Interrupting speculation: The thinking of Heidegger and Greek tragedy

Despite his extended readings of parts of the Antigone of Sophocles, Heidegger nowhere explicitly sets about giving us a theory of tragedy or a detailed analysis of the essence of tragedy. The following paper seeks to piece together Heidegger's understanding of tragedy and tragic experience by looking to themes in his thinking – particularly his analyses of early Greek thinking – and connecting them both to his scattered references to tragedy and actual examples from Greek tragedy. What we find is that, for Heidegger, tragedy is an interruption of speculation, a refusal to philosophize, a way of showing how things are that resonates with the goal of Heidegger's own thinking.     

Philosophy's Tragedy

Is tragedy, as Nietzsche declared, dead? In recent years many philosophers have reconsidered tragedy's relation to philosophy. While tragedy is deemed to contain important lessons for philosophy, there is a consensus that it remains a thing of the past. This article calls this consensus into question, arguing that it reifies tragedy, keeping tragedy at arm's length. With the interest of identifying the necessity of tragedy to philosophy, it draws from Quentin Skinner to put forward an alternative approach to genre as living form. This approach alters our understanding of the philosopher at the heart of philosophy's dialogue with tragedy, Immanuel Kant. Moreover, it shows that tragedy is closer to contemporary philosophy than we might think.     

The Representation of an Action: Tragedy between Kant and Hegel

Hegel's theory of tragedy has polarized critics. In the past, many philosophers have claimed that Hegel's theory of tragedy removes Kant's critical insights and returns to pre‐critical metaphysics. More recently, several have argued that Hegel does not break faith with tragic experience but allows philosophy to be transformed by tragedy. In this paper I examine the strength of this revised position. First I show that it identifies Hegel's insightful critique of Kant's theoretical assumptions. Yet I then argue that it fails to note the practical importance of Kant's separation of knowledge and aesthetics. I propose an alternative approach to tragedy that builds from the revised view and yet maintains the autonomy of aesthetics. Tragedy represents an action, a set of events that are internally unified and yet cannot be reduced to theory. This is to say that tragedy confronts us with an aesthetic sphere of making and doing that, while constrained, is incessantly open and free.     

Awe,tragedy and the human condition

This article, reporting on research in progress on the nature of tragedy, falls into three sections. The first explores the concept of awe and relates it to contemporary thinking about spiritual education. The second identifies tragedy as an artistic form that evokes awe in response to the vision of the human condition that it presents. The theories of Aristotle and Nietzsche are examined in support of this view of tragedy. The third section looks at ways that tragedy can be taught in the classroom that allow space for students' emotional responses.     

God, Tragedy, and the Near-Death Experience: Evaluating Kushner's Perspectives on Theodicy

This article evaluates Harold Kushner's original and reconstructed perspectives on God and the theodicic problem on the basis of research on the near-death experience (NDE) and related phenomena. In response to a personal tragedy, Kushner reconstructed his thinking about God and tragedy from his original Causation-Power perspective to an Inspiration-Love perspective. The Causation-Power perspective posits that God causes human events and that tragic events do not actually contradict God's purpose or will, although tragic events may result from the human freedom to disobey God and suffer punitive consequences. In the Inspiration-Love perspective, human freedom expands to mean that God does not cause all events: God does not cause tragedy, suffers with the sufferer, and can intervene against tragic events only by inspiring people to cope with tragedy and care for others. Although the research findings are consistent with Kushner's emphasis on love and inspiration, the theme of divine power and purpose is also evident. Hence, Kushner should not have rejected entirely his early (Causation-Power) perspective. Identified in the research are forms of inspiration that Kushner did not take into account in his reconstructed (Inspiration-Love) view. The Causation-Power and Inspiration-Love perspectives seem incompatible and neither alone solves the theodicic problem. Nonetheless, they do complement one another; a resolution would permit an integrative understanding of God and tragedy.     

The Idea of the Tragic

For tragedy is a representation, not of man, but of actions and of life; the good or evil condition of men lies in action; and the telos is an action, not a characteristic. "The way people are" means their makeup; whether they are good or happy or the opposite means what they do. It is not in order to represent the human characteristics that performances are put on: characteristics, rather, are what are assumed in the dramatic performance of actions; since the deeds or story is the telos of tragedy, the telor being the most important thing.     

