This article identifies a double allusion to the tragic characters of Phaedra and Eriphyle in Amm. Marc. 14.1.3 and considers its possible meanings. In combination, these allusions evoke the double nature of the story of Eriphyle, therefore functioning as a reference to the double nature of Caesar Gallus’ depiction in Ammianus. The double allusion consequently forms part of Ammianus’ tragic style throughout Book 14. Having identified the presence of this double allusion, the article illuminates its possible meaning (...) by connecting Ammianus’ passage to the Virgilian rewriting of the description of Eriphyle in Homer. (shrink)

This essay attempts a reevaluation of the use of Greek tragedy in Vergil's Aeneid, drawing on recent advances in the study of literary allusion and on current approaches to Greek drama which emphasize the importance of social context. I argue that extensive allusions to the figure of Ajax in the Aeneid serve as a subtext for the construction of the personae of Dido and Turnus. The allusive presence of Ajax attests to the existence of a tragic register in (...) the epic, which intersects with and complicates the multiple allusive registers within the poem. Moreover, I propose that a detailed examination of Vergil's manipulation of tragedy's articulation of socio-political and ideological problems may in turn illuminate the Aeneid as a national epic and its much-contested relationship with Augustan ideology. More specifically, I argue that issues of identity and moral action explored in Sophocles' Ajax are crucial in the cases of Dido and Turnus, who similarly find themselves in conflict with and unable to adapt to the new social and political structure of Aeneas' new order. Like Ajax, Dido and Turnus define themselves through constant reference to their relationship with their people. All three, however, engage in action which pits them against the interests of their communities and which results in their complete isolation. Unable to adjust their behavioral code to ensure their survival, Dido and Turnus embody a heroic ideal which, though laudable, can have no place in Aeneas' Roman future. Vergil thus mobilizes a tragic allusive register in order to illustrate the tension between the celebration of this ideal and the realization that social change has rendered it obsolete. At the same time, the loss of the ideals that Dido and Turnus represent necessitates the articulation of a comparable, if not superior, ethical code which Aeneas is called on to embody. Allusive evidence linking Aeneas to the tragic Ajax, however, seems to indicate Aeneas' failure to emerge as a superior moral force in the poem. (shrink)

Berenicen statim ab urbe dimisit invitus invitam.As for Berenice, he immediately dismissed her from the city against his will, against her will. Suetonius' laconic description of Titus' dismissal of his consort, the Herodian Berenice, after his accession to the Principate has attracted the attention of readers across the centuries. The biographer's use of polyptoton, invitus invitam, to describe the mental states of the Roman princeps and Judaean princess has been read as particularly moving. Perhaps most notably, Racine turned the emperor's (...) banishment of his lover into the central dilemma of his tragedy Bérénice. At the start of his preface to the text of the play, the dramatist amalgamates this sentence with another from earlier in the chapter, retaining the striking repetition, ‘Titus reginam Berenicen cui etiam nuptias pollicitus ferebatur, statim ab Urbe dimisit invitus invitam’. Racine claims that this account of the dismissal of Berenice provides appropriate subject matter for tragic poetry and, to support his case, he compares Virgil's treatment of the separation of Aeneas and Dido to the situation of Titus and Berenice. Suetonius is not normally read as a literarily sophisticated writer, but we should take a cue from Racine's response to this sentence. In this article, I argue that Suetonius himself chose to compare Titus and Berenice with Dido and Aeneas by an allusion in this sentence to Virgil's Aeneid and to Catullus' translation of the Coma Berenices. Within a rather matter-of-fact presentation of the relationship between the Flavian emperor and his Herodian consort, Suetonius evoked a more dramatic model. (shrink)

