Tragedy and Citizenship provides a wide-ranging exploration of attitudes toward tragedy and their implications for politics. Derek W. M. Barker reads the history of political thought as a contest between the tragic view of politics that accepts conflict and uncertainty, and an optimistic perspective that sees conflict as self-dissolving. Drawing on Aristotle's political thought, alongside a novel reading of the Antigone that centers on Haemon, its most neglected character, Barker provides contemporary democratic theory with a theory of tragedy. He sees (...) Hegel's philosophy of reconciliation as a critical turning point that results in the elimination of citizenship. By linking Hegel's failure to address the tragic dimensions of politics to Richard Rorty, John Rawls, and Judith Butler, Barkeroffers a major reassessment of contemporary political theory and a fresh perspective on the most urgent challenges facing democratic politics. Derek W. M. Barker is a program officer at the Kettering Foundation. (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)

These hours of backward clearness come to all men and women, once at least, when they read the past in the light of the present, with the reasons of things, like unobserved finger-posts, protruding where they never saw them before. The journey behind them is mapped out, and figured with its false steps, its wrong observations, all its infatuated, deluded geography.Henry James,The Bostonians, ch. xxxixThis paper is intended to contribute to the study of both Homer and Greek tragedy, and more (...) particularly to the study of the influence of the epic upon the later poets. The current revival of interest among English scholars in the poetic qualities of the Homeric poems must be welcomed by all who care for the continuing survival and propagation of classical literature. The renewed emphasis on the validity of literary criticism as applied to presumably oral texts may encourage a more positive appreciation of the subtlety of Homeric narrative techniques, and of the coherent plan which unifies each poem. The aim of this paper is to focus attention on a number of elements in Greek tragedy which are already present in Homer, and especially on the way in which these poets exploit the theme of knowledge—knowledge of one's future, knowledge of one's circumstances, knowledge of oneself. Recent scholarship on tragedy has paid much more attention to literary criticism in general and to poetic irony in particular: these insights can also illuminate the epic. Conversely, the renewed interest in Homer's structural and thematic complexity should also enrich the study of the tragedians, his true heirs. (shrink)

En el pasaje 1147b6-9 de la Ética Nicomáquea, Aristóteles subraya que el akratḗs es capaz de arrepentimiento sin indicar cómo, pues ello debe ser escuchado de los fisiólogos. Este trabajo, no obstante, sostiene que Aristóteles no deja este problema sin respuesta: dado que la educación es el marco en el que el hombre se ejercita, a lo largo de su vida, en el buen vivir, la construcción de la acción trágica en la Poética puede verse como una herramienta pedagógica que (...) permite una profundización en el conflicto entre la razón y las pasiones del akratḗs, y cuyo genuino aporte estriba en su capacidad de explotar sus páthē para él y encauzarlas hacia una reflexión, a través de un ejercicio deductivo, sobre su propia condición. (shrink)

In the authoritative new collection of the Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta , a five-trimeter passage appears as No. 624 in the second volume which contains the ‘Fragmenta adespota’. Whereas Nauck placed the lines among the ‘Fragmenta dubia et spuria’ of Euripides , Kannicht and Snell separate them totally from the Euripidean fragments and associate them with various pseudepigraphical pieces of tragic poetry which are commonly thought to have originated in the ‘workshop of a Jewish forger’. The purpose of my article is (...) to challenge this decision and to show that TrGF 2.624 may well be genuine poetry by Euripides if we restore the lines to their probable original form. An attempt to reconstruct the original context of the fragment will also be added. (shrink)

