Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us

1. Tragedy Reveals Our Fragility and Dependency

Tragedy shows what is perishable, what is fragile, and what is slow moving about us.

Emergency brake. Tragedy serves as an "emergency brake" in a fast-paced world, forcing us to confront our limitations and the transient nature of existence. It slows us down, making us aware of what we often ignore: our mortality and the power of the past.

Vulnerable exposure. Tragedy highlights our dependency on others, particularly within familial and kinship structures. It reveals the vulnerability of the self and the often-unacknowledged patterns that shape our lives. Even when we believe we know our origins, tragedy exposes the unknown aspects of our identities and relationships.

Sympathy with the enemy. The oldest extant piece of theater, Aeschylus’s The Persians, demonstrates the importance of sympathy, even for the defeated enemy. This perspective is a crucial lesson for our time, where constant warfare and lack of understanding often prevail.

2. Fate Requires Our Freedom

Tragedy requires some degree of complicity on our part in the disaster that destroys us.

Collusion with calamity. Tragedy isn't merely misfortune; it involves our unwitting participation in the events that lead to our downfall. This complicity suggests that fate isn't a predetermined path but a consequence of our choices and actions.

Oedipus's example. The tragedy of Oedipus illustrates how we conspire with our fate. Despite knowing the prophecy, Oedipus's actions, driven by a sense of freedom, ultimately fulfill his destiny. This highlights the core contradiction of tragedy: knowing and not knowing simultaneously.

Conspiring with fate. Tragedy teaches that fate requires our freedom to manifest. Characters aren't puppets but agents who, through their choices, bring about their own destruction. This underscores the complex interplay between freedom and necessity in defining our being.

3. Tragedy Exposes the Disjunctions of Truth

Tragedy invites its audience to look at such disjunctions between two or more claims to truth, justice, or whatever without immediately seeking a unifying ground or reconciling the phenomena into a higher unity.

Invitational "we". Tragedy extends an invitation to its audience to become part of a "we," a community summoned and questioned by ancient drama. This "we" is not necessarily existent but represents a potential for new understanding and transformation.

Reinventing the classics. Each generation must reinvent the classics to speak to the present and challenge the endless production of the new. This reinvention is a responsibility that allows for the imagination of different human possibilities.

Disjunctions of truth. Tragedy invites us to examine disjunctions between conflicting claims to truth and justice without seeking immediate reconciliation. This approach provokes thinking and allows for a deeper understanding of complex phenomena.

4. Grief and Rage Are the Wellsprings of Tragedy

Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief.

Rage follows grief. Tragedy is born from the rage that follows grief, often stemming from war and violence. Characters like Antigone, Clytemnestra, and Hecuba exemplify this dynamic, their actions fueled by profound loss and injustice.

War's devastating effects. The history of Greek tragedy is intertwined with war, from the Persian Wars to the Peloponnesian Wars. These conflicts shaped the themes and narratives of the plays, reflecting the devastating impact of war on human life.

Complicity in disaster. Tragedy exposes our complicity in the disasters that unfold in the world. It challenges us to acknowledge our role in perpetuating cycles of violence and grief, rather than simply condemning them.

5. Tragedy Is Wisdom Through Deception

Tragedy, by means of legends and emotions, creates a deception in which the deceiver is more honest than the non-deceiver, and the deceived is wiser than the nondeceived.

Acquiring wisdom through deception. Tragedy offers wisdom through deception, an emotionally charged experience that generates powerful emotions. This perspective contrasts with philosophy's emphasis on reason and truth.

Conjuring ghostly illusion. Tragedy involves a kind of necromancy, conjuring ghostly illusions that blur the line between the living and the dead. This creates an otherworldly state that is both enthralling and unsettling.

Moral and political productivity of deception. Tragedy raises questions about the necessity and productivity of deception, fiction, and illusion. It challenges the Platonic and Christian moralization of truth, suggesting that deception can reveal deeper truths.

6. Justice Is Conflict, Reason Is Limited

In tragedy justice is conflict.

