In this paper I consider some possible pedagogic powers in Werner Herzog's documentary film Grizzly Man. This paper will dwell on three key questions. First, what is the sublime and can it be screened in film? Second, what are some core features of tragic art and how might such art ethically educate (if at all)? Third, does Werner Herzog's documentary film Grizzly Man screen the sublime or is the predominant mood tragic?

The discussion of the first research question will focus on Brady who argues that paradigm examples of the sublime are found in nature and involve vast phenomena that cause a mixture of pleasure and anxiety in a human subject. Sublime natural phenomena can include the night sky, huge waterfalls or mountains and thunderous lightning storms (Brady, 2013). Sublime experiences thus usually require interaction between two components. A sublime phenomena or object and a human subject who experiences that phenomena or object with a deeply felt mixture of anxiety and pleasure. There are however different understandings of the sublime and more than one type of experience can be sublime. While a joy filled terror on a beautiful mountain ridge is one paradigm case of the sublime, other sublime experiences may entail little in the way of overwhelming fear of imminent threat to one’s life or wellbeing. Awe or wonder of a more humbling and contemplative sort may be largely felt in place of outright fear. A stargazer may for example look upon the vastness of the night sky and space beyond and feel overwhelmingly small and insignificant in comparison (Brady, 2013). Here the sublime is more contemplatively wonder-filled than life-threatening fearsome.

Brady argues that while the sublime is primarily encountered in nature, artworks can also convey a ‘secondary’ sublime (2013, p 6). She emphasises that second hand access to the sublime through art is not without significance as it can encourage people to feel a sense of humility towards nature’s power. However, she is also clear that artworks cannot provide a full sublime experience. Brady acknowledges that a carefully crafted tornado scene on an IMAX screen could be thrilling. However, she suggests the artistic reproduction will only ever be an impoverished experience when contrasted with the real thing. The natural sublime has a ‘multi-sensory’ dimension (tactile, auditory and visual) that is absent from artistic recreations (Brady, 2013, p 128). The cinematic representation will lack the ‘in-your-face fury’ of a live whirling tornado (Brady, 2013, p 128).

 In response to Brady I claim that while cinematic depictions of the sublime are qualitatively different from the sublime as it is directly encountered in nature, the screened sublime is not inevitably inferior just because it qualitatively different from the natural sublime. Instead of relegating the screened sublime to secondary, reduced status because it cannot mirror the sublime in nature (as Brady does) I argue it is worth thinking about how film might offer distinctive perspectives on the sublime, ones that invite viewers to critically reflect on whether the search for the sublime in nature is always ethically defensible and good for people and planet.

 I also note that artworks can have aesthetic properties that have educational power drawing on Simoniti (2017) who offers a persuasive account of aesthetic properties in realist terms. He suggests aesthetic properties are real powers that objects have in them to dispose an audience to an experience or response. I claim some films have aesthetic properties that have the power to invoke a sublime response in their audiences and cite Jennifer Peedom's Mountain and Denis Villneuve's Dune as examples of films that screen the sublime.

My method involves: first a philosophical analysis of the concepts of the tragic and sublime; secondly a film analysis of Herzog's documentary Grizzly Man focusing on how it depicts the tragic and sublime in a way that has potential for ethics and education. In this submission I do not take an empirical approach but a philosophical one and so in this submission I am instead showing readers how I will address the three questions I will focus on in the space in all of the text boxes available. The discussion of the second question will focus on what Lear (1998) and Ridley (2005) say about tragic art. Lear (1998) and Critchley (2019) both claim that tragic art cannot ethically educate the audience in the way that some Aristotle inspired scholars like Carroll (1996) suppose, as the process of catharsis central to his account of tragedy does not involve moral and emotional education. Contrary to Lear and Critchley, I argue that Aristotle allows for the possibility that tragic art may confer ethics educational benefit. Although Aristotle probably did not equate catharsis with moral and emotion education there is other textual evidence in Aristotle to support the idea that the audience can be ethically educated by tragic art. Here the emotions of pity and fear induced through catharsis matter not because they are morally educative in themselves but because they prompt reflection on what matters in life - the prosperity of loved ones. I argue that three features central to the structure of tragic art forms (1. the inducement of pity and fear in the audience 2. towards a central character in tragedy who is in some way or other worried about a loved one who causes or undergoes suffering in the tragic plot and where 3. after the moment of cathartic release the audience have space to reflect on what matters in life - the prosperity of loved ones and family) can contribute to ethics education by opening up questions about what matters in life. This reading of tragedy has something in common with Ridley's. Ridley (2005) argues that tragic art matters to aesthetics and philosophy because tragedy shows lives profoundly damaged by accidental chance and the contingencies of character. Ridley suggests that by awakening audiences to the power of luck and character on fate, tragic art opens up possibilities for reflection on a central ethical question - how we should live.

The discussion of the third research question will focus on Castello Branco and Brady. Castello Branco (2022) claims that Herzog films including Grizzly Man screen the sublime - albeit a very terrrible Burkean variety. I agree with this reading to a point as the film screens the sublime vastness of the mountains as well as the sublime threat that nature can pose to humans - in the shape of the bear threat to Treadwell in the film. However I also claim the film is full of tragic themes and may more than anything be tragic rather than sublime. Tragic art is meant to provide a safe space for terrible fates and feelings but the fate of Treadwell in real life was terrible, as the film shows. I note how the sublime and the tragic both involve a mix of positive and negative emotion and both types of experiences have potential to educate (Brady, 2013). Brady however stresses one crucial difference between sublime experiences and tragic experiences – with ‘the sublime there is shared excitement, with tragedy, shared trauma’ (2013, p 164). There are then some similarities and important differences between experiences of the sublime and the tragic. The sublime response classically involves nature posing an overwhelming threat to a human subject where excitement in the end prevails. In cases of tragedy by contrast the subject feels overwhelmed by the threat from nature to the point of trauma. Many of the surviving participants in the documentary are traumatised by Treadwell's fate and perhaps the audience will be too. I conclude that Grizzly Man has the pedagogic power to deepen understanding of the concepts of the tragic and sublime by invoking experiences of the same. The film also explores a pressing ethical issue - how to live with threats to and from non-human nature.

Aristotle. (2004). Nicomachean Ethics. (London: Penguin, 2004). Brady, E. (2013). The Sublime in Modern Philosophy: Aesthetics, Ethics and Nature, Cambridge University Press. Carroll, N. (1996). Moderate Moralism, British Journal of Aesthetics, 36, 223-238. Castello Branco, P (2022) Kant and Burke’s Sublime in Werner Herzog’s Films: The Quest for an Ecstatic Truth, Film-Philosophy, 26 (2), 149-170. Clewis, R. R. (2015) What’s the Big Idea: On Emily Brady’s Sublime, Journal of Aesthetic Education, 50 (2), 104-118. Critchley, S. (2019). Tragedy, The Greeks and Us, Profile Books. Decoster, P-J & Vansieleghem, N. (2014). Cinema Education as an Exercise in ‘Thinking Through Not-Thinking’, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 46:7, 792-804, Lear, J. (1998). Katharsis, Phronesis, 33. 297-326. Ridley, A (2005) Tragedy, Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics, 408-421. Simoniti, V. (2017). Aesthetic Properties as Powers, European Journal of Philosophy, 25 (4), 1434 -1453.