Schopenhauer is renowned for his account of the pleasures of aesthetic contemplation. A lot and perhaps even most of Schopenhauer's insightful account of the arts can be reduced to a kind of enlightened aesthetic attitude theory that relates all artistic achievements back to the value of the aesthetic experiences afforded. But Schopenhauer's account of tragedy reveals some reticence about the 'aesthetic experience' approach that is usually attributed to him. Although Christopher Janaway (along with many other commentators) is right to emphasise the crucial importance of the pleasure of will-less tranquillity, 1 Schopenhauer's analysis of the significance of tragedy at least suggests that we cannot explain the value of all art in terms of the pleasurable experience afforded. We do not value a work of art merely because it offers us pleasure, nor do we repudiate it because it fails to do so.
Janaway rightly insists that 'aesthetics is at the heart of philosophy for Schopenhauer', 2 but also ultimately reduces Schopenhauer's theory of art to an account of aesthetic pleasure. However, unlike Paul Guyer, for example, 3 he argues that 'Schopenhauer's philosophy, at a deeper level, is more Platonic than it is Kantian'. 4 His main arguments are: first, that the theory of Platonic Ideas is no mere ad hoc insertion into a dominantly Kantian framework, but a carefully prepared and fundamental insight; and, second, that his account of aesthetic experience is ultimately preoccupied with timeless and painless contemplation-i.e. the younger Schopenhauer's so-called ideal of the 'better consciousness': the timeless, painless subject-which is 'indissolubly' connected with the knowledge of (Platonic) Ideas.
I shall argue that some important (and often neglected) aspects of Schopenhauer's insightful discussion of tragedy show that the thesis that the value of art is reducible to the aesthetic pleasure it affords is inadequate. 5 Pace some of what Schopenhauer himself suggests, the value of the understanding offered by an artwork does not solely consist in the pleasure it may generate. Although Schopenhauer does not sufficiently develop this strand of thought, he nonetheless rightly suggests that a theory that conceives of artistic value as being fully exhausted by aesthetic value cannot but be mistaken.
Schopenhauer's Platonism
Above all else, Plato's theory of the universal Forms or Ideas was a continual source of fascination and inspiration for Schopenhauer. The young Schopenhauer