Tragedy and catharsis in the wake of the 911 attacks

We argue that the events of 11 september 2001 (911) should be understood as a tragedy in the Greek sense of the term. Contemporary US views of tragedy typically communicate a sense that little can be done to predict or explain catastrophic events. This leads to feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. Accordingly, traditional US psychological interventions focus upon ameliorative efforts only. In Greek notions of tragedy, however, the hero(ine) has a character flaw that contributes to his/her demise. Lessons are learned, and catharsis results. From the standpoint of the US as a tragic hero, psychological interventions should be both ameliorative and preventative. We contend that this overemphasis on ameliorative work and the limited views of terrorism's root causes are counterproductive. Indeed, we recommend that individual US psychologists and the American Psychological Association leadership engage in both ameliorative efforts and broadly conceived preventative work. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Contemplating Tragedy Raises Gratifications and Fosters Self‐Acceptance

Despite the reflective nature of tragedy, little research has focused on reflection's impact on “pleasure” and personal growth. Drawing from entertainment, literary, and health research, this study assessed the degree to which contemplating tragedy increases gratifications and promotes self‐acceptance. The moderating effects of life events were also examined. In an experiment, participants (N = 120) were randomly instructed to either watch a Hollywood drama and reflect, or only watch the movie (control). Results showed significant main effects on appreciation and enjoyment. Reflection increased gratifications for participants with remote loss (≥2 years) but not recent loss, and it strengthened the link between self‐perceptual depth and a 4‐week change in self‐compassion. The benefits and drawbacks of reflecting on tragedy are discussed.     

Accounting for the ‘tragedy’ in the Prisoner's Dilemma

The Prisoner's Dilemma (PD) exhibits a ‘tragedy’ in this sense: if the players are fully informed and rational, they are condemned to a jointly dispreferred outcome. In this essay I address the following question: What feature of the PD's payoff structure is necessary and sufficient to produce the tragedy? In answering it I use the notion of a “trembling-hand equilibrium”. In the final section I discuss an implication of my argument, an implication which bears on the persistence of the problem posed by the PD.     

A Theory of Tragic Experience According to Hegel

Abstract: Hegel's theory of tragedy is often considered to be primarily a theory of the objective powers involved in tragic conflicts—for Hegel, these are paradigmatically competing ethical notions—and of the rationality which underlies and drives such conflicts. Such a view follows naturally from a close reading of Hegel's discussion of classical Greek tragedy in his Lectures on Aesthetics. However, this view gives rise to the question of whether Hegel's theory of tragedy can account for the significance of tragic experience, in particular the experience of tragic suffering; it has been argued repeatedly that it cannot. In contrast, I want to suggest in this paper that a theory of tragic experience can be derived from Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. This Hegelian theory of tragic experience, I argue, should be understood as complementing rather than challenging Hegel's theory of objective tragic conflict.     

Vulnerable Creation: Vulnerable Human Life between Risk and Tragedy1

In this paper a theology of vulnerability is explored by describing three bridges between risk and tragedy. Conceptually, ontological and situational vulnerability will be explored as the basis of anthropological realism. Hermeneutically, a case study is done by interpreting the documentary film “Roadside Radiation,” which shows attempts to live a normal life in tragedy in the “death zone” around Chernobyl. The theological bridge unfolds a theological approach to vulnerability that grasps its processive character.     

In search of the silver lining: the justice motive fosters perceptions of benefits in the later lives of tragedy victims

Past research has demonstrated that people's need to perceive the world as fair and just leads them to blame and derogate victims of tragedy. The research reported here shows that a positive reaction--bestowing additional meaning on the lives of individuals who have suffered--can also serve people's need to believe that the world is just. In two studies, participants whose justice motive was temporarily heightened or who strongly endorsed the belief that reward and punishment are fairly distributed in the world perceived more meaning and enjoyment in the life of someone who had experienced a tragedy than in the life of someone who had not experienced tragedy, but this pattern was not found for participants whose justice motive was not heightened or who did not strongly endorse a justice belief. These results suggest that being motivated to see the world as just--a motivation traditionally associated with victim derogation--also leads people to perceive a "silver lining" to tragic events.     

Quantifying genre: an operational definition of tragedy and comedy based on Shakespeare's plays

Emotion and imagery in the words of Shakespeare's plays, as measured by the Dictionary of Affect in Language, were used to predict genre (tragedy or comedy). Genre distinctions, which were associated with small effect sizes, were established on the basis of 23 plays and then applied to other plays. A discriminant function which combined lower emotional Pleasantness with higher emotional Activation or arousal and more pictorial Imagery successfully (91% of the time) predicted whether a play was a tragedy or a comedy. The genre-discriminating formula provided meaningful categorizations of 23 additional plays. As hypothesized, comedies employed more Pleasant words than tragedies. Tragedies employed more Active words (p < .001). Unexpectedly, comedies rather than tragedies employed words with lower Imagery (greater Abstraction). The predicted elevation of language in tragedy was noted instead in the use of more verse, fewer common words, and fewer personal pronouns (less subjectivity).     