Tragic allusions to contemporary events are not, as a rule, taken on trust, but the Eumenides of Aeschylus provides three notable exceptions. The view that the Athenian-Argive alliance of 462 B.C. is reflected in Eum. 287–91, 667–73, anc^ 762–74 has won wide acceptance, although no systematic theory of the relation between the drama and the historical context has yet been advanced. If demonstration in detail has been wanting, the view seems to be supported by three general considerations. In (...) the first place, the emphasis put on the dramatic declaration of friendship exceeds the requirements of the plot: the acquittal of Orestes rather than his gesture of gratitude to Athens is the natural climax of this part of the drama, 1–777, and yet the gesture has been considered important enough to be heralded twice before it is actually made in 762–74. Secondly, Orestes' declaration is not limited in duration but binding on his successors in perpetuity; it seems, therefore, to have been deliberately formulated in order to react upon historical fact. Thirdly, in instituting the Council of the Areopagus and dwelling upon the importance of its constitutional function , Aeschylus seems to have gone out of his way to pass judgement of some sort on the recent reforms of Ephialtes and Pericles; the theory that he has also appreciated their foreign policy on the tragic stage is thus relieved of some of the obvious practical objections and made inherently more plausible. (shrink)

Tragic allusions to contemporary events are not, as a rule, taken on trust, but the Eumenides of Aeschylus provides three notable exceptions. The view that the Athenian-Argive alliance of 462 B.C. is reflected in Eum. 287–91, 667–73, anc^ 762–74 has won wide acceptance, although no systematic theory of the relation between the drama and the historical context has yet been advanced. If demonstration in detail has been wanting, the view seems to be supported by three general considerations. In (...) the first place, the emphasis put on the dramatic declaration of friendship exceeds the requirements of the plot: the acquittal of Orestes rather than his gesture of gratitude to Athens is the natural climax of this part of the drama, 1–777, and yet the gesture has been considered important enough to be heralded twice before it is actually made in 762–74. Secondly, Orestes' declaration is not limited in duration but binding on his successors in perpetuity; it seems, therefore, to have been deliberately formulated in order to react upon historical fact. Thirdly, in instituting the Council of the Areopagus and dwelling upon the importance of its constitutional function, Aeschylus seems to have gone out of his way to pass judgement of some sort on the recent reforms of Ephialtes and Pericles; the theory that he has also appreciated their foreign policy on the tragic stage is thus relieved of some of the obvious practical objections and made inherently more plausible. (shrink)

C. A. J. Littlewood approaches Seneca's tragedies as Neronian literature rather than as reworkings of Attic drama, and emphasizes their place in the Roman world and in the Latin literary corpus. The Greek tragic myths are for Seneca mediated by non-dramatic Augustan literature. In literary terms Phaedra's desire, Hippolytus' innocence, and Hercules' ambivalent heroism look back through allusion to Roman elegy, pastoral, and epic respectively. Ethically, the artificiality of Senecan tragedy, the consciousness that its own dramatic worlds, events, and (...) people are literary constructs, responds to the contemporary Stoical dismissal of the public world as mere theatre. (shrink)

This article interrogates the concepts of faith, the ethical, and tragedy in Fear and Trembling by examining Johannes De Silentio’s allusions to heroic characters. I argue that these heroes are emblematic of faith or tragedy through their orientation to a promise in their respective mythic narratives. Abraham’s faith in the covenant with God commits him to the reconcilability of virtue and the good life, while the tragic heroes’ commitments to the ethical reveal their inability to transcend the ( (...) class='Hi'>tragic) presumption that virtue and the good life are ultimately incommensurable. I conclude by sketching a politics corresponding to De Silentio’s conception of tragedy. (shrink)

A foremost critic of the English language here reflects on beauty and the language that it inspires in authors from Kant to Keats, Hawthorne to Housman. "An excellent and eloquent book.”--James Wood, New York Times Book Review "A beautiful book about beauty. Enormously learned, allusive, recuperative, and citational, it is a passionate meditation on what has been said about beauty in the West from the Greeks to the present day.”--J. Hillis Miller "Donoghue talks... with a delightful informality and absence of (...) dogma.... One of the most charming features of Denis Donoghue’s book is his appendix of 'afterwords,’ brief quotations on beauty from sundry writers.”--John Bayley, New York Review of Books "Continuously fascinating, continuously readable, the book speaks of beauty, and of speakers of beauty, in its own calm, steady voice. You won’t want to lay it down.”--Hugh Kenner. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to explore the problem of human sacrifice in Euripides’ tragedy Iphigenia among the Taurians. Although the archaeological surveys indicate that this type of sacrifices was not practiced in archaic and classical Greece, we find them repeatedly in Greek literature, in general, and more especially in the tragic genre, of which this work is a finished example. In this sense, we will focus our study on the role of allusions and references to human (...) sacrifice in the tragedy, especially within the prologue, since we understand that it constitutes a central issue to the plot, as not only it relates to Iphigenia's past but also conforms a constant threat to the other characters. (shrink)

