ABSTRACT
This chapter begins the examination of Hume’s solution to the paradox of art and negative emotions, namely the conversion theory presented jointly in section 6 of the Dissertation on the Passions and the essay Of Tragedy. Hume’s account is placed in its theoretical and historical context, and the previous solutions offered by Jean-Baptiste Du Bos and Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle are discussed and compared with Hume’s own. It is noted that Hume had endorsed a hybrid of these two accounts in the Treatise, and that his later criticisms of Du Bos are disappointingly weak and seem to miss their mark. It is suggested that something deeper therefore underlies Hume’s rejection of this view, namely its Epicurean nature, which may have struck Hume in later life as morally unpalatable. This suggestion is strengthened by consideration of Lord Kames’s own Stoical solution to the puzzle, which owes much to Butler’s motivational pluralism, and is a precursor to modern compensation theories.
