Oedipus the tyrant and the limits of political rationalism -- Blind faith and enlightened statesmanship in Oedipus at colonus -- The pious heroism of Antigone -- Conclusion: Nietzsche, Plato, and Aristotle on philosophy and tragedy.

Considering Butler's "tragic trilogy"-a set of interventions on Sophocles' Antigone, Euripides' Bacchae, and Aeschylus's Eumenides-this book seeks to understand not just how Butler uses and interprets Greek tragedy, but also how tragedy shapes Butler's thinking, even when their gaze is directed elsewhere. Through close readings of these tragedies, this book brings to light the tragic quality of Butler's writing. It shows how Butler's mode of reading tragedy-and, crucially, reading tragically-offers a distinctive ethico-political response to the harrowing (...) dilemmas of our current moment. (shrink)

This essay initially distinguishes Athenian democracy from what I call ‘hyphenated-democracies’, each of which adds a conceptual framework developed in early modern Europe to the language of democracy: representative-democracy, liberal-democracy, constitutional-democracy, republican-democracy. These hyphenated-democracies emphasize the restraints placed on the power of political authorities. In contrast, Athenian democracy with the people ruling over themselves rested on the fundamental principle of equality rather than the limitations placed on that rule. However, equality as the defining normative principle of democracy raises its own (...) problems, namely: How do we – of limited vision – identify who is equal, and what injustices attend the criteria used to establish who is equal? Consideration of several ancient tragedies illustrates how the Athenian playwrights explored these questions and how they identified the challenges faced by those who understand democracy as grounded on egalitarian principles. (shrink)

Athenian citizens deliberate in the assembly, but the theatre also becomes a place for public debate. In addition to being a consequence of economic or cultural aspects, democracy is a consequence of the development of a democratic imaginary. Located in that imaginary, Greek tragedies, regarded as «democratic myths», work to reaffirm Athenian democracy. Far from being dogmatic, the tragic myth explores the contradictions of social and personal life and implicitly or explicitly seeks their correction. This dramatic genre encourages participation (...) from the spectator (citizen) that greatly exceeds the schematic reduction in Aristotelian theory of catharsis. Greek tragedy proposes the existence of an «audience», of spectators who need a sufficient level of maturity to make that assessment. Democracy is a path, or perhaps an active utopia, which should combine the political order with a coherent culture and art.Los ciudadanos atenienses deliberaban en la asamblea, pero también el teatro se convierte en un lugar de debate público. Porque una democracia (también la ateniense) no solo es consecuencia de aspectos económicos o de orden cultural, sino también del desarrollo de un imaginario democrático. Y es en dicho imaginario donde se inscriben las tragedias griegas, consideradas como «mitos democráticos» que servían para reafirmar la democracia ateniense. Lejos de cualquier dogmatismo, el mito trágico explora las contradicciones de la vida social y personal, y se pregunta, de manera expresa o tácita, por su posible corrección. Este género dramático induce a una participación del espectador (ciudadano), que va más allá de la esquemática reducción de la teoría aristotélica de la catarsis. El teatro griego propone la existencia de un «público», de unos espectadores que precisan de una gran madurez para emitir ese juicio. La democracia es un camino, o quizás una utopía activa, que debe conjugar el orden político con una cultura y un arte coherentes. (shrink)

This title tells the story of democracy through the perspective of tragic drama. It shows how the ancient tales of greatness and its loss point to the potential dangers of democracy then and now.

Greek tragedy is easily one of the most dynamic fields in Classics. In addition to its perennial appeal and popularity among diverse audiences, every few years its study is reinvented and redefined as scholars and students apply new theories and critical lenses, many of which stem from contemporary concerns. In the last 50 years, for example, a rich body of work began to explore the manifold intersections between Greek tragedy and Athenian ritual and social practices, in (...) line with rising interest in the social sciences. Over the past few decades scholars have slowly but steadily turned their gaze towards the performance and staging of tragedy and ancient Greek drama. To a large degree this interest has been fuelled by contemporary performance practice and experience, particularly as productions and adaptations of ancient plays have proliferated across the globe. Whereas the scholarship on the myriad ways in which Greek tragedy has been adapted and performed across the globe is itself a growing subfield deserving of its own profile, my focus here is on recent scholarly and creative work produced in the last ten years that illuminates Athenian performance practices. As I illustrate, we have come a long way since the seminal works of N.C. Hourmouziades (Production and Imagination in Euripides: Form and Function of the Scenic Space [1965]) and O. Taplin (The Stagecraft of Aeschylus: the Dramatic Use of Exits and Entrances in Greek Tragedy [1977]), who were among the first to draw attention to tragedy as a performed art. (shrink)