The sting to Aristophanes’ ‘little tale’ inWasps(λογίδιον,Vesp.64) materializes from the comedy's interplay with theOresteia. This article argues that Aristophanes alludes to bothAgamemnonandEumenidesin the scenes running up to (and including) the trial scene, and that he exploits this intertext in the cloak scene (Vesp.1122–264). While isolated allusions to theOresteiahave been identified inWasps, a systematic consideration of these references has not been undertaken: a surprising absence in discussions of the ongoing competition between the comic and the tragic genres permeatingWasps’ dramatic (...) action. Moreover, Aristophanes’ engagement with theOresteiaoffers a special type of tragic intertext, in which the first and the last plays of a connected trilogy are referenced simultaneously, provocatively destabilizing the original. Furthermore, this allusion has implications for our understanding of a scene which recent scholarship has established as pivotal within the comedy, namely the cloak scene. The first part of this article, therefore, establishes the extent ofWasps’ engagement with theOresteiaand considers the significance of the ‘pastiche’ formed through the combined intertextual references toAgamemnonand toEumenides. The second part explores the impact of this intertext on the interpretation of the cloak scene, revealing that its use of costume can be understood as a criticism of Aeschylus’ dramaturgy, inviting a negative reading of Bdelycleon's ideological stance and reinforcing the play's pessimistic view of the Athenian law courts. (shrink)

This paper is as much about a particular depiction of the tribune P. Sulpicius Rufus as it is about Cicero's De Oratore, a dialogue regularly called upon by historians to give evidence on the 90s b.c. and the characters who take part in the conversation it depicts. My main focus is literary: I will argue that, given what we know about the historical Sulpicius, Cicero's choice of Sulpicius for a prominent minor role in De Oratore drives the tragic historical (...) framework that undercuts the optimism expressed within the dialogue by the main protagonist L. Licinius Crassus for the civic value of oratory. The Rhetorica ad Herennium illustrates a certain type of allegory with the statement ‘as if one should call Drusus a “faded reflection of the Gracchi”’. In De Oratore, Drusus’ friend and successor Sulpicius functions as a reflection of the Gracchi and his eloquence reinforces the problem posed by such orators as the notoriously eloquent Gaius Gracchus for any such grand claims about the civic value of oratory. By examining Cicero's use of relatively recent history, we therefore discover that De Oratore is significantly more pessimistic than it may at first seem. This pessimism, however, has important implications for historians, since expanding our understanding of De Oratore as a literary construct should encourage historians to be significantly more cautious about using the text as a historical source. As Görler points out with regard to Crassus’ swansong at De or. 3.4–5, although ‘a naive reader of Oratorum Romanorum Fragmenta could be left with the impression that some sentences are quite well attested’, most of the fragments of Crassus’ speech can actually be traced back to De Oratore. Likewise, a significant proportion of the standard elements in Sulpicius’ backstory go back to De Oratore and become a great deal less convincing once we accept De Oratore as a sustained fictional account featuring people who were neither as politically ‘safe’ nor as intellectually united as Cicero would have them be. My secondary focus in this paper is therefore on the broader lessons to be drawn from Sulpicius’ role in De Oratore. I will begin by outlining the historical context of the dialogue, which was written in the mid 50s but is set in 91, a few weeks before the natural death of Crassus, one of its two protagonists. Next, I will discuss the dialogue's literary context, specifically the Platonic allusions Cicero embeds within the text. These allusions encourage us to treat De Oratore’s historical framework carefully, if not sceptically, and I will outline the ‘off notes’ struck by references to the Gracchi and by the presentation of Crassus and Antonius before examining the problem Sulpicius poses for a straightforwardly optimistic reading of De Oratore. I will conclude by considering first the literary implications for De Oratore of accepting that Sulpicius is a deliberately problematic character and then the historical implications of taking a sceptical approach towards De Oratore as an historical source for our picture of Sulpicius. (shrink)

