
true, however, is an empirical question that cannot be answered
from the armchair.

Whether or not the experience of emotions in response to artworks

is on the whole rational remains a very live question, a question
that, given the irresistible thought that artworks are valuable partly
because of the emotional effect they have on us, is of prime
importance. (See Matravers, 2006, for further discussion.)

6. Conclusion
There are at least three main problems that arise at the intersection
of emotions and the arts. The first problem is that of explaining how
it is possible to experience genuine emotions in response to fictional
events and non-representational strings of sounds. The second
problem is finding a rationale for our putative desire to engage with
works of art that systematically trigger negative affective states in
us (regardless of whether such states count as genuine emotions).
Assuming the claim that works of art do sometimes trigger genuine
emotions in us, the third problem is the problem whether the
relevant responses can be said to be rational (given that, after all,
they are systematically directed at non-existent or non-meaningful
entities). We have seen that each of these problems admits more or
less plausible answers that may require a revision of our pre-
theoretical beliefs about emotion, on the one hand, and artworks, on
the other. Whether a non-revisionary solution to each of these
problems is possible, and whether its lack of non-revisionary
implications would give this solution the upper hand over alternative
solutions, are questions the reader is encouraged to consider.

It is worth emphasizing that the list of problems this article deals

with is far from exhaustive. One promising avenue of research is the
thorough study of the relationship between emotions and other
mental capacities, including imagination. Of particular interest in
this area is the phenomenon of imaginative resistance whereby an
audience is reluctant to imaginatively engage with fictional works
 that require them to imagine situations that run contrary to its moral
beliefs (such as a world where the torture of innocents is morally
permissible). Given that imaginative resistance plausibly implies the
presence of certain emotions, such as indignation and guilt, and the
absence of others, such as joy and pride, we can legitimately ask
what is the precise relationship between our reluctance to imagine
certain states of affairs and the emotional responses that are often
found to accompany this reluctance (see, for instance, Moran,
1994). If emotion turned out to play a role in the explanation of
imaginative resistance in response to fiction, this would give us
strong ground for taking the relationship between emotion, fiction,
and morality very seriously.

7. References and Further Reading

Budd, M. (1985). Music and the Emotions. Routledge
A forceful attack of the major theories on the relationship between music and emotion.
Carroll, N. (1990). The Philosophy of Horror. New York: Routledge
A classic discussion on the nature of our responses to horror films.
Charlton, W. (1970). Aesthetics. London: Hutchinson
Dated but useful introduction to aesthetics.