Focusing on Greece, this essay aims to contribute to a philosophical understanding of Europe’s current financial crisis and, more generally, of the aporetic implications of the modern determination of freedom as such. One the one hand, I draw on Hegel’s Philosophy of Right in order to argue that modernity entails a potential conflict between a market economy and a state that is supposed to further the interests of the society as a whole. On the other hand, I draw on Sophocles’ (...) Oedipus the King as well as on Hegel’s account of tragedy in the Phenomenology of Spirit to reinterpret the conflict between the spheres of civil society and the state as a tragic conflict. Modernity threatens to undermine itself from within, I maintain, because the simultaneous development of capitalism and democracy makes it very hard to prevent the sphere of particular interests from encroaching upon the sphere of politics. (shrink)

In this essay, I attempt to explore Dennis Schmidt’s pervasive claim throughout his work of a deep affinity between aesthetic experience and ethical life. In a discussion of what Schmidt calls the intensification of life, the essay shows how for Schmidt birth and death are moments that have a peculiar capacity to reveal what he calls the idiom of the ethical. At the end of the essay, I turn to Schmidt’s discussion of Greek tragedy as an exemplary site (...) for his unique sense of original ethics. (shrink)

In Le théatre des philosophes, Taminiaux suggests that both German Idealism and Heidegger understand Greek tragedy as ontological in its import. So does Plato who, however, censures it for the inadequacy of its ontological vision, which he seeks to correct by means of the aesthetic education of the guardians of the ideal city. Taminiaux stresses that Aristotle understands tragedy as a mimēsis of action which is pluralistic, willing to engage with appearances, and oriented toward phronēsis. A key (...) question concerns his understanding of the katharsis or purification of powerful passions, treated here as a cognitive clarification requiring the intense passional engagement that Plato censors. In response to Taminiaux’s claim that Hölderlin’s tragic inspiration is Aristotelian, this essay explores his understanding of tragic purification. In separating the hybristic union of god and man, such purification restores the possibility of interlocutory praxis. (shrink)

In this illuminating work, Dennis J. Schmidt examines tragedy as one of the highest forms of human expression for both the ancients and the moderns.

Why did Greek tragedy and "the tragic" come to be seen as essential to conceptions of modernity? And how has this belief affected modern understandings of Greek drama? In Genealogy of the Tragic, Joshua Billings answers these and related questions by tracing the emergence of the modern theory of the tragic, which was first developed around 1800 by thinkers associated with German Idealism. The book argues that the idea of the tragic arose in response to a new (...) consciousness of history in the late eighteenth century, which spurred theorists to see Greek tragedy as both a unique, historically remote form and a timeless literary genre full of meaning for the present. The book offers a new interpretation of the theories of Schiller, Schelling, Hegel, Hölderlin, and others, as mediations between these historicizing and universalizing impulses, and shows the roots of their approaches in earlier discussions of Greek tragedy in Germany, France, and England. By examining eighteenth-century readings of tragedy and the interactions between idealist thinkers in detail, Genealogy of the Tragic offers the most comprehensive historical account of the tragic to date, as well as the fullest explanation of why and how the idea was used to make sense of modernity. The book argues that idealist theories remain fundamental to contemporary interpretations of Greek tragedy, and calls for a renewed engagement with philosophical questions in criticism of tragedy. (shrink)

Lawrence's volume provides a detailed discussion and analyses of the moral awareness of major characters in Greek tragedy, focusing particularly on the characters' recognition of moral issues and crises, their ability to reflect on them, and their consciousness of doing so.