Psychoanalysis and the tragic sense of life

In this paper, psychoanalysis is compared to a phenomenological theory of tragedy in which tragedy is understood as a mode of viewing life that insists on a balance being maintained between human striving for rational understanding and the acceptance of certain irreducibly irrational elements of human experience. Many of the underlying assumptions of psychoanalysis are found to correspond closely to those of the tragic vision of life: the commitment to the search for truth and the understanding of individual experience, paired with a recognition of the inherent limitations of that search and the inevitable relativity of those truths; the belief in the possibility and importance of meaningful individual action without any avoidance of the powerfully determining influence of personal history, prehistory, and intrapsychic structure; the focus on the irreversibly forward flow of time, and the resultant reality of loss that is an absolute dimension of the very process of living. These issues are explored with particular attention to the roles of transference, repressed endopsychic structure, and termination within the psychoanalytic process.     

Fiction,Pleasurable Tragedy,and the HOT Theory of Consciousness

Abstract

The ‘feeling fiction problem’ asks: is it rational to be moved by what happens to fictional characters? The so-called ‘paradox of tragedy’ is embodied in the question: Why or how is it that we take pleasure in artworks which are clearly designed to cause in us such feelings as sadness and fear? My focus in this paper is to examine these problems from the point of view of the so-called ‘higher-order thought theory of consciousness’ (HOT theory) which says that the best explanation for what makes a mental state conscious is that it is accompanied by a thought that one is in that state. I examine the feeling fiction problem in light of the HOT theory and through a critique of Colin Radford's view. For example, I argue that Radford equivocates in his use of the term ‘aware’ in his response to some of the proposed solutions to the feeling fiction problem. Finally, I show how Susan Feagin's approach to the paradox of tragedy can be analysed and supported by the HOT theory.     

The Tragedy of the Few

In this article I elaborate and defend a rights-based understanding of climate politics, that is, one that takes climate politics to concern the rights to access of natural resources as opposed to people’s economic incentives. The argument contains two parts. The first is negative: to demonstrate that the tragedy of the commons as a story of climate change is inadequate. The second is positive: to suggest a more satisfactory framework, which I call the tragedy of the few. In this view, climate politics is neither primarily mitigation nor economic incentive politics, but one of distributing rights to access natural resources in a fair and environmentally-friendly way. By changing both the narrative and underlying methodological assumptions, my goal is to enable us to accommodate the rights to access natural resources as a key moral issue in climate politics. I begin by sketching the main features of the tragedy of the commons and demonstrate its inadequacy. I then provide an account of the rights-based view of climate change that consists of two arguments. First, I demonstrate the normative side of the argument by highlighting the importance of environmental rights, and second, I outline the empirical side of the argument by discussing recent studies on the properties of natural resources and on the corporate agents who extract the resources that emit greenhouse gasses.     

Risky Subjectivity: Antigone,Action, and Universal Trespass

In this paper, I draw on the mutually implicated structures of tragedy and self-formation found in Hegel’s use of Sophocles’ Antigone in the Phenomenology. By emphasizing the apparent distinction between particular and universal in Hegel’s reading of the tragedies in Antigone, I propose that a tragedy of action (which particularizes a universal) is inescapable for subjectivity understood as socially constituted and always already socially engaged. I consider universal/particular relations in three communities: Hegel’s Greek polis, his community of conscience, and my reading of certain feminist communities. The position I propose establishes a ground from which to approach subjects, and implies that all subjects may be understood as the result of relations embodying potential tragedy. This speaks to contemporary concerns about marginalization, identity articulation, and relations of recognition.

PHILOSOPHY AS TRAGEDY OR WHAT WORDS WON'T GIVE

This article examines Cavell's problematic understanding of scepticism and the knowledge of other minds with respect to his long preoccupation with tragedy. I point to the meta‐philosophical questions Cavell continually raises but fails to address such that a philosophy as tragedy is frequently announced. Taking the same meta‐philosophical questions raised by the inability of words to give us access to certain knowledge, I then rethink this problematic theologically. I show the way Cavell hints at a Christology and a doctrine of analogy neither of which he develops. In developing these two theologoumenon I make some observations on the relationship between theology, philosophy and the endemic potential of the tragic.     

AIDS Group Psychotherapy

Abstract

Clinical data are presented from a day spent at a New Jersey high school severely impacted by the World Trade Center disaster. Dissociation, a sense of numbness, anger, and guilt about feelings induced by the tragedy are all common dynamics in adolescents responding to trauma. The developmental issues that adolescents are confronting are described and discussed in terms of the challenges they present to the healing process. An argument is made that using groups to aid in the long recovery process with our young people should be a top public health priority.