Justice as conflict. Tragedy portrays justice as a conflict between opposing parties, each prepared to act violently in its name. This highlights the inherent divisions and complexities of justice.

Adversarial reasoning. Tragedy employs "adversary reasoning," where we consider the adversary's position and use reason to understand the other side. This process often takes place in law courts or legal disputes within the plays.

Weakness of rational argumentation. Tragedy reveals the limitations of rational argumentation in the face of violence. It acknowledges the persistence of arbitrary decision-making and the fragility of reason in a world of conflict.

7. Tragedy Is a Dialectical Mode of Experience

Tragedy is a dialectical mode of experience.

Implication and responsibility. Tragedy is a dialectical mode of experience that implicates us in the conflicts of the present and holds us responsible for them. It shows our complicity with disaster and challenges us to see our role in unfolding events.

Reversal, inversion, and negation. Tragedy involves reversal, inversion, and negation, implicating us at each step. It is a staging of dialectics, offering a bracing, skeptical realism that qualifies hope and deepens it into courage.

Beyond the theater. Tragedy is not confined to the theater but extends to film, television, politics, and our domestic lives. It is a mode of experience that can be found in various aspects of human existence.

8. Tragedy Queers Norms and Troubles Gender

For women there is liberty in tragedy—liberty in death.

Sex war. If the frame of tragedy is war, then it is a sex war. Tragedy constantly disturbs the norm in the interest of the deviant, but at the same time, we must be aware that under the deviant, the norm is often silently present.

Ambiguous glory. Tragedy presents an ambiguous representation of gender, where women's glory is often realized only in death. This raises questions about the norms of patriarchy and their subversion within the plays.

Instability of gender identity. Tragedy queers norms and troubles gender. Figures like Antigone represent the instability and fragility of gender identity, challenging traditional notions of sexual difference and kinship structures.

9. The Gods Represent Forces Beyond Our Control

Human action must be aligned with the power of fate, which is more than human.

Doubling of human and divine. Tragedy operates on two levels, human and divine, requiring characters to align their actions with fate. This highlights the limits of human autonomy and the influence of forces beyond our control.

Placeholder for forces. The gods in tragedy are placeholders for forces that exceed human agency, such as the weight of the past or the determination of our being by fate. They represent powers that can destroy individuals and shape their destinies.

Rejection of salvation. Tragedy rejects the notion of salvation, emphasizing the precariousness of existence and the limitations of human control. It challenges modern theological shibboleths like faith in progress.

10. Tragedy Challenges Moral Psychology

Tragedy is the enactment of the varieties of psychical disintegration.

Critique of psychical integration. Tragedy challenges the idea of moral psychology and the project of psychical integration, where the psyche is moralized and unified. Instead, it portrays characters at war with themselves and in states of profound contradiction.

Varieties of psychical disintegration. Tragedy enacts the varieties of psychical disintegration, showing human beings at odds with themselves, fate, and each other. This offers a more realistic view of the human condition than philosophies that aspire to psychic unity.

Conflict and contradiction. Tragedy describes a state of affairs where human beings are in conflict and contradiction, challenging theories that aspire to the unity of the psyche and morality. It highlights the frailty of reason in the face of powerful forces.

11. Tragedy's Philosophy Opposes Philosophy's Tragedy

Tragedy’s philosophy is sophistry.

Exclusion of tragedy. Philosophy, beginning with Plato, is premised on the exclusion of tragedy and the range of experiences we call tragic. This exclusion is itself tragic, representing philosophy's tragedy.

Giving voice to suffering. Tragedy gives voice to what suffers in us and others, allowing us to become cognizant of that suffering. It articulates a philosophical view that challenges the authority of philosophy by highlighting our contradictions and limitations.

Sophistry as tragedy's philosophy. Tragedy's philosophy is sophistry, embracing partial agency, limited autonomy, deep traumatic affect, agonistic conflict, gender confusion, political complexity, and moral ambiguity. This challenges the stability of the distinction between philosophy and sophistry.

Last updated: April 20, 2025