Tragedy and the Idea of Modernity

Description

From around 1800, particularly in Germany, Greek tragedy has been privileged in popular and scholarly discourse for its relation to apparently timeless metaphysical, existential, ethical, aesthetic, and psychological questions. As a major concern of modern philosophy, it has fascinated thinkers including Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger. Such theories have arguably had a more profound influence on modern understanding of the genre than works of classical scholarship or theatrical performances. Tragedy and the Idea of Modernity considers this tradition of philosophy in relation to the ancient Greek works themselves, and mediates between the concerns of classicists and those of intellectual historians and philosophers. The volume is organized into sections treating issues of poetics, politics and culture, and canonicity, and contributions by an interdisciplinary range of scholars consider themes of catharsis, the sublime, politics, and reconciliation, spanning 2,500 years of literature and philosophy. Although firmly anchored in the classical tradition, the volume suggests that the tradition of philosophical thought concerning tragedy has a major place in understandings both of ancient tragedy and of modernity itself. Cover Tragedy and the Idea of Modernity Copyright Acknowledgements Contents List of Contributors Introduction Part I: Tragic Poetics 1: Jacob Bernays and the Catharsis of Modernity 1. Bernays´s Theory of Vital Affections 2. Tragic Catharsis 3. Catharsis beyond the Medical Model 4. From Catharsis to the Sublime 5. Cultural Contingencies of Catharsis 2: The Aesthetics of Tragedy: Romantic Perspectives 1. The Problem of Aesthetic Autonomy 2. Tragic Irony 3. Dramatic Ambiguity 4. Transcendental Dramatics 5. Meta-Theatre 3: Paradoxon: On the Sublimity of Tragedy in Hölderlin and Some Contemporaries 4: Tragedy and Trauerspiel: Too Alike? 5: Leben und Glück: Modernity and Tragedy in Walter Benjamin, Hölderlin, and Sophocles Part II: Tragic Cultures 6: Tragedy with and without Religion: Hegelian Thoughts 7: The (Operatic) Tragedy of Culture: Notes on a Theme in Kierkegaard, Hebbel, and Wagner 1. Prologue 2. Reinventing Antigone 3. The Three Fates of Modernism 4. An Excursion, or Notes on Alceste 5. Epilogue 8: Heidegger´s Antigone: Ethics and Politics 9: Carl Schmitt: Tragedy and the Intrusion of History 10: The Tragic Voice of Pascal Quignard Part III: Tragic 11: The Ends of Tragedy: Schelling, Hegel, and Oedipus 12: The Tragedy of Misrecognition: The Desire for a Catholic Shakespeare and Hegel´s Hamlet 1. We Need a Sophocles of the Differentiated World 2. Unbearable Contingency: Hegel´s Hamlet 3. Hegel Likes a Happy Ending 4. Hamlet Is A Lost Man 5. Hamlet´s Multiple Misrecognitions 13: Margins of Genre: Walter Benjamin and the Idea of Tragedy 1. Ideas of Tragedy 2. Margins of Trauerspiel 3. Origin and Constellation 14: Williams on Nietzsche on the Greeks 1 2 3 4 5 6 Epilogue: Tragedy and Modernity, Closing Thoughts Appendix: Jacob Bernays, ‘Outlines of Aristotle’s Lost Work on the Effects of Tragedy’, sect. IV Translated by James I. Porter [40/171] IV References Index