San Francisco Public Library

Tragedy, the Greeks, and us, Simon Critchley

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

index present

non fiction

Tragedy, the Greeks, and us

bibliography

1046067916

Simon Critchley

"From the curator of The New York Times's "The Stone," a provocative and timely exploration into tragedy--how it articulates conflicts and contradiction that we need to address in order to better understand the world we live in. We might think we are through with the past, but the past isn't through with us. Tragedy permits us to come face to face with what we do not know about ourselves but that which makes those selves who we are. Having Been Born is a compelling examination of ancient Greek origins in the development and history of tragedy--a story that represents what we thought we knew about the poets, dramatists, and philosophers of ancient Greece--and shows them to us in an unfamiliar, unexpected, and original light"--, Provided by publisher

Feeding the ancients with our own blood -- Philosophy's tragedy and the dangerous perhaps -- Knowing and not knowing : how Oedipus brings down fate -- Rage, grief, and war -- Gorgias: tragedy is a deception that leaves the deceived wiser than the non-deceived -- Justice as conflict (for polytheism) -- Tragedy as a dialectical mode of experience -- Tragedy as invention, or the invention of tragedy : 12 theses -- A critique of the exotic Greeks -- Discussion of Vernant's and Vidal-Naquet's Myth and tragedy in ancient Greece -- Moral ambiguity in Aeschylus' Seven against Thebes and the suppliant maidens -- Tragedy, travesty, and queerness -- Polyphony -- The gods! Tragedy and the limitation of the claims to autonomy and self-sufficiency -- A critique of moral psychology and the project of psychical integration -- The problem with generalizing about the tragic -- Good Hegel, bad Hegel -- From philosophy back to theatre -- Against a certain style of philosophy -- An introduction to the Sophists -- Gorgiasm -- The not-being -- I have nothing to say and I am saying it -- Helen is innocent -- Tragedy and sophistry -- the case of Euripides' The Trojan women -- Rationality and force -- Plato's Sophist -- Phaedrus, a philosophical success -- Gorgias, a philosophical failure -- Indirection -- A city in speech -- Being dead is not a terrible thing -- The moral economy of mimesis -- Political forms and demonic excess -- What is mimesis? -- Philosophy as affect regulation -- The inoculation against our inborn love of poetry -- The rewards of virtue, or what happens when we die -- What is catharsis in Aristotle? -- More devastating -- Re-enactment -- Mimesis apraxeos -- The birth of tragedy (and comedy) -- Happiness and unhappiness consist in action -- Single or double? -- Most tragic euripides -- Monstrosity -- or Aristotle and his highlighter pen -- The anomaly of slaves and women -- Mechanical prebuttal -- The god finds a way to bring about what we do not imagine -- Misrecognition in Euripides -- Smeared make-up -- Sophocles' theatre of discomfort -- Vulgar acting and epic inferiority -- Is Aristotle really more generous to tragedy than Plato? -- Poetics II -- Aristotle on comedy -- Tormented incomprehensibly -- against homeopathic catharsis -- Aristophanes falls asleep -- Make Athens great again -- Trans-generational curse -- Aliveness