Coleridge, S.T. ([1817] 1985). Biographia Literaria, ed. Engell, J. & Bate,
W.J. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Currie, G. (1990). The Nature of Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press
A classic treatment of the nature of fiction. Includes a chapter on the paradox of
fiction.
Davies, S. (1994). Musical Meaning and Expression. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press
Important contribution to the debate over the nature of musical expressiveness.
Davies, S. (1997). Contra the Hypothetical Persona in Music, in Hjort, M.
& Laver, S. (eds.), Emotion and the Arts. New York: Oxford University press. 95-
109
A forceful attack on the persona theory of musical expressiveness.
Deigh, J. (1994). Cognitivism in the Theory of Emotions, Ethics, 104,
824-854
A classic critique of the cognitive theory of emotion.
Deonna, J.A. & Teroni, F. (2012). The Emotions: A Philosophical
Introduction. New York: Routledge
An excellent introduction to the philosophy of emotion.
Dring, S. (2009). The Logic of Emotional Experience: Non-Inferentiality
and the Problem of Conflict Without Contradiction, Emotion Review, 1, 240-247
An article where a problem to the cognitive theory of emotion is exposed.
 Eaton, M. (1982). A Strange Kind of Sadness, Journal of Aesthetics and
Art Criticism, 41, 51-63
A response to the paradox of tragedy appealing to control.
Feagin, S. (1983). The Pleasures of Tragedy, American Philosophical
Quarterly, 20, 95-104
Develops a response to the paradox of tragedy in terms of meta-response.
Gaut, B. (1993). The Paradox of Horror, British Journal of Aesthetics, 33,
333-345
A thorough response to Noel Carrolls treatment of our responses to works of horror.
Gendler, T.S. (2008). Alief and Belief, Journal of Philosophy, 105, 10, 634-
663
Article where the distinction between alief and belief is defended and developed.
Gendler, T.S. & Kovakovich, K. (2006). Genuine Rational Fictional
Emotions, in Kieran, M. (ed.), Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the
Philosophy of Art. Blackwell. 241-253
An article dealing with the paradox of fiction. Argues that our responses to fictional
works are rational.
Gilmore, J. (2011). Aptness of Emotions for Fictions and
Imaginings, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 92, 4, 468-489
An article dealing with the topic of appropriateness of emotions in fictional and
imaginative contexts.
Goldie, P. (2000). The Emotions: A Philosophical Exploration. Oxford:
Oxford University Press
A classic text in the philosophy of emotion. Defends the claim that the cognitive theory
of emotions is too intellectualist.
Greenspan, P. (1988). Emotions and Reasons. New York: Routledge
Explores the relationship between emotions and rationality.
Hjort, M. & Laver, S. (eds.) (1997). Emotion and the Arts. New York: Oxford
University Press
An excellent collection of papers on the relationship between emotions and artworks.
Joyce, R. (2000). Rational Fears of Monsters, British Journal of
Aesthetics, 21, 291-304
An article construing the paradox of fiction as a paradox of rationality rather than
logic.
Kivy, P. (1989). Sound Sentiment: An Essay on the Musical Emotions.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press
Classic contribution to the philosophy of music, in particular to the topic of emotions in
music.
Kivy, P. (1990). Music Alone: Philosophical Reflections on the Purely
Musical Experience. Ithaca: Cornell University Press
Classic contribution to the philosophy of music. Revival of formalism in music theory.
Kivy, P. (1999). Feeling the Musical Emotions, British Journal of
Aesthetics, 39, 1-13
An article expressing clearly Kivys views on the relationship between music and
emotion.
Kivy, P. (2002). Introduction to a Philosophy of Music. Oxford: Oxford
University Press
A good introduction to the philosophy of music, and to Kivys views on it.
 Kivy, P. (2006). Mood and Music: Some Reflections on Nol
Carroll, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 64, 2, 271-281
A good place to find Kivys views on moods in response to music.
Lamarque, P. (1981). How Can We Fear and Pity Fictions, British Journal
of Aesthetics, 21, 291-304
Classic article developing the thought theory as a response to the paradox of fiction.
Levinson, J. (1990). Music, Art, and Metaphysics: Essays in Philosophical
Aesthetics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press
A classic book in analytic aesthetics. Includes a chapter on music and negative
emotion.
Levinson, J. (1997). Emotion in Response to Art: A Survey of the Terrain,
in Hjort, M. & Laver, S. (eds.), Emotion and the Arts. New York: Oxford
University press. 20-34
A short and useful survey of the various questions and positions about our emotional
responses to artworks. Could be used as a supplement to the present article.
Lucas, F.L. (1928). Tragedy in Relation to Aristotles Poetics. Hogarth
Classic treatment of Aristotles view on tragedy. Defines catharsis as moral
purification.
Lyons, W. (1980). Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
A classic exposition of the cognitive theory of emotion.
Mannison, D. (1985). On Being Moved By Fiction, Philosophy, 60, 71-87
Article on the paradox of fiction. Develops a solution appealing to surrogate objects.
Matravers, D. (1998). Art and Emotion. Oxford: Oxford University Press