There is a concern that the widespread deployment of autonomous machines will open up a number of ‘responsibility gaps’ throughout society. Various articulations of such techno-responsibility gaps have been proposed over the years, along with several potential solutions. Most of these solutions focus on ‘plugging’ or ‘dissolving’ the gaps. This paper offers an alternative perspective. It argues that techno-responsibility gaps are, sometimes, to be welcomed and that one of the advantages of autonomous machines is that they enable us to embrace (...) certain kinds of responsibility gap. The argument is based on the idea that human morality is often tragic. We frequently confront situations in which competing moral considerations pull in different directions and it is impossible to perfectly balance these considerations. This heightens the burden of responsibility associated with our choices. We cope with the tragedy of moral choice in different ways. Sometimes we delude ourselves into thinking the choices we make were not tragic ; sometimes we delegate the tragic choice to others ; sometimes we make the choice ourselves and bear the psychological consequences. Each of these strategies has its benefits and costs. One potential advantage of autonomous machines is that they enable a reduced cost form of delegation. However, we only gain the advantage of this reduced cost if we accept that some techno-responsibility gaps are virtuous. (shrink)

This paper outlines and defends a notion of tragic-remorse. This moral emotion properly accompanies those actions that involve unavoidable moral wrongdoing in general and dirty hands scenarios in particular. Tragic-remorse differs both phenomenologically and conceptually from regret, agent-regret and remorse. By recognising the existence of tragic-remorse, we are better able to account for our complex moral reality which at times makes it necessary for good persons to act in ways that although justified leave the agent with a (...) moral stain and a particular emotional response. (shrink)

This is the masterpiece of Miguel de Unamuno, a member of the group of Spanish intellectuals and philosophers known as the "Generation of '98," and a writer ...

This note addresses the longstanding question of whether Parmenides B6.9 should be read as an allusion to Heraclitus B51. It offers a response to some recent objections that have been raised against such a reading, and in particular draws attention to the reception context of both texts, a topic that has been largely overlooked in the scholarship on this issue.

This paper outlines and defends a notion of 'tragic-remorse'. This moral emotion properly accompanies those actions that involve unavoidable moral wrongdoing in general and dirty hands scenarios in particular. Tragic-remorse differs both phenomenologically and conceptually from regret, agent-regret and remorse. By recognising the existence of tragic-remorse, we are better able to account for our complex moral reality which at times makes it necessary for good persons to act in ways that although justified leave the agent with a (...) moral stain and a particular emotional response. (shrink)

_A moving meditation on recent geopolitical crises, viewed through the lens of ancient and modern tragedy__ “Spare, elegant and poignant.... If there is a single contemporary book that should be pressed into the hands of those who decide issues of war and peace, this is it.”—John Gray, _New Statesman_ “It is tragic that Robert D. Kaplan’s luminous _The Tragic Mind_ is so urgently needed.”—George F. Will_ Some books emerge from a lifetime of hard-won knowledge. Robert D. Kaplan has (...) learned, from a career spent reporting on wars, revolutions, and international politics in Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia, that the essence of geopolitics is tragedy. In _The Tragic Mind_, he employs the works of ancient Greek dramatists, Shakespeare, German philosophers, and the modern classics to explore the central subjects of international politics: order, disorder, rebellion, ambition, loyalty to family and state, violence, and the mistakes of power. The great dilemmas of international politics, he argues, are not posed by good versus evil—a clear and easy choice—but by contests of good versus good, where the choices are often searing, incompatible, and fraught with consequences. A deeply learned and deeply felt meditation on the importance of lived experience in conducting international relations, this is a book for everyone who wants a profound understanding of the tragic politics of our time. (shrink)

