Tragedy
Gregory Currie
1 The problem
Hume thought it puzzling that members of an audience are sometimes ‘pleased in
proportion as they are afflicted.’1 We demand our money back if some rewriting has
Desdemona alive at the end of Othello--not merely because it contradicts
Shakespeare’s intentions, but because it seems dramatically wrong. At the same
time, her death is deeply upsetting. While we want the fiction to go a certain way,
and certainly to include the death of Desdemona, we don’t, it seems, want
Desdemona to die. Put more generally:
(1) we want the fiction to be such that something, E, occurs in it,
while
(2) we react in ways which make it tempting to say that we want E not to occur.
I’ll call such a combination of states a tragic response, and the fiction to which it is a
response tragic or a tragedy. But my description of the response has so far been
rather tentative, at least in regard to (2). Is the tempting thing to say the right thing? If
not, what is the right thing? This is my problem of tragedy, and my answer to the first
part is No; my answer to the second will take longer to develop. This is not Hume’s
problem of tragedy. Hume wondered why people seek tragic fictions; to this I give no
answer. But answering my question is a step towards answering Hume’s; if we want
to know why viewers enjoy being in certain states it helps to know what states they
are in.
What counts for me as a tragedy is observer relative; perhaps this is not how we
ordinarily think about tragedy. Tragedy in the ordinary sense, or something close to
it, is that which merits, or aspires to merit, a tragic response. So if what I say here is
right, we shall learn something about how tragedy, in the ordinary sense, works.
1
Hume 1777/1985: 217.
2 Three solutions
According to the simple solution, the tempting thing to say is the right thing. Instead
of (2) we should say
(3) We desire that E not occur.
So the viewer desires Othello to be a play where Desdemona dies, but also desires
that she not die. The change-of-content solution has it that (3) correctly identifies the
attitude—desire--but gets the content of the desire wrong; the right thing to say is
(4) We desire the fiction to be such that E not occur in it.
So the viewer desires Othello to be a play wherein Desdemona dies, and desires it
to be a play wherein she does not die.2 The change-of-attitude solution has it that (3)
gets the content right, but gets the attitude wrong.3 Viewers don’t really desire E not
to occur, though they are in states easily confused, even by their possessors, with
desires. These are imaginative counterparts of desires, just as what we ordinarily call
‘imaginings’ are counterparts of beliefs.4 Following Egan and Doggett, I’ll call them idesires. This solution, the one I favour, replaces (2) with:
(5) We i-desire that E not occur.
3 Against the simple solution
Some reject the simple solution because these supposed desires, as in (3), don’t
have motivating tendency; we don’t leap on stage to save Desdemona. Defenders
say that we can account for the inertness of these desires in this way: desires
motivate in conjunction with beliefs, not in conjunction with imaginings; the viewer
Nichols says that ‘when we say that we want Desdemona to be saved, we are reporting a
real desire that, in the fiction, Desdemona be saved’ (2004: 332). Weinberg and Meskin say
that ‘we both desire that it is true that in the fiction Desdemona does well while also desiring
that the fiction that we are reading or watching is of a tragic sort’ (2006: 234); in
correspondence Meskin and Weinberg suggest that their view is closer to the simple
solution.
3
See Currie and Ravenscroft 2002, Section 1.4; Egan and Doggett 2009; Doggett and Egan
2010.
4
Thus we infer things from our imaginings much as from our beliefs; our imaginings have
emotional effects on us comparable to those of beliefs; we sometimes mistake what we
imagine for what we believe.
2
genuinely desires Desdemona not to be killed but merely imagines that this will
happen, and so does not act.5
Nothing I shall say against the simple theory depends on claims about inertness. Nor
does my case depend on supposed difficulties in the way of having desires
concerning things we know don’t exist. I’ll consider a case where the fictional
character in question is a real thing, really known by the viewer to exist. I argue that
even in this case, where the viewer does have genuine desires concerning the
fictional character, the simple solution will not work.
Suppose I am watching a BBC drama set in the 1980s called Death of a Prime
Minister which imagines the assassination of Margaret Thatcher and its political
aftermath. I will stipulate a couple of things: (i) watching the play, I desire that, in the
play, Mrs Thatcher is killed; that seems the best way to explore dramatic and political
possibilities; (ii) as a matter of fact, I admire Mrs Thatcher, and wish her a long and
happy life. 6
(i) and (ii) are, respectively, instances of our schemas (1) and (3) above. The simple
solution claims that it is instances of (1) and (3) which characterise tragic responses.
