El presente artículo examina la semántica de la anagnórisis en la diégesis de Tucídides y los poetas trágicos. Vinculando el corpus narrativo de la tragedia griega y de la stásis en la democracia de la Grecia Clásica, el texto formula dos ejercicios: Primero, mediante el examen de algunas especies lexicales que constituyen el campo semántico de la tragedia (hamartía, amatía y katastrophé), se establece el nexo entre «lance patético» y anagnórisis que acontecen al héroe trágico y al ciudadano ateniense narrado (...) por Tucídides. Segundo, mediante la indagación de los lexemas enunciados en la anagnórisis del héroe trágico y del ciudadano ateniense, con la noción de «sintagma trágico» el artículo imbrica el campo semántico de la diégesis trágica e historiográfica para postular la conjunción de una lengua trágico-política en común. (shrink)

Within the broader horizon of asking about the relevance of the Reformation, or more particularly, Martin Luther’s thought, this paper first draws on the old debate whether there can be a Christian conception of tragic guilt by reconstructing an argument Giorgio Agamben develops against von Fritz’s denial of this possibility. The paper shows that Agamben makes a similar move as Protestantism by claiming that natura, which is always already spoiled by hamartia, is objective, naturaliter not personaliter. But in doing (...) so, he does not draw the proper consequences. He tries to re-inscribe this realization into a post-Thomist anthropology, thus not drawing the most radical conclusions necessary from the objectification of hamartia as natura, namely that natura is always already lacking and is itself in a sense an object as lack. This paper shows how this consequences is, on the contrary, developed in Martin Luther’s notion that the “whole of nature” is corrupted and in the ensuing totus-homo principle. To draw the delineation of the production of this lack, it is useful to draw on the notion of kerygma and its usage in both tragedy and the Pauline New Testament. With it, one can think of a repetition of the constitution of the subject through a “message” or “kerygma” that is heteronomous. What is left in and through this repetition can be viewed as “nothingness”, as is shown in the example of Martin Luther’s translation of the humilitas of Mary as “nothingness”. This product of kerygma is at the same time potentially the cause for another type of subjectivity, a comic subjectivity, yet one which carries the heritage of its tragic constitution with it. As a methodological consequence, this paper suggests that it is not possible to develop proper notions of the subject within contemporary debates without repeating or representing the event of the site of this potentially comic subjectivity within the early thought of Martin Luther. (shrink)

Publication date: 30 November 2016 Source: Author: Mahshid Mirmasoomi King Lear is one of the political tragedies of Shakespeare in which the playwright censures Lear's hamartia wrecking havoc not only upon people's lives but bringing devastation on his own kindred. Shakespeare castigates Lear's wrath, sense of superiority, and misjudgments which lead to catastrophic consequences. In Death of Yazdgerd, an anti-authoritarian play, Bahram Beyzayie, the well-known Persiaian tragedian, also depicts the hamartia of King Yazdgerd III whose pride and unjust (...) treatment of people end in devastation. By demonstrating such defective and reprehensible tragic heroes, both playwrights set at providing audience with an anti-heroic representation of the kings and also shattering the common god-like heroism attributed to hero kings. Bearing in mind the political instability of England after the succession of James I, Shakespeare avails himself of such anti-heroic representation to forewarn those monarchs incapable of maintaining a balance between their judgments and the society's need for a genuine authority. In a similar fashion, Beyzayie narrates the true historical event of a Persian king whose improper exercise of authority, withdrawal from battle, and an ultimate escape leave people helpless against the invasion of Arabs. The article initially aims to discuss the concept of hamartia within the tragedies based on Aristotle's definition of hamartia and golden mean; by defining the nature of the kings' unforgivable errors and their extremely imbalanced temperament, the paper demonstrates how such ignoble failure relegates the hero kings to anti-heroes whose punishment equals their mistakes. Contrary to Aristotle’s idea, the article also elucidates how Shakespeare and Beyzaie have caused the audiences’ catharsis of emotion not through fear and pity but through the creation of a sense of justice by portraying characters who deserve their ultimate downfall. (shrink)