This paper outlines and defends a notion of ‘tragic-remorse’. This moral emotion properly accompanies those actions that involve unavoidable moral wrongdoing in general and dirty hands scenarios in particular. Tragic-remorse differs both phenomenologically and conceptually from regret, agent-regret and remorse. By recognising the existence of tragic-remorse, we are better able to account for our complex moral reality which at times makes it necessary for good persons to act in ways that although justified leave the agent with a (...) moral stain and a particular emotional response. (shrink)

In 2004 The New York Times launched a weekly Times Supplement with Taiwan’s United Daily News. This article aims to explore non-lexicalized allusion variation between TS headlines and NYT headlines as a discourse strategy. A textual survey was conducted on a corpus comprising 605 TS news articles and their corresponding NYT articles. Non-lexicalized allusions were identified and explored within a reader-oriented approach. And a stylistic analysis was performed to explore cognitive, pragmatic, and rhetorical roles of non-lexicalized allusions in (...) the corpus. The results show that non-lexicalized allusions occur in far fewer TS than NYT headlines. The allusion downsizing increases the accessibility of TS headlines to general TS readers at the cost of cultural diverseness and stylistic expressiveness in the headline language, making the language of TS headlines stylistically more restricted and culturally less Western. NYT headline language exemplifies English as a native language, whereas TS headline language is a specific genre of English as an international language. This article also discusses cultural implications of non-lexicalized allusions for EIL learning. It is pointed out that EIL is an integration of elements of all varieties of English involved in international or intercultural discourse. The cultural knowledge behind non-lexicalized allusions dealt with in this article represents one such element of EIL. (shrink)

A world awash in little understood chemicals tragically harms adults and children alike. Laws keep health agencies in the dark about toxicants, slow, well motivated research hampers protections, and strenuous vested opposition exacerbates the harm. How science is used in the tort law can facilitate or frustrate redress of harm. This book recommends better approaches.

Of other ancient writers, call into question the traditional view that katharsis in the Poetics is a homeopathic process - one in which pity and fear affect emotions like themselves. She maintains, instead, that Aristotle considered katharsis to be an allopathic process in which pity and fear purge the soul of shameless, antisocial, and aggressive emotions. While exploring katharsis, Tragic Pleasures analyzes the closely related question of how the Poetics treats the.

Tragedy is a founding theme in disability studies. Critical disability studies have, since their inception, argued that understandings of disability as tragedy obscure the political dimensions of disability and are a barrier facing disabled persons in society. In this paper, we propose an affirmative understanding of tragedy, employing the philosophical works of Nietzsche, Spinoza and Hasana Sharp. Tragedy is not, we argue, something to be opposed by disability politics; we can affirm life within it. To make our case, we look (...) to an ongoing ethnography of two Canadian children’s rehabilitation clinics. Looking to the clinical experience of Canadian boys and young men diagnosed with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and those of their families, we show how this affirmative understanding of tragedy allows us to pursue the themes of disability politics within tragedy. Contrary to an optimism that would eschew tragedy at all costs or a pessimistic approach that declines to act in the face of tragic circumstance, we argue that a revised understanding of tragedy allows us to situate the occasionally-tragic clinical experience of disability in a philosophy of life. Both disability and tragedy point us to the shared entanglements that make life what it is. (shrink)

What is the literary antecedent to Newman’s famous “Lead, Kindly Light”? This essay proposes that Newman’s phrase—“Kindly Light”— is an allusion to a specific passage of Vergil’s Aeneid. Understood in this light, Newman’s poem is a prologue to the epic journey Newman began as he returned to England to commence the Oxford Movement.

