Download or read book Greek Tragedy and Political Philosophy written by Peter J. Ahrensdorf and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-06 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Peter Ahrensdorf examines Sophocles' powerful analysis of a central question of political philosophy and a perennial question of political life: should citizens and leaders govern political society by the light of unaided human reason or religious faith? Through an examination of Sophocles' timeless masterpieces - Oedipus the Tyrant, Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone - Ahrensdorf offers a sustained challenge to the prevailing view, championed by Nietzsche in his attack on Socratic rationalism, that Sophocles is an opponent of rationalism. Ahrensdorf argues that Sophocles is a genuinely philosophical thinker and a rationalist, albeit one who advocates a cautious political rationalism. Ahrensdorf concludes with an incisive analysis of Nietzsche, Socrates and Aristotle on tragedy and philosophy. He argues, against Nietzsche, that the rationalism of Socrates and Aristotle incorporates a profound awareness of the tragic dimension of human existence and therefore resembles in fundamental ways the somber and humane rationalism of Sophocles.
Download or read book Greek Tragedy and Political Theory written by J. Peter Euben and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1986 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Tragedy of Political Theory written by J. Peter Euben and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book J. Peter Euben argues that Greek tragedy was the context for classical political theory and that such theory read in terms of tragedy provides a ground for contemporary theorizing alert to the concerns of post-modernism, such as normalization, the dominance of humanism, and the status of theory. Euben shows how ancient Greek theater offered a place and occasion for reflection on the democratic culture it helped constitute, in part by confronting the audience with the otherwise unacknowledged principles of social exclusion that sustained its community. Euben makes his argument through a series of comparisons between three dramas (Aeschylus' Oresteia, Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannos, and Euripides' Bacchae) and three works of classical political theory (Thucydides' History and Plato's Apology of Socrates and Republic) on the issues of justice, identity, and corruption. He brings his discussion to a contemporary American setting in a concluding chapter on Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 in which the road from Argos to Athens, built to differentiate a human domain from the undefined outside, has become a Los Angeles freeway desecrating the land and its people in a predatory urban sprawl.
Download or read book Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Tragedy written by Robert Carl Pirro and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A German Jewish refugee suffering tremendous personal and political upheaval during the years of Nazi conquest, Hannah Arendt turned to classical literature and drama as she struggled to make sense of the terrible events of her time. Studying fiction, plays, and poetry, she found a way to meld theoretical political philosophy and concrete personal commitment to action. Among her literary resources, the epics and plays of ancient Greece provided the ideal balance of politics and culture. In Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Tragedy, Pirro focuses especially on the influence of Greek tragedy on Arendt's political writings. Pirro casts Arendt's political thought as tragic storytelling, crafted to inspire her audience both to appreciate political freedoms and to act on those freedoms by participating in public life. Echoing an affinity for Greek drama common in the tradition of German philosophy and letters, Arendt draws on tragic characters, scenes, and dramatic conventions, as well as theories, to assess the maddening and often fatal contradictions of political life in modern times. Classical narratives of heroic achievements and failures shape the structure and content of Arendtian thought, as when she compares Jewish refugees' attempts to confront their stateless condition during the 1930s and 1940s to Ulysses's mythical quest. Turning her attention in the postwar years to the promise and limits of political freedom in American life, Arendt invokes Sophocles's last drama, Oedipus at Colonus, in an attempt to outline an alternative, aesthetic sense of political authority in the American Republic. In providing this new avenue of approach to Arendt, Pirro shows how elements of Greek tragedy helped her grapple with the problems of modern politics in the chaos of a universe without rules. Arendt enthusiasts and readers interested in the classics and politics will find fresh ideas to consider in Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Tragedy.
Download or read book Tragedy the Greeks and Us written by Simon Critchley and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2019-04-16 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the moderator of The New York Times philosophy blog "The Stone," a book that argues that if we want to understand ourselves we have to go back to theater, to the stage of our lives Tragedy presents a world of conflict and troubling emotion, a world where private and public lives collide and collapse. A world where morality is ambiguous and the powerful humiliate and destroy the powerless. A world where justice always seems to be on both sides of a conflict and sugarcoated words serve as cover for clandestine operations of violence. A world rather like our own. The ancient Greeks hold a mirror up to us, in which we see all the desolation and delusion of our lives but also the terrifying beauty and intensity of existence. This is not a time for consolation prizes and the fatuous banalities of the self-help industry and pop philosophy. Tragedy allows us to glimpse, in its harsh and unforgiving glare, the burning core of our aliveness. If we give ourselves the chance to look at tragedy, we might see further and more clearly.