Given (i) and (ii), and assuming the simple solution is correct, Death of a Prime
Minister should elicit from me a tragic response. But it doesn’t. Agreeing to (i) and
(ii) leaves it open how I respond as I watch the drama. Admiring of Mrs Thatcher as I
am, I may still be ‘on the side’ of the assassin, especially if care is taken to highlight
his steely Jackal-like professionalism. True, if I am an admirer of Thatcher this won’t
be easy; it means overcoming my natural inclination to favour her cause, even as
represented in fiction. But fictions do surprise us with their capacity to re-align our
natural inclinations. It would also be wrong to insist that my taking the assassin’s
side reveals me as a self-deceived anti-Thatcherite. It could be that way, but it
doesn’t have to be. We should accept that I have the right attitudes to count, by the
lights of the simple theory, as someone for whom this is a tragedy. Yet I am not such
a person.
It is sometimes said of such cases that the object of my thought is not the real Mrs
Thatcher, but an unreal Mrs Thatcher-of-the-play, so my desires about the real Mrs
5
6
See Carruthers (2003). The simply solution is defended in detail in Kind (unpublished).
I’m indebted here to Friend (2003).
Thatcher are irrelevant. For reasons given by Stacie Friend (2003), this is not a
promising move. When I tell my daughter stories about her adventures with lions
their appeal depends on it being she who figures in them. Of course, in all cases the
story tells of things which did not happen to Mrs Thatcher or to my daughter. In that
sense, they are about Mrs Thatcher and the rest fictionalised. But Mrs Thatcher
fictionalised is Mrs Thatcher.
A simple theorist might allow that I have, as stipulated, the desire that Mrs Thatcher
not be killed. That’s a stable, background desire of mine. She might also say that I
have the desire that she be killed. That’s a highly salient, condition-dependent
desire; a desire triggered by the specific condition of watching the drama. For the
duration of the drama, the condition-dependent desire dominates my thinking,
inhibiting my tragic response. Now the simple theorist need only tweak her theory to
deal with the counterexample. Instead of saying that a drama will be tragic for an
agent if the agent has desires of kinds (1) and (3), she says instead that the drama
will be tragic if the desires in question are both possessed and not dominated by
more salient contrary desires. This more demanding condition is not satisfied in the
case of Death of Prime Minister.
People do sometimes have genuine desires which are condition-dependent and
which contradict their more stable desires. A person whose long term background
desire is to stay sober may, when confronted with temptation, acquire the desire to
drink. This is a condition-dependent desire, and not a conditional desire; it is not the
desire to drink if confronted by certain things, but the desire simply to drink: a desire
the subject has just when so confronted. The condition in which one has that desire
is a trigger; it is not part of the satisfaction condition of that desire; the satisfaction
condition is merely that I drink now. The subject has a desire of the one kind to drink,
and a desire of the other kind not to.
That is not how it is with me as I watch Death of a Prime Minister. My long-term,
stable desire that Mrs Thatcher thrive has a certain satisfaction condition; it is
satisfied if she thrives. What is the satisfaction condition of my supposed desire,
prompted by the drama, for the death of Mrs Thatcher? If it really is a desire, it
should be satisfied by her death. It wouldn’t be.7 Suppose that, while I am watching
the play and cheering for the assassin, Mrs Thatcher runs in pursued by an assassin
who proceeds to murder her. That would seem to me a wholly bad thing.
Perhaps my unhappiness at the outcome does not show that my desire was
frustrated. People sometimes have desires the satisfaction of which leave them
unhappy. But that’s not plausible the case here. If you and I are watching the drama,
and bet on whether my desire (we casually call it that in our conversation) will be
satisfied, the bet isn’t decided by what happens when, amazingly, Mrs Thatcher
appears pursued by an assassin; it is decided by what happens in the play. This
state, which we ignorantly call a desire, is not satisfied by the death of Mrs Thatcher,
but by her death according to the fiction. 8
This gives us a clear test that will distinguish i-desires from desires:
(SC) A putative desire, is an i-desire and not really a desire if  has
satisfaction conditions, a canonical statement of which makes reference to
a fiction which is not also the object of 
That is how it is with my putative desire in the present case. What we call my desire
that Mrs Thatcher die is really an i-desire, as the change-of-attitude theory claims.