This short but thought-provoking volume asks the question 'What is it that tragedy makes us know?'. The focus is on tragedy as a mode of representing the experience of radical suffering, pain, or loss, a mode of narrative through which we come to know certain things about ourselves and our world--about its fragility and ours. Through a mixture of historical discussion and close reading of a number of dramatic texts--from Sophocles to Sarah Kane--the book addresses a wide range of debates: (...) how tragedy is defined, whether there is such a thing as 'absolute tragedy', various modern attempts to rework the classical heritage and the relation of comedy to tragedy. There is also a fresh discussion of whether religious--particularly Christian--discourse is inimical to the tragic, and of the necessary tension between tragic narrative and certain kinds of political as well as religious rhetoric. Rowan Williams argues that tragic drama both articulates failure and frailty and, in affirming the possibility of narrating the story of traumatic loss, refuses to settle for passivity, resignation, or despair. In this sense, it still shows the trace of its ritual and religious roots. And in challenging two-dimensional models of society, power, humanity and human knowing, it remains an intrinsic part of any fully humanist culture. (shrink)

Tacitus gives lavish treatment to the mutiny of the German legions in the aftermath of Augustus' death in a.d. 14 and provides an excellent centrepiece in a speech by Germanicus to the troops of the Lower German army at Ara Ubiorum . After the harsh treatment of a delegation from Rome, Germanicus responded to requests that he send Agrippina and Caligula to safety. As the family was leaving the camp the troops surrounded Germanicus, who moved them to repentance by his (...) speech. Previous writers have already discussed particular debts to Livy and to Virgil, but none has, I think, pointed to the most likely source for Germanicus' opening remarks: ‘Non mihi uxor aut filius patre et re publica cariores sunt…’. Goodyear dismisses the sentiment as a variety of the ‘commonplace’. that the state was more important than the individual and refers the reader to Béranger. However, none of these passages is as close or as pointed as the examples I consider below. (shrink)

The aim of the current article is to analyze the concept of tragic cases and its different implications based on Manuel Atienza, one of the jurists who specially addressed the issue, and on Robert Alexy, whose work is one of the main references in contemporary Legal Philosophy. According to parameters exposed by Alexy (correctness, rationality, legal argumentation, human rights), some of Atienza’s central assertions about tragic cases (lack of correct answer, legal rationality limitation, option for the lesser evil) (...) are herein demonstrated as inadmissible. Based on Alexy’s work, it is possible to justify the opposite conclusion about tragic cases, i.e., cases where there is more than one correct answer and these answers are opposed to each other. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: Introduction; Part I. Theoretical Views about Pity and Fear as Aesthetic Emotions: 1. Drama and the emotions: an Indo-European connection? 2. Gorgias: a strange trio, the poetic emotions; 3. Plato: from reality to tragedy and back; 4. Aristotle: the first 'theorist' of the aesthetic emotions; Part II. Pity and Fear within Tragedies: 5. An introduction; 6. Aeschylus: Persians; 7. Prometheus Bound; 8. Sophocles: Ajax; 9. Euripides: Orestes; Appendix: catharsis and the emotions in the definition of tragedy (...) in the Poetics. (shrink)

Violence against women is a global stigma. At least two conditionsstirred the global community: Malala Yousafzai who took a bullet in 2012 andwho advocate girl’s education to date, and the 2014 reported kidnap of 300Nigerian girls by Boko Haram. There are oppressive stereotypes of women.Violence can come in different forms. These can come as verbal abuse, intimatepartners violence, non-intimate partner violence, trafficking, forced prostitution,exploitation of labor, debt bondage, physical and sexual violence, sex selectiveabortion, female infanticide and femicide, deliberate neglect and (...) girl’s education,rape in war, dowry murder, pornography, dating violence, female genitalmutilation/circumcision, and acid attack. With the aid of Hermeneutics, therich allusions and strong Feminist voices that exhume the elements of VAW areinherent characteristics of the Cebuano-Visayan Feminist poetry. The poemsconvince women to reclaim femininity, regain self-worth, challenge patriarchy,defy social prescriptions and conventions for women’s behavior. The four selectedCebuano-Visayan poetry with sound Feminist voices are support systems forwomen. Further studies on VAW in Cebuano-Visayan poetry are recommended. Keywords: Hermeneutics, poetry, Violence Against Women , descriptive research,Cebuano-Visayan language, Philippines. (shrink)