Download or read book Greek Political Thought written by Ryan K. Balot and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This wide-ranging history of ancient Greek political thought showswhat ancient political texts might mean to citizens of thetwenty-first century. A provocative and wide-ranging history of ancient Greekpolitical thought Demonstrates what ancient Greek works of political philosophymight mean to citizens of the twenty-first century Examines an array of poetic, historical, and philosophicaltexts in an effort to locate Greek political thought in itscultural context Pays careful attention to the distinctively ancient connectionsbetween politics and ethics Structured around key themes such as the origins of politicalthought, political self-definition, revolutions in politicalthought, democracy and imperialism
Download or read book Tragedy and Archaic Greek Thought written by D. L. Cairns and published by Classical Press of Wales. This book was released on 2013-12-31 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eight leading contemporary interpreters of Classical Greek tragedy here explore its relation to the thought of the Archaic Period. Prominent topics are the nature and possibility of divine justice; the influence of the gods on humans; fate and human responsibility; the instability of fortune and the principle of alternation; hybris and ate; and the inheritance of guilt and suffering. Other themes are tragedy's relation with Pre-Socratic philosophy, and the interplay between 'Archaic' features of the genre and fifth-century ethical and political thought. The book makes a powerful case for the importance of Archaic thought not only in the evolution of the tragic genre, but also for developed features of the Classical tragedians' art. Along with three papers on Aeschylus, four on Sophocles, and one on Euripides, there is an extensive introduction by the editor.
Download or read book Tragic Pathos written by Dana LaCourse Munteanu and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-11-10 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars have often focused on understanding Aristotle's poetic theory, and particularly the concept of catharsis in the Poetics, as a response to Plato's critique of pity in the Republic. However, this book shows that, while Greek thinkers all acknowledge pity and some form of fear as responses to tragedy, each assumes for the two emotions a different purpose, mode of presentation and, to a degree, understanding. This book reassesses expressions of the emotions within different tragedies and explores emotional responses to and discussions of the tragedies by contemporary philosophers, providing insights into the ethical and social implications of the emotions.
Download or read book Tragedy and Enlightenment written by Christopher Rocco and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-04-28 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1997.
Download or read book Genealogy of the Tragic written by Joshua Billings and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did Greek tragedy and "the tragic" come to be seen as essential to conceptions of modernity? And how has this belief affected modern understandings of Greek drama? In Genealogy of the Tragic, Joshua Billings answers these and related questions by tracing the emergence of the modern theory of the tragic, which was first developed around 1800 by thinkers associated with German Idealism. The book argues that the idea of the tragic arose in response to a new consciousness of history in the late eighteenth century, which spurred theorists to see Greek tragedy as both a unique, historically remote form and a timeless literary genre full of meaning for the present. The book offers a new interpretation of the theories of Schiller, Schelling, Hegel, Hölderlin, and others, as mediations between these historicizing and universalizing impulses, and shows the roots of their approaches in earlier discussions of Greek tragedy in Germany, France, and England. By examining eighteenth-century readings of tragedy and the interactions between idealist thinkers in detail, Genealogy of the Tragic offers the most comprehensive historical account of the tragic to date, as well as the fullest explanation of why and how the idea was used to make sense of modernity. The book argues that idealist theories remain fundamental to contemporary interpretations of Greek tragedy, and calls for a renewed engagement with philosophical questions in criticism of tragedy.
Download or read book An Introduction to Greek Tragedy written by Ruth Scodel and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-08-16 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an accessible introduction for students and anyone interested in increasing their enjoyment of Greek tragic plays. Whether readers are studying Greek culture, performing a Greek tragedy, or simply interested in reading a Greek play, this book will help them to understand and enjoy this challenging and rewarding genre. An Introduction to Greek Tragedy provides background information, helps readers appreciate, enjoy and engage with the plays themselves, and gives them an idea of the important questions in current scholarship on tragedy. Ruth Scodel seeks to dispel misleading assumptions about tragedy, stressing how open the plays are to different interpretations and reactions. In addition to general background, the book also includes chapters on specific plays, both the most familiar titles and some lesser-known plays - Persians, Helen and Orestes - in order to convey the variety that the tragedies offer readers.
Download or read book