The Renaissance of Tragedy And the Tragic Sense of Law

Once this Platonic history of philosophy is acknowledged, it is easy to see that a reaffirmation (by philosophy) of tragedy comes down to nothing less than philosophical suicide. Plato and tragedy imply a radically different cosmology. After tragedy was banished by Plato Aristotle could safely reintroduce it to the polis, but only as an innocent and irrelevant realm of art, as moral lesson and as pleasurable entertainment. After Plato philosophy could well afford to basically ignore tragedy.

In modern times, in Descartes and Kant tragedy is first completely absent. It was Hegel who reintroduced the existence and development of genuine contradictions in a reality full of negativities. Being one-sided and estranged from ‘the absolute’ (Geist), tragic deeds in them themselves engender contradictions and represent tragic guilt. For Hegel the contending parties and what they stand for (family and state) are both equally justified. Although in tragedy (Hegel refers to Antigone) the tragic individual is sacrificed, the final outcome of tragic negativity is absolute justice, in which the previous oppositions are surpassed and retained at the same time. All’s well that ends well, Hegel seems to be saying. Besides tragic conflict a tragedy must have the necessary reconciliation (Versöhnung) in which all tragic ambiguities and negativities are resolved. ‘Erst in der gleichen Unterwerfung beider Seiten ist das absolute Recht vollbracht.‘ (PhG 337)

Since Hegel’s interpretation and again under the strong influence of tragic literature (Dostojewski), philosophy could no longer disregard or ‘exorcize’ tragedy. Nietzsche especially acknowledged the tragic sense of life, but with his famous input, the challenge and problem of harmonization again came to the fore, as is all too clear from both Heidegger and Derrida. Although it is not always recognized as such, contemporary philosophy is littered and tormented with the problem of tragedy. Acknowledging that the one cannot stand without the other, can there be some sort of reconciliation between the two?

Tragedy represents the fundamental and disturbing experience that the cosmos and human life are subject to dark and elusive forces which lie outside the governance of reason or justice. Irreducible ambiguities and contradictions direct our world. Our rational means of understanding this cosmos produce only so many ‘castles in the sky’: bulwarks of fantasy meant to defend us against the threatening worlds of tragedy. The tragic sense of life is also at a great distance from most modern worldviews, governed as they are by rational values such as justice, transparency and intelligibility. The deep belief of modern politics in a predictable, controllable and perfectible world, our faith in deliberation and reason, contradicts the Greek insight that many private and public dimensions of life are fundamentally beyond our insight and control. To ignore this or (which comes down to doing the same) to try to domesticate tragedy in a harmonious worldview is potentially dangerous, for individuals as well as for communities. We need to cope with tragedy, although this certainly implies that we have to let go many of our most treasured thoughts and intuitions. 

This tragic worldview was expressed in the great tragedies of Greek antiquity: first and foremost by those of The Great Three: Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides (although, according to Nietzsche, the last one is supposed to have succumbed to a ‘aesthetic socratism’ in which tragedy proper is already on the wane). After the golden age of tragedy ended, tragedy barely survived within the tragic worldview in the Judeo-Christian tradition, which was not always recognized as such (see Georg Steiner et al.). Different factors, both political, philosophical and theological, brought on the ever-decreasing importance of tragic modes of thought in modern times. But as indicated, since Hegel philosophy has seen a remarkable renaissance of the tragic legacy. At a time of unbridled belief in the possibilities of thought, science, politics and technology, the ancient Greeks have been of unique value in calling to mind the dangers involved in suppressing those aspects of human life that defy the authority of reason and reasonable deliberation. Especially through Nietzsche’s extremely important The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music (1872) the tragic sense of life has again inspired artists, thinkers and scholars to cast-off the dogma’s and inflexibilities of reason.

Philosophy more and more gave up its obsession with a beautiful conception of truth that ignores and endangers life. It has sought to find knowledge and justice in the irrational, paradoxical and abysmal dimensions of life. Fiat vita pereat veritas. Instead of: ‘Let the truth be done and let life perish’ (Fiat veritas, pereat vita). Applied to justice this means: Fiat mundus, pereat justitia. Instead of: Fiat justitia, et pereat mundus (‘Let justice be done, and let the world perish’).