Tragic moral conflicts are situations from within which whatever one does—including abstaining from action—will be seriously wrong; even the overall right decision involves violating a moral responsibility. This article offers an account of recovery predicaments, a particular kind of tragic conflict that characterizes the current extinction crisis. Recovery predicaments occur when the human-caused extinction of a species or population cannot be prevented without breaching moral responsibilities to animals by doing violence to or otherwise severely dominating them. Recognizing the (...) harm of acting from within recovery conflicts adds force to appeals for interrogating and dismantling the systems of thinking, valuing, and acting that bring species to the brink of extinction. (shrink)

Tragic choices arise during the COVID-19 pandemic when the limited resources made available in acute medical settings cannot be accessed by all patients who need them. In these circumstances, healthcare rationing is unavoidable. It is important in any healthcare rationing process that the interests of the community are recognised, and that decision-making upholds these interests through a fair and consistent process of decision-making. Responding to recent calls to safeguard individuals’ legal rights in decision-making in intensive care, and for new (...) authoritative national guidance for decision-making, this paper seeks to clarify what consistency and fairness demand in healthcare rationing during the COVID-19 pandemic, from both a legal and ethical standpoint. The paper begins with a brief review of UK law concerning healthcare resource allocation, considering how community interests and individual rights have been marshalled in judicial deliberation about the use of limited health resources within the National Health Service. It is then argued that an important distinction needs to be drawn between procedural and outcome consistency, and that a procedurally consistent decision-making process ought to be favoured. Congruent with the position that UK courts have adopted for resource allocation decision-making in the NHS more generally, specific requirements for a procedural framework and substantive triage criteria to be applied within that framework during the COVID-19 pandemic are considered in detail. (shrink)

The acknowledged masterpiece of Unamuno expresses the anguish of modern man as he is caught up in the struggle between the dictates of reason and the demands of his own heart.

This book examines Whitehead’s process aesthetics focusing on two categories, the penumbral beauty of darkness and the tragic beauty of perishability, while establishing parallels with the Japanese sense of evanescent beauty. It clarifies how both traditions develop a religio-aesthetic vision of tragic beauty and its reconciliation in the supreme ecstasy of peace.

In many tragic plays, the protagonist is brought down by a disaster that is a consequence of the protagonist's own error, his or her hamartia, the tragic flaw. Tragic flaws are disconcerting to the audience because they are not known or fully recognized by the protagonist—at least not until it is too late. In this essay, I take tragic flaws to be unreliable belief-forming dispositions that are unrecognized by us in some sense. I describe some different (...) types of flaws and consider what we might do about them. Then I examine three types of policies for managing our tragic flaws: doxastic, dispositional, and methodological. (shrink)

Is it possible to preserve national security through ethical policies? Richard Ned Lebow seeks to show that ethics are actually essential to the national interest. Recapturing the wisdom of classical realism through a close reading of the texts of Thucydides, Clausewitz and Hans Morgenthau, Lebow argues that, unlike many modern realists, classic realists saw close links between domestic and international politics, and between interests and ethics. Lebow uses this analysis to offer a powerful critique of post-Cold War American foreign policy. (...) He also develops an ontological foundation for ethics and makes the case for an alternate ontology for social science based on Greek tragedy's understanding of life and politics. This is a topical and accessible book, written by a leading scholar in the field. (shrink)

Pandemic-related restrictions can be especially tragic for people whose lives are ending; it seems that the needs and desires of people who are dying should be given extra consideration. Given an additivist view of well-being, however, the last weeks of a person's life can only matter so much relative to the rest of the life they had. This article reflects on the end of my mother's life during the Covid-19 pandemic in order to make the case that the additive (...) view of well-being is part of a broader trend of dehumanizing emergency ethics. (shrink)

This article argues that Virgil includes an allusion to the fourth-century censor Appius Claudius Caecus in Book 8 of the Aeneid. Three pieces of evidence point to this allusion: (1) wordplay, especially the near echo of ‘Caecus’ in ‘Cacus’; (2) semantic associations between Cacus and darkness; and (3) repeated references to sight and Cacus’ eyes. By invoking the memory of Appius, whose blinding in 312 b.c.e. allegedly came at the hands of Hercules as punishment for transferring control of the god's (...) rites at the Ara Maxima to the state, Virgil underscores the importance of properly observing religious rituals. This aligns with Evander's original intent with the Hercules–Cacus story to prove to Aeneas and the Trojans that the Arcadians’ religious practices are no uana superstitio (8.187). (shrink)