The word Eμενδες occurs six times in our texts of Greek tragedy and once as a play title . This may make ‘Eumenides in Greek tragedy’ sound like a restricted subject, but it is one that has seldom been discussed as a whole, and scholars have tended to consider each of the three plays in question in the light of unargued assumptions about the other two, and about the nature and affinities of Eumenides in general. I (...) shall begin with some introductory remarks on cults, since not all the information is readily available in reference books, and then discuss the three plays in turn, starting for convenience with the Orestes. (shrink)

It is now generally agreed that in Aristotle's Poetics, ch. 13 means ‘mistake of fact’. The moralizing interpretation favoured by our Victorian forebears and their continental counterparts was one of the many misunderstandings fostered by their moralistic society, and in our own enlightened erais revealed as an aberration. In challenging this orthodoxy I am not moved by any particular enthusiasm for Victoriana, nor do I want to revive the view that means simply ‘moral flaw’ or ‘morally wrong action’. I shall (...) try to show that the word has a range of applications, from ‘ignorance of fact’ at one end to ‘moral defect’, ‘moral error’, at the other, and that the modern orthodoxy, though not as clearly wrong as the moralizing interpretation it displaced, restricts Aristotle's meaning in a way he did not intend, and does lessthan justice to his analysis of classical drama. (shrink)

The present study is dedicated to the different interpretations of Greek tragedy proposed in the writing of G.W.F. Hegel. It explicates how and in what sense Hegel’s investigation in tragedy parallels the development of his philosophy from his early theological writings to his system of absolute idealism, and thereby defends the view that this investigation is linked to a concern with politics in the modern world.

Novelties introduced into traditional myths are an essential characteristic of Greek tragedy. Each and every play demonstrates, in different ways, how tragedians were versatile and innovative in handling mythic material. Modern prefaces to individual tragedies often discuss the possible innovations in the dramatization of a myth compared to previous or subsequent versions. Innovations advanced in a play sometimes became so familiar that they came to be regarded as ‘standard’. Such examples include the condemnation and death of the protagonist (...) in Sophocles’ Antigone and, in all likelihood, Medea's filicide in Euripides’ Medea. (shrink)

The word Eὐμεν⋯δες occurs six times in our texts of Greek tragedy (four times in Eur.Or., twice in Soph.O.C.) and once as a play title (Aesch.Eum.). This may make ‘Eumenides in Greek tragedy’ sound like a restricted subject, but it is one that has seldom been discussed as a whole, and scholars have tended to consider each of the three plays in question in the light of unargued assumptions about the other two, and about the nature (...) and affinities of Eumenides in general. I shall begin with some introductory remarks on cults, since not all the information is readily available in reference books, and then discuss the three plays in turn, starting for convenience with theOrestes. (shrink)

By looking at 15th/16th realistic noh and Greek tragedies through the lens of Aristotle and of each other, this comparison reveals a previously unnoticed relationship between the structure of the tragedies and their performance, that is, the involvement of the third actor at the climactic moments of the plot in both and the actor stepping out of character in noh. This observation helps to account for Aristotle’s view that tragedy be limited to three actors.

By looking at 15th/16th realistic noh and Greek tragedies through the lens of Aristotle and of each other, this comparison reveals a previously unnoticed relationship between the structure of the tragedies and their performance, that is, the involvement of the third actor at the climactic moments of the plot in both and the actor stepping out of character in noh. This observation helps to account for Aristotle’s view that tragedy be limited to three actors.

This book is a study of ancient views about 'moral luck'. It examines the fundamental ethical problem that many of the valued constituents of a well-lived life are vulnerable to factors outside a person's control, and asks how this affects our appraisal of persons and their lives. The Greeks made a profound contribution to these questions, yet neither the problems nor the Greek views of them have received the attention they deserve. This book thus recovers a central dimension of (...) Greek thought and addresses major issues in contemporary ethical theory. One of its most original aspects is its interrelated treatment of both literary and philosophical texts. The Fragility of Goodness has proven to be important reading for philosophers and classicists, and its non-technical style makes it accessible to any educated person interested in the difficult problems it tackles. This new edition features an entirely new preface by Martha Nussbaum. (shrink)