It is now generally agreed that in Aristotle's Poetics, ch. 13 means ‘mistake of fact’. The moralizing interpretation favoured by our Victorian forebears and their continental counterparts was one of the many misunderstandings fostered by their moralistic society, and in our own enlightened erais revealed as an aberration. In challenging this orthodoxy I am not moved by any particular enthusiasm for Victoriana, nor do I want to revive the view that means simply ‘moral flaw’ or ‘morally wrong action’. I shall (...) try to show that the word has a range of applications, from ‘ignorance of fact’ at one end to ‘moral defect’, ‘moral error’, at the other, and that the modern orthodoxy, though not as clearly wrong as the moralizing interpretation it displaced, restricts Aristotle's meaning in a way he did not intend, and does lessthan justice to his analysis of classical drama. (shrink)

This is a collection of 13 essays which focus on a theme to which Crossett dedicated much of his highly interdisciplinary research. Six essays concern Hamartia in Greek works by Herodotus, Plato, Euripides, and others; two deal with the concept of error in the Christian theology of Boethius and Aquinas; and five examine Hamartia in 14th-19th-century English works by Chaucer, Shakespeare, Coleridge, and George Eliot.

This monograph first introduces a methodology called “hamartia poetics,” which explores how novels generate their own semantic conceptions of “sin.” A poetics of sin rests on four fundamental assumptions about narrative itself: (1) narratives present a transformation from one condition to another; (2) in narratives, states of being only “exist” as compared with others; (3) narrative makes possible the act of sin; and (4) the act of sin cannot exist without the possibility of combinatory transformation. Second, it applies (...) class='Hi'>hamartia poetics to Dickens’s Bleak House, arguing that the novel simultaneously establishes two codes of sin, but that these codes ultimately converge into one. (shrink)

It is now generally agreed that in Aristotle's Poetics, ch. 13 means ‘mistake of fact’. The moralizing interpretation favoured by our Victorian forebears and their continental counterparts was one of the many misunderstandings fostered by their moralistic society, and in our own enlightened erais revealed as an aberration. In challenging this orthodoxy I am not moved by any particular enthusiasm for Victoriana, nor do I want to revive the view that means simply ‘moral flaw’ or ‘morally wrong action’. I shall (...) try to show that the word has a range of applications, from ‘ignorance of fact’ at one end to ‘moral defect’, ‘moral error’, at the other, and that the modern orthodoxy, though not as clearly wrong as the moralizing interpretation it displaced, restricts Aristotle's meaning in a way he did not intend, and does lessthan justice to his analysis of classical drama. (shrink)

In Poetics 13, Aristotle claims that the protagonist in the most beautiful tragedies comes to ruin through some kind of ‘failure’—in Greek, hamartia. There has been notorious disagreement among scholars about the moral responsibility involved in hamartia. This article defends the old reading of hamartia as a character flaw, but with an important modification: rather than explaining the hero's weakness as general weakness of will (akrasia), it argues that the tragic hero is blinded by temper (thumos) or (...) by a pursuit for fine, good and desirable things—that is, by what may be labelled ‘qualified’ weakness of will. The upshot is that hamartia ends up as being less blameworthy than ‘proper’ akrasia, but still explains why morally outstanding people are unsuitable for the most beautiful tragedies. (shrink)

Jules Brody argues that Aristotle's usage of hamartia in The Poetics is best understood in terms of its literal meaning, "missing the mark," rather than in the broader, familiar sense of "tragic flaw." Hamartia is a morally neutral non-normative term, derived from the verb hamartano, meaning "to miss the mark," "to fall short of an objective." And by extension: to reach one destination rather than the intended one; to make a mistake, not in the sense of a moral (...) failure, but in the nonjudgmental sense of taking one thing for another, taking something for its opposite. Hamartia may betoken an error of discernment due to ignorance, to the lack of an essential piece of information.1 Or, as S. H. Butcher would have it:... (shrink)