How can citizens construct the political authority under which they will live? I argue that Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651) answers this question concerning the constitutive power of political and normative agency by employing four dimensions of mimesis from the Greek and Roman traditions. And I argue that mimesis accounts for the know-how, or power/knowledge, the general ‘man’ draws upon in constructing the commonwealth. Hobbes revalues poetic mimesis through his stylistic decisions, including the invitation to the reader to read ‘himself’ in (...) the portrait of the general man depicted in the text. Hobbes aims for Leviathan to change the ethical dispositions of its readers, turning them from bad to good men as they witness the general man undergoing this ethical transformation in the transition from the state of nature to the civil state. He emphasizes the anthropological dimension of mimesis to explain political disorder since he argues that men assess the honor others attribute them by observing signs and gestures in others’ behavior. Hobbes employs the linguistic dimension of mimesis to describe how men acting as agents can build a normative consensus out of the state of nature. This article positions mimesis as a key term for understanding the intersection between aesthetics and politics before the term ‘aesthetics’ came into parlance. (shrink)

De nombreuses recherches ont mis en évidence le fait que les épicuriens n’étaient pas complètement hostiles à la poésie en général mais qu’ils refusaient probablement les compositions ou procédures poétiques qui ne conduisent pas à la fin naturelle du plaisir « catastématique », c’est-à-dire le bonheur. Dans cet article, nous nous demanderons donc si les épicuriens ont inventé une poésie cathartique de type positif ou s’ils ont simplement rejeté toutes les formes de catharsis poétique en les décrivant comme des expériences (...) négatives. Nous constaterons dans ce travail de recherche, divisé en trois parties, que la première hypothèse est plus probable que la seconde. Dans un premier temps, nous démontrerons que les épicuriens ont effectivement reconnu l’existence d’une catharsis positive, transmise par la raison et l’enseignement de la philosophie, ayant la capacité de faire disparaître les émotions négatives qui entravent l’accès au bonheur (l’amour, la peur du divin, le désir excessif, etc.). L’idée développée, dans un second temps, établit qu’Épicure et ses disciples pourraient s’être opposés à la catharsis tragique décrite dans la Poétique d’Aristote, parce qu’elle implique de passer par des passions négatives telles que la pitié et la terreur. Cette expérience esthétique entrerait alors en contradiction avec l’idéal épicurien du plaisir comme absence de trouble et d’inquiétude psychique. Enfin, dans un troisième temps, nous exposerons l’idée selon laquelle les épicuriens pourraient avoir accepté une seule forme de catharsis poétique : celle facilitant le processus de purification effectué par la raison et l’enseignement de la philosophie. Un exemple possible de cette pratique est le poème De rerum natura de Lucrèce dans lequel la poésie n’est pas considérée comme cathartique en soi, mais si et seulement si elle assiste la philosophie épicurienne dans sa conquête du bonheur. (shrink)

The paper studies Livy's account in Book 45 of the aftermath of Aemilius Paullus' conquest of Macedon employing two interpretative methods, both common in recent studies of historians. The first is “metahistory,” in other words interpreting events within a historical narrative as commenting covertly on the genre of history and on the work as an example of that genre. The second is seeing how internal audiences provide a guide for the reader's interpretation. These, though theoretically independent, are in practice often (...) related, with internal audiences being used as a trigger for wider reflections on the text and the genre. Four linked passages from Livy 45 are discussed in detail. One invites a systematic metahistorical reading without the use of an internal audience, partly to endorse Livy's own manner of “secondary” history, partly to promote a moral reading of the text. The other three employ internal audiences to similar effect: first, Aemilius' meeting with the defeated Perseus, and the lesson which he draws about the mutability of fortune; second, the spectacular games he organizes at Amphipolis; and third, his eventual triumph in Rome, along with the speech that Servilius gives in its support. The understanding of the genre of history that Livy promotes through these passages is, however, astonishingly narrow and didactic, ignoring even central aspects of his own work which do not conform to that understanding. The paper concludes by considering why Livy would wish to present himself and his genre as single-mindedly moralistic when neither he nor it actually was. (shrink)

In chapter 9 of the Poetics Aristotle states that poetry is concerned with the universal . In this paper I shall consider three questions arising out of this statement. First, what does it mean? Secondly, what constraints does it impose on the construction of tragic plots ? I shall consider this question with special reference to the possible role of chance in tragedy. Thirdly, why is poetry concerned with the universal – that is, why is poetry such that these constraints (...) are appropriate ? (shrink)

