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Notes kind. Properly amended to reflect mental rather than bodily taste, the story of Sancho’s kinsmen
underlies the whole argument of “The Standard of Taste.” Even if the rule has not been formalized,
the wine taster will operate as if reasoning from a rule (e.g., “since this is red wine, it will have a
fruity bouquet but no hint of leather or iron”). The experienced reader or viewer will approach art
with “the same excellence of faculties which contributes to the improvement of reason” (SOT,
278), discovering the true character of the object within “the disorder, in which they are presented”
(SOT, 273).
20.5 Hume’s Essay on Tragedy

The motivating issue in “Of Tragedy” is that of unpleasant emotion as a positive feature of a
work. Hume proposes to explain how “a well-written tragedy” is pleasing when that pleasure
appears to depend on “sorrow, terror, anxiety,” and other naturally disagreeable emotions (OT,
258).
Originally published beside “Of the Standard of Taste” in Four Dissertations, “Of Tragedy” is a
peculiar essay. Its engagement with the Abbé Jean-Baptiste Dubos confirms Hume’s strong interest
in French aesthetics. Yet the essay says little about the topic of tragedy, and what it says is
combined with discussions of melodramas and historical writing. Its real topic is the experience of
conflicting emotions directed simultaneously at a single object, a topic treated in the Treatise.
Because the pleasure offered by tragedy and melodrama depends on and is proportionate with
their capacity to arouse grief, fear, and other unpleasant passions, Hume uses literature and
theater as an occasion to elaborate on his theory of mixed emotions. As Hume formulates it, the
problem is to explain the nature of the relationship between our approbation, which is pleasurable,
and the presence of “sorrow, terror, anxiety,” and other naturally disagreeable emotions (OT,
258). The solution, Hume claims, is that any emotion “which attends a passion, is easily converted
into it, though in their natures they be originally different from, and even contrary to each other”
(T, 419).
So “Of Tragedy” grapples with a very different set of problems than “Of the Standard of Taste.”
In the essay on taste, the unchallenged appearance of vice is treated as a flaw, and unpleasant
emotion is a defect. But when “Of Tragedy” identifies a flaw in Nicholas Rowe’s The Ambitious
Stepmother, the play’s defect is not the endorsement of vice. Instead, its flaw is the staging of
action that is “too bloody and atrocious” (OT, 264). But why is “shocking” spectacle a flaw that
leads to general disapprobation? Is it simply a question of the degree of shock? But why should
that prevent the audiences from “converting” the shock into a “contrary” and pleasurable
experience, as Hume claims happens with terror and anxiety? The obstacle does not seem to be
moral in nature, of the sort explored in “Of the Standard of Taste” where Hume discusses a work’s
failure to direct proper disapprobation at vicious manners. The essay on taste suggests that the
same content would not be a flaw if proper adjustments were made. But “Of Tragedy” does not
call attention to the moral dimension of Rowe’s play. So “Of Tragedy” is a discourse on an
interesting puzzle about human psychology, namely the fact that unpleasant elements can be
either strengths or ruinous defects. “Of Tragedy” says nothing about moralism and art.
Hume’s account of tragic pleasure has two components. First, different features of the work must
generate the viewer’s agreeable and disagreeable responses. Disagreeable aspects contribute to
our general approbation because those properties are balanced by naturally agreeable properties.
Second, a general psychological principle explains how it is possible for competing emotions to
produce a complex, pleasing sentiment. Borrowed from the Treatise (T, 419), that principle holds
that when the same object produces different passions, even those “of a contrary nature,” then the
subordinate passion can be “converted” into the predominant (OT, 262). “Of Tragedy” combines
these two ideas. Our natural delight in “imitation” provides a strong and predominant passion.
The naturally disagreeable emotions aroused by the plot provide a subordinate and contrary

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