W artykule wykazuję, że życie i twórczość Jana Jakuba Rousseau w kuriozalny sposób wpisują się w schemat tragedii greckiej. Jest to teatr jednego aktora, inspirowany przedstawieniami pierwszego tragika Tespisa. Rousseau przez całe życie z wielkim patosem gra przed światem rolę cierpiętnika, który jako człowiek jest ciemiężony przez ludzi. We wszystkich jego tekstach chodzi tylko o jego własną, jednostkowo pojętą wolność. Rzekomo broniąc tej wolności, Rousseau nakłada wiele teatralnych masek i wciela się w Boga oraz w wiele fikcyjnych postaci, dzięki którym (...) chce zmienić świat na taki, który lepiej odpowiadałby jego potrzebom. Dwa główne dzieła Jana Jakuba, _Umowa społeczna _i _Emil_, powstałe w tym samym czasie, są dramatyczną próbą połączenia _polis _z _oikos _i odtworzenia indywidualnego raju utraconego. Niebawem jego paranoja osiąga apogeum i Rousseau czuje się ofiarą powszechnego spisku przeciw niemu i czyni szaleńcze próby zachowania dla potomnych swego patologicznego dzieła, w którym występuje jako sędzia we własnej sprawie. W _Przechadzkach samotnego myśliciela _wreszcie trafia do swojego raju, ale to oznacza, że zupełnie traci kontakt z rzeczywistością i ulega iluzorycznemu utożsamieniu z wielbioną przez siebie naturą. Występując na wyimaginowanej scenie, Rousseau pewnie nie uświadamia sobie faktu, że sam jest ciemiężycielem bliskich mu osób. Cynicznie wykorzystuje bowiem sprzyjających mu ludzi, by osiągnąć życiowy sukces i potwierdzić swoją niezwykłą wielkość, oraz oddaje własne dzieci do przytułku, by nie przeszkadzały mu w karierze. W ten sposób dyskredytuje się jako człowiek i ponosi klęskę jako tragiczny twórca, ponieważ działa pod wpływem pychy (_hybris_) i nie umie adekwatnie ocenić sytuacji, w jakiej się znalazł (_hamartia_). Być może oczyszczenie z win (_katharsis_) przyniosłoby mu poddanie się medycznej terapii wodnej dla maniaków, o której pisze Foucault w _Historii szaleństwa w dobie klasycyzmu_. Rousseau jednak z niej nie korzysta, a w jego czasach nie jest jeszcze stosowana psychoanaliza Freuda, która pozwoliłaby mu opowiedzieć terapeucie wszystkie swoje sny o potędze, uwolnić się od stłumionych pragnień oraz fantazji i w końcu powrócić do świata normalnych ludzi, jako człowiek bez manii wielkości i manii prześladowczej. (shrink)

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)

Resumen: El objetivo de este artículo es mostrar la relevancia de la máthesis para la concepción de la mimesis aristotélica. A partir de las observaciones de la Poética, delimitaré las características del aprendizaje tomando como eje su objeto, modalidad y consecuencias. Para ello analizaré, en primer lugar, el objeto sobre el que recae el aprendizaje mimético, esto es, los hombres que actúan. Luego examinaré la modalidad de presentación de sus acciones para que sea posible el aprendizaje, prestando especial atención al (...) papel que desempeña el error trágico o hamartía. Finalmente, resaltaré los aspectos por los que, a mi entender, la mímesis tiene consecuencias éticas y políticas relevantes en el marco del proyecto educativo de Aristóteles, y que permiten pasar de una consideración de la mímesis en el plano individual a una consideración sobre su función en el ámbito político.: The aim of this paper is to show the relevance of mathesis for the Aristotelian concept of mimesis. From the framework of Poetics, i try to demarcate the characteristics of learning, taking into account its object, modality, and consequences. In order to do this, I will analyze, first, the object of mimetic learning, that is, men who act. Then, I will examine the modality of presentation of their actions that make learning possible, paying special attention to the role played by tragic mistake or hamartía. Finally, I will highlight the aspects on account of which, in my opinion, mimesis has relevant ethical and political consequences in the framework of Aristotle's educational project, and which allow passing from a consideration of mimesis on an individual level to a political level. (shrink)

