ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Schopenhauer's account of the experience of the art of tragedy, and in particular his conception of the value of this variety of experience. Assuming that the value of tragedy is a distinctive value – it looks as though the source of that value is not to be found in Schopenhauer's theory and in the hedonic aspect of our experience of tragedy. At the beginning of his discussion of the individual arts, in talking about architecture, Schopenhauer mentions almost in passing that it is in 'the aesthetic enjoyment' of drama (by which he means tragedy), 'which brings to knowledge the most significant of all the Ideas', that 'the objective side is predominant throughout'. Tragedy's value lies not merely in the importance of what it reveals to us concerning the nature of reality, but also in the fact that through our engagement with tragedy we may come to recognise the only appropriate response to the terrible truth it presents.