The simple theory is wrong.
The example which has carried this argument is atypical, being a case where the
fiction concerns a real thing. I don’t believe this affects the generality of the
conclusion. If we agree that what characterises my response to Death of a Prime
Minister is an i-desire then we agree that there are i-desires, something opponents of
the change-of-attitude theory have always denied. It would be odd to claim that,
when fictions concern real things it is i-desires which are in play, but that in the case
of fictions involving nonexistents, real desires take over.
I’m indebted to Tyler Doggett here.
Doggett and Egan say ‘Romeo and Juliet can’t survive unless, according to the fiction of
Romeo and Juliet, they survive’ (2010: 11-12). I leave out of account as irrelevant here a
number of issues: whether desire satisfaction requires knowledge that Mrs Thatcher has a
long life; whether the satisfaction conditions for the desire to drink requires that the drinking
be caused by the desire; whether desire satisfaction is something which comes in degrees
(on which see Skow 2009).
9
My desire that, in the drama, Mrs Thatcher die is not an i-desire, for the fiction we make
reference to in describing the desire is the object of the desire.
7
8
4 Against the change-of-content solution
At this point a change-of-content theorists, from whom we have not so far heard, will
protest. Why insist that there are odd states called i-desires, with odd satisfaction
conditions, given by (SC), which don’t match their contents? We can explain
everything using only real desires with respectable satisfaction conditions. Consider
the problem for the simple theorists: she claims that what is salient in my response to
the drama is a desire that Mrs Thatcher dies. But it turns out that this supposed
desire would not be satisfied by the death of Mrs Thatcher--so it cannot be the desire
the simple theorists thought it was. But no such problem arises if we think that the
desire in question is the desire that Mrs Thatcher die according to the fiction. And
now the change-of-content theorist can explain why I do not have a tragic response
to the drama. To have one I would have to have contradictory desires concerning the
drama: the desire that Mrs Thatcher die according to the drama, and the desire that
she not die according to the drama. It’s because I lack the second of these desires
that the drama is not, for me, a tragic one. All is explained, without resort to states
with odd satisfaction conditions.
I reply in two parts: (a) the change-of-content theory is wrong for another reason; (b)
(SC) does not ascribe odd satisfaction conditions to i-desires.
Take (a) first. The change-of-content theory is wrong because it requires the viewer
of a tragedy to be ambivalent about the kind of fiction she wants. It is not possible,
on this account, to experience the work as a tragedy and want wholeheartedly for it
to be a work in which Desdemona dies; one must want it to be a work in which she
dies, and want it not to be one. But many, probably most, people who find Othello
tragic have no ambivalence about what shape they want for the play’s ending. They
are not, for example, people who found it difficult to decide whether they wanted to
see a play with a dead heroine at the end or to see a light comedy.
Now to (b). Take imagining, in the ordinary sense, that Bill Sykes is a kindly old
gentleman. That’s the wrong thing to imagine, not because Sykes is something other
than a kindly old gentleman; Sykes doesn’t exist. It is the wrong thing to imagine
because that is not how things are represented in Oliver Twist. How things are
represented makes it appropriate to imagine that Sykes is a violent criminal.
Imagining that he is a violent criminal matches what is so according to the story, and
matching is what we aim for when we engage with stories. One thing I don’t imagine
while engaging with the story is that, in the story, Sykes is a violent criminal—that’s
not so according to the story. That is something I believe, and rightly so, because the
belief matches reality. So we have a belief and an imagining—the imaginative
counterpart of the belief. They have distinct contents, but they are made appropriate
by the same state of affairs: that, according to the story, Sykes is a violent criminal. It
is the same for desires and i-desires. One who prefers gentle narratives might have
the genuine desire that, in Oliver Twist, Sykes is not a violent criminal, and one who,
reading the book, is concerned for Nancy’s safety, might have the i-desire that Sykes
is not a violent criminal. These two states, with their distinct contents, would be
satisfied by the same state of affairs: that, In Oliver Twist, Sykes is not a violent
criminal. They are satisfied together, or not at all. The satisfaction conditions for idesires are just what we would expect for states which are imaginative counterparts.