Ovídio, poeta latino do século I a.C, compôs as Heroides, obra em que heróis e heroínas das lendas escrevem a seus amados(as) ausentes. Todas as cartas apresentam profundo teor trágico, tanto na temática quanto nos aspectos trágicos marcantes. Analisamos a tragicidade na carta de Dejanira a Hércules, na qual a mulher do herói narra seu desespero ao receber a notícia da morte de Hércules, após vestir a túnica que ela havia enviado. Como base para a análise, serão usados os conceitos (...) aristotélicos de hamartia e hybris, bem como os sentimentos de terror e compaixão e também a concepção filosófica de trágico estabelecida pelos idealistas alemães do século XVIII. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.2 (2002) 260-272 [Access article in PDF] Tragic Conflict and Greatness of Character Ariel Meira IT IS A SURPRISING FACT that some of our best literary examples of greatness of character are of persons acting in a way that involves them in a terrible burden of guilt. As spectators we perceive Oedipus, in Sophocles's Oedipus the King, 1 as one who upon discovering the identity of (...) his father and mother affirms that he bears guilt for killing the former and committing incest with the latter, and we typically concur in some vague way with his affirmation. 2 We do not, after all, think that his affirmation is merely the consequence of some confusion about morals on his part, and that he would have been more justified in treating his discovery with a light conscience. Furthermore, it seems that our conception of his greatness is intimately bound up with our being acquainted with him as someone who acted so as to render himself profoundly guilty in this way. What is paradoxical is that moral taint would be expected to reduce our admiration for a character and our attribution of greatness to it. Why then should noteworthy paradigms of greatness of character be morally tainted characters? Can we make sense of the idea that some kinds of guiltiness might be constitutive of greatness of character?As it is well-known, Aristotle says that in order for a tragedy best to achieve its desired effect, it should portray a protagonist "who is not pre-eminent in moral virtue, who passes to bad fortune not through vice or wickedness, but because of some hamartia...." 3 The term "hamartia" is variously translated as "piece of ignorance," "miscalculation," and "error of judgment," but as O. B. Hardison notes, it must be treated as designating a moral flaw, because it renders the protagonist [End Page 260] less than "pre-eminent in moral virtue." 4 However, even if the term is interpreted as covering what I have described as the moral taint associated with greatness of character, it should be clear that Aristotle does not provide here an answer to my question. At best he can be viewed as explaining why morally tainted characters of this sort are crucial to achieving tragic effect. He is not explaining how it is that such characters can be viewed as paradigms of greatness.I propose not to treat this paradox in its most general form, but rather by confining my attention to an interesting subclass of cases. What I have in mind are cases in which a protagonist finds himself or herself in what I shall call circumstances of tragic conflict. Such circumstances determine that a choice must be made between two (or perhaps more) courses of action, even though each of the courses involves the violation of an important moral claim, or the destruction of a crucial value. As spectators or readers, we typically perceive the protagonist as emerging with a heavy burden of guilt (much in the way noted above regarding Oedipus), and we recognize that he or she was bound to emerge guilty, no matter which course of action would have been chosen. Cases such as that of Agamemnon (bearing guilt for the sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia in Aeschylus's Agamemnon), 5 of Jephthah (again bearing guilt for the sacrifice of his daughter, in Judges 11), 6 and of Orestes (bearing guilt for the murder of his mother Clytemnestra in Euripides's Orestes) 7 belong quite uncontroversially to this subclass. 8These protagonists make difficult choices, and carry them out with courage and resolution, qualities which explain to some extent our perception of them as possessing greatness of character. But in making their choice, they necessarily render themselves guilty, whether or not they have made the correct choice (assuming there is a correct choice in the circumstances). And we sense that suffering the peculiarly poignant pain which accompanies their guilty action is at least partly constitutive of their greatness. Clearly, we are faced again with the paradox of the association of guilt with greatness of character.In... (shrink)

Introduction 1 -- Ancient Greece -- Reason and the irrational : Sophocles' Oedipus tyrannus -- Psuchê : literature and moral psychology from Homer to Sophocles -- Aristotle's poetics : Oedipus and the problem of tragedy -- Psuchê redux : philosophy and the new psychology -- Psychologizing Oedipus : reason and unreason in Aristotle's ethics -- Golden age denmark -- Kierkegaard's retrieval of Greek tragedy -- Tragedy as historical idea : either/or ancient drama reflected in the modern -- Stages on life's (...) way : Hamartia in the wake of modernity -- Fear and trembling : tragedy, comedy, and the heroism of Abraham -- The concept of anxiety : fate and the tragic logos of a second ethics -- Beyond eudaimonism : tragic virtue and the practice of eternity -- Moral psychology in the pseudonyms, search for a method ethicscontra ethics : Climacus on eternal happiness and tragic virtue -- Kierkegaard and the tragedy of authorship. (shrink)