A comprehensive study of the relationship between emotion and art.
Matravers, D. (2006). The Challenge of Irrationalism, and How Not To
Meet It, in Kieran, M. (ed.), Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the
Philosophy of Art. Blackwell. 254-264
An interesting discussion on the rationality and value of emotions in response to works
of fiction.
Moran, R. (1994). The Expression of Feeling in Imagination, Philosophical
Review, 103, 1, 75-106
Classic article on imagination and the emotions.
Morreall, J. (1985). Enjoying Negative Emotions in Fiction, Philosophy
and Literature, 9, 95-103
A response to the paradox of tragedy appealing to control.
Neill, A. (1991). Fear, Fiction and Make-Believe, Journal of Aesthetics and
Art Criticism, 49, 1, 47-56
Provides a good discussion of the notion of make-believe.
Neill, A. (1992). On a Paradox of the Heart, Philosophical Studies, 65, 53-
65
A critical discussion of Carrolls solution to the paradox of horror.
Neill, A. (1993). Fiction and the Emotions, American Philosophical
Quarterly, 30, 1-13
Proposes a solution to the paradox of fiction in terms of beliefs about what is fictionally
the case.
Novitz, D. (1980). Fiction, Imagination, and Emotion, Journal of
Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 38, 279-288
Develops a version of the thought theory in terms of imagination.
 Nussbaum, M.C. (1992). Loves Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and
Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Classic text at the intersection of philosophy and literature. Provides a defense of the
claim according to which literature can play a positive role in moral philosophy.
Paskins, B. (1977). On Being Moved by Anna Karenina and Anna
Karenina, Philosophy, 52, 344-347
Article on the paradox of fiction. Provides a solution in terms of surrogate objects.
Radford, C. (1975). How Can We Be Moved by the Fate of Anna
Karenina?, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supplementary vol. 49, 67-
80
The classic article where Radford introduces the so-called paradox of fiction.
Radford, C. (1989). Emotions and Music: A Reply to the
Cognitivists, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 47, 1, 69-76
Article on emotion and music. Responds to views assuming the cognitive theory of
emotion (such as Kivys).
Ridley, A. (1995). Music, Value, and the Passions. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press
A thorough study of the relationship between music and emotion. Defense of the claim
that the emotions we feel in response to music can positively contribute to a proper understanding
of it.
Robinson, J. (2005). Deeper than Reason: Emotion and its Role in
Literature, Music, and Art. New York: Oxford University Press
A comprehensive treatment of the relationship between emotions and artworks. A very
good discussion on the nature of emotions included.
Smuts, A. (2007). The Paradox of Painful Art, Journal of Aesthetic
Education, 41, 3, 59-77
Excellent discussion on the paradox of tragedy. Puts forward the rich
experience theory.
Smuts, A. (2009). Art and Negative Affect, Philosophy Compass, 4, 1, 39-
55
Excellent introduction to the paradox of tragedy. Good supplement to the present
article.
Suits, D.B. (2006). Really Believing in Fiction, Pacific Philosophical
Quarterly, 87, 369-386
Article on the paradox of fiction. Argues that, while engaging with fictional stories,
we do believe in their content.
Solomon, R. (1993). The Passions: Emotions and the Meaning of Life.
Indianapolis: Hackett
Classic text in the philosophy of emotion. Develops a cognitive account of emotion.
Tappolet, C. (2000). Emotions et valeurs. Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France
Classic defense of the perceptual theory of emotion (in French).
Todd, C. (forthcoming). Attending Emotionally to Fiction, Journal of Value
Inquiry
Article on the paradox of fiction. Proposes a solution appealing to the notion
of bracketed beliefs. A plausible version of the suspension of disbelief strategy.
Walton, K.L. (1978). Fearing Fictions, Journal of Philosophy, 75, 5-27
Classic paper on the paradox of fiction. Introduction of the notion of quasi-emotion.
 Walton, K.L. (1990). Mimesis as Make-Believe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press
Classic text on the nature of our engagement with fictions.
Walton, K.L. (1997). Spelunking, Simulation, and Slime: On Being Moved
by Fiction, in Hjort, M. & Laver, S. (eds.), Emotion and the Arts. New York:
Oxford University press. 37-49
Article on the paradox of fiction. Worth comparing with Waltons earlier formulation of
his views on the matter.
Weston, P (1975). How Can We Be Moved by the Fate of Anna Karenina?
II. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supplementary vol. 49, 81-93
Article on the paradox of fiction. Provides a solution in terms of surrogate objects.
Yanal, R.J. (1994). The Paradox of Emotion and Fiction, Pacific
Philosophical Quarterly, 75, 54-75
A good article for an introduction to the paradox of fiction.
Zangwill, N. (2004). Against Emotion: Hanslick Was Rightbout
Music, British Journal of Aesthetics, 44, 29-43
A thorough defense of the view that emotions are aesthetically inappropriate in an
engagement with musical works.

Author Information
Hichem Naar
Email: hm.naar@gmail.com
University of Manchester
United Kingdom

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