_Tragic Play_ explores the deep philosophical significance of classic and modern tragedies in order to cast light on the tragic dimensions of contemporary experience. Romanticism, it has often been claimed, brought tragedy to an end, making modernity the age _after_ tragedy. Christoph Menke opposes this modernist prejudice by arguing that tragedy remains alive in the present in the distinctively new form of the playful, ironic, and self-consciously performative. Through close readings of plays by William Shakespeare, Samuel Beckett, Heiner Müller, (...) and Botho Strauss, Menke shows how tragedy re-emerges in modernity as "tragedy of play." In _Hamlet_, _Endgame_, _Philoktet_, and _Ithaka_, Menke integrates philosophical theory with critical readings to investigate shifting terms of judgment, curse, reversal, misfortune, and violence. (shrink)

As genealogy has gained greater disciplinary recognition over the last two decades, it has become increasingly common to call any historically oriented philosophy, such as Theodor W. Adorno’s, “genealogy.” In this article, I show that Adorno’s philosophy performs genealogy’s defining functions of “problematization” and “possibilization.” Moreover, it does so in unique ways that constitute a significant contribution to genealogical practice. Adorno’s method, here called “tragic genealogy,” is particularly well-suited to the genealogical analysis of traditional philosophical problems and to the (...) critical reanimation of declining, but ethically significant, values. Nevertheless, I also argue that Adorno’s philosophy cannot be assimilated into genealogical practice without rejecting or revising some of its Hegelian influences, particularly its philosophy of history and its modal metaphysics. (shrink)

Humanitarian healthcare work presents a range of ethical challenges for expatriate healthcare professionals, including tragic choices requiring the selection of a least-worst option. In this paper we examine a particular set of tragic choices related to the prioritization of care and allocation of scarce resources between individuals in situations of widespread and urgent health needs. Drawing on qualitative interviews with clinicians, we examine the nature of these choices. We offer recommendations to clinical teams and aid organizations for preparing (...) and supporting frontline clinicians in their efforts to determine the least-worst option, and in their responsibility for making such choices. (shrink)

The aim of the current article is to analyze the concept of tragic cases and its different implications based on Manuel Atienza, one of the jurists who specially addressed the issue, and on Robert Alexy, whose work is one of the main references in contemporary Legal Philosophy. According to parameters exposed by Alexy, some of Atienza’s central assertions about tragic cases are herein demonstrated as inadmissible. Based on Alexy’s work, it is possible to justify the opposite conclusion about (...) tragic cases, i. e., cases where there is more than one correct answer and these answers are opposed to each other. (shrink)

The Winter 2010 issue of Telos has clearly highlighted the relevance of Carl Schmitt's Hamlet or Hecuba to both the interpretation of Schmitt's political theory and Shakespearean criticism. The main thesis concerning Schmitt's intrusion into the literary field deals with the structural relationships between historical context and tragic dimension, between politics and aesthetics; the tragic drama can be properly understood only in relation to the historical context to which it refers and the concrete situation that it aims to (...) re-present. The historical reality that can be glimpsed by focusing on the tragic masks against the light of their contexts represents…. (shrink)

Tragic Beauty in Whitehead and Japanese Aesthetics evolved from a paper Steve Odin delivered at the 1984 Conference for the International Society of Process Philosophy at Nanzan University in Nagoya, Japan. This book will be intriguing and stimulating not only to those scholars who engage in Whitehead studies but also to those who are concerned with the development of an East–West dialogue on aesthetics and aesthetic education. In this volume, Odin compares Alfred North Whitehead's axiological process metaphysics, including his (...) concept of aesthetic experience and a doctrine of beauty, with the aesthetics of Zen Buddhism and offers readers a fresh cross-cultural understanding of Whitehead's process philosophy.In... (shrink)