Failure, success's ugly sister, is inevitable - cognitively, biologically and morally. We all make mistakes, we all die, and we all get it wrong. A chain of flaws can be traced through all phenomena, natural and human. We see impending and actual failures in individual lives, in marriages, careers, in religion, education, psychotherapy, business, nations, and in entire civilizations. And there are chronic and imperceptible failures in everyday domains that most of the time we barely notice, often until it is (...) too late. Colin Feltham expores what constitutes failure across a number of domains. He takes guidance from the work of such diverse philosophers and thinkers as Diogenes, Epictetus, Augustine, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre, Camus, Cioran and Ricoeur, while also drawing on the insights of artists and writers such as van Gogh, Arthur Miller, Philip Larkin, Samuel Beckett, Charles Bukowski and Philip Roth. Precursors and partial synonyms for failure can be seen in the concepts of hamartia, sin, fallenness, non-being, false consciousness and anthropathology. Philosophy can help us but is itself, in its reliance on language and logic, subject to inherent flaws and failures. It is the very pervasiveness yet common denial of failure which makes it a compelling topic that cries out for honest analysis. We live in a time when the cliche of failed Marxism may be segueing frighteningly into the failure of 'selfish capitalism', in a time of geopolitical uncertainty and failure to address the dire need for agreement and action on climate change. But many of us are also painfully aware of our own shortcomings, our own weakness of will and lack of authenticity. Trying to identify where the lines may be drawn between individual responsibility, social policy, and historical and biological dark forces is a key challenge in this fascinating book. (shrink)

In recent decades, the philosopher William Desmond (1951-) has offered both insightful readings of individual tragedies and a striking reformulation of old Aristotelian standbys like hamartia and catharsis. This reformulation grows out of his wider philosophy of the “between,” which stresses humans’ fundamental receptivity or “porosity.” For Desmond, tragedy strips away characters’ self-determination and returns them to porosity. The audience is returned to porosity as well, a process of exposure that can be harrowing, and at times leads to despair, (...) but that can also lead, in Desmond’s take on catharsis, to a renewed sense of the worth of fragile beings. Both tragic “being at a loss” and catharsis are important for philosophy because they resist determinate conceptualization. Tragedy reminds philosophy of its limits, and it challenges philosophy to attend to the intimate and the singular. This essay situates, synthesizes, and extends Desmond’s many reflections on tragedy. It focuses in particular on Shakespeare's Macbeth and King Lear. (shrink)

Two seemingly opposing philosophies, Plato’s and Heidegger’s, are brought together by reading the philosophy of politics in the Republic through the existential-analytic lenses of Being and Time and also by using the former in order to explore the philosophico-political potential of the latter. Plato’s thematic of errancy (αμαρτία) is shown to interlock harmoniously with Ηeidegger’s thematic of the fall (Verfall). This provides a single, penetrating interpretation of how philosophy thinks humans are supposed to respond to the predicament of their original (...) condition (painfulness connected with injustice, meaninglessness, etc.). It turns out that in these otherwise antipodean versions of philosophizing, the view emerges, according to which the original difficulty can be fully overcome. The question whether the aforementioned predicament can be actually fully overcome (or rather not) however, would form the basis for a novel phenomenology of the political. (shrink)

This article aims at analysing Aristotle’s poetic conception of catharsis to assess whether it may be of help in enlightening the particular didactic challenges involved when training medical students to cope morally with complex or tragic situations of medical decision-making. A further aim of this investigation is to show that Aristotle’s criteria for distinguishing between history and tragedy may be employed to reshape authentic stories of sickness into tragic stories of sickness. Furthermore, the didactic potentials of tragic stories of sickness (...) will be tried out. The ultimate aim is to investigate whether the possibilities of developing a therapeutic conception of medical ethics researched in a previous article on catharsis and moral therapy in Plato may be strengthened through the hermeneutics of the Aristotelian conception of tragic catharsis. (shrink)