Earlier I referred to the view that our attitudes are never, in fictional contexts,
directed to real things like Mrs Thatcher, but always to their fictional counterparts.
This view is false. What is true is that one’s attitude to a real thing in a fictional
contexts is an attitude which, while directed at that thing, is not satisfiable in the way
that one’s real desires would be. Its satisfaction does not depend on what the real
thing does, but on what the real thing does according to the fiction. To say that one’s
attitude is directed towards the fictionalised counterpart of the real thing is a garbled
version of what ought to be said: that one’s attitude is satisfied according to how that
real thing is represented in the fiction.
5 For the change-of-attitude solution
The change of attitude theory tells us two things relevant to the Margaret Thatcher
case: (i) what state I would have to be in for my response to the drama to be tragic;
(ii) why my response is in fact not tragic. The answers go like this: (i) I would have to
desire that Mrs Thatcher dies according to the drama, and i-desire that she not
desire; (ii) While I have the relevant desire, I lack the relevant i-desire.
Most of the case for the change-of-attitude solution is now in place. We have seen
why extant theories that don’t resort to i-desires fail. We have seen why the changeof-attitude theory is justified in resorting to them, not merely because doing so solves
the problem of tragedy and accounts or the Mrs Thatcher case, but because the
states in question manifestly don’t have the satisfaction conditions which would
make them real desires; the charge that i-desires are ad hoc postulates is thereby
answered. And we are able, finally, to respond to another objection to the change-ofattitude theory. Shaun Nichols argues that this solution can’t explain why there is a
feeling of tension in responding to a tragedy.10 Nichols points out that there is no
conflict generated by believing something and imagining its negation. But the
change-of-attitude solution asks us to account for our response to tragedy as a
combination of a real desire—one concerning the play—and an i-desire concerning
the character. How could this generate a tension?
It’s worth noting that the change-of-attitude theory does not postulate states which
genuinely parallel the case of believing P and imagining not-P. That theory requires
a desire that, in the play, P, and an i-desire that not-P. Still, we need to say why this
combination of states—a desire and an i-desire—would lead to a sense of tension.
And the reason is now available. Recall that there is a desire and an i-desire that are
satisfied together or not at all: the desire that, in the play, Desdemona is saved, and
the i-desire that Desdemona is saved. That being so, the desire that, in the play,
Desdemona dies and the i-desire that she be saved are not mutually satisfiable.
Those are exactly the two states definitive of a tragic response, according to the
change-of-attitude theory. Our having those two states, and our awareness of their
incompatibility, is what generates the tension to which Nichols points.11
University of Nottingham
NG7 2RD
UK
gregory.currie@nottingham.ac.uk
References
Carruthers, P. 2003. Review of Recreative Minds. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
Currie, G. and Ravenscroft, I. 2002. Recreative Minds. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Egan, A. and Doggett, T. 2009. Wanting what you don’t want. Philosophers’ Imprint. 7: 1–17.
10
11
See Nichols 2004.
Thanks to Fiora Salis for extensive discussion, and to Tyler Doggett, Stacie Friend,
Manuel Garcia-Carpintero, Amy Kind, Elisa Paganini, Alberto Voltolini and others for
comments on earlier and longer versions, some read at colloquia in Barcelona, Milan and
Nottingham.
Doggett, T. and Egan, A. 2010. Fiction, Emotion and Cognitive Architecture, Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research.
Friend, S. 2003. How I really feel about JFK. In eds. M. Kieran and D. M. Lopes,
Imagination, Philosophy and the Arts. London:Routledge.
Hume, D. 1777/1985. On Tragedy, in Essays Moral, Political and Literary. Indianapolis:
Liberty Fund.
Kind, A. Unpublished. The puzzle of imaginative desire.
Nichols, S. 2004. Review of Currie and Ravenscroft, Recreative Minds, Mind. 113: 329-334.
Weinberg, J. and Meskin, A. 2006. Imagine that! In ed. M. Kieran, Contemporary Debates in
Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art. Oxford: Blackwell.
Skow, B. 2009. Preferentialism and the paradox of desire, Journal of Ethics and Social
Philosophy 3: 1-16.