Malcolm Budd

Hume's Tragic Emotions

It seems an unaccountable pleasure, which the spectators of a well-written tragedy receive from sorrow, terror, anxiety, and other passions, that are in themselves disagreeable and uneasy. The more they are touched and affected, the more are they delighted with the spectacle ... The whole art of the poet is employed, in rouzing and supporting the compassion and indignation, the anxiety and resentment ofhis audience. They are pleased in proportion as they are afflicted, and never are so happy as when they employ tears, sobs, and cries, to give vent to their sorrow, and relieve their heart, swoln with the tenderest sympathy and compassion.1

Response to Christopher Peacocke's ‘The Perception of Music: Sources of Significance’

My response consists essentially of an attempt to throw light on (and encourage further elucidation of) Peacockes basic proposal as to how musical expressiveness should be understood by a comparison and contrast with a somewhat similar suggestion of mine.

Sibley's aesthetics

Book reviewed in this article: Frank Sibley, John Benson, Betty Redfern and Jeremy Roxbee Cox, Approach to Aesthetics: Collected Papers on Philosophical Aesthetics Emily Brady and Jerrold Levinson, Aesthetic Concepts: Essays after Sibley