The plays of Menander have been largely absent from the recent critical attention given the metatheatrical aspects of ancient comedy because they avoid direct reference to performance and maintain dramatic illusion. But as readings of tragic self-reflexivity have shown, even consistently illusionistic drama can make reference to itself as drama so that the audience is encouraged to view the play in double focus, as both a pretense of reality and as an evident dramatic artifice. Metatheatricality in Menander has its basis (...) in the recurring view of the characters that life is like a tragedy. A number of characters state that the events at hand resemble a tragic situation, comment on events by quoting from a tragedy, or ask other characters to view the current situation through the lens of a particular tragic drama. In other instances, reference is made to aspects of dramatic staging or to the constitutive parts of plays. Such comments are realistic, or probable, because it is likely that Greeks of the fourth century regularly interpreted their own lives through the paradigm of myth, best known in dramatized form, and used theatrical metaphors to refer to everyday events. At the same time, however, audience members may experience a character's comparison of the dramatic situation to tragedy as humorously ironic because they know that the plot is destined to fulfill itself in a comic mode. Tragedy is in fact a mask worn by Menander's comedy, and the audience has a metadramatic experience whenever it focuses on the fact of masking. Analysis of passages from the Dyscolos, Epitrepontes, Perikeiromene, and Samia, as well as fuller discussion of the Aspis, demonstrates that Menader's plays invite metadramatic readings in which the plot develops through the struggles of characters to impose on themselves and others tragic readings of their comic situation. (shrink)

In Eum. 1028–9 the Furies mark their transformation into Eumenides by donning red robes over their black costumes in imitation of the robes worn in the Panathenaea by metics . Greek epic was sensitive to the symbolic value of clothing and Aeschylus had experimented in the Persians with the greater scope that drama offered for clothing-symbolism. Scholars have detected a wealth of associations in the Furies' robing-scene: this culmination of the trilogy echoes the red carpet upon which Agamemnon walks to (...) his death in the first play, which is actually referred to as ‘garments’ , and the net in which Agamemnon is caught , which is brought on stage in the middle play . Another series of stage-actions of equal importance in preparing for the robing of the Furies has not been so well explained. (shrink)

Jasper Griffin, in his recent book on Homer, has suggested that modern critics would do well to pay more attention to the localized insights and the general critical framework of the ancient Greek commentators. In a previous article, ‘Homeric Pathos and Objectivity’, he claimed to show, by careful study of those passages in which the scholiasts found λεος, οκτος or πάθος, that ‘the ancient scholars were right to regard pathos as one of the most important elements in the Iliad’. also (...) think this is a potentially fruitful and underdeveloped approach to the criticism of Homer and other ancient authors; and that the term pathos, together with ēthos, with which it is often coupled or contrasted, is one of the most suggestive, though also confusing, of ancient critical terms. I want to begin the story further back in time than the scholia, in the treatises on rhetoric and poetics from which the scholiasts’ critical vocabulary was largely derived. I propose to survey the use of ēthos and pathos as contrasted terms in these treatises from Aristotle to Longinus, in the hope that such a survey will not only clarify the various meanings and associations attached to these terms but will also throw a more general light on ancient critical presuppositions. Both Aristotle and Longinus used the ethos/pathos distinction to contrast the Odyssey and theIliad; and a clearer understanding of the significance they gave to these words may help us to appraise the critical usefulness of their comments. (shrink)

The characters of tragedy are in some sense responsible for their errors. However, given their ignorance of the consequences of their actions, it seems that they ought not be held responsible by others for what they have done. This is a paradox. The way to resolve the paradox is to distinguish two kinds of agent responsibility: accountability and culpability. Being accountable is primarily a private affair, whereas being culpable entails the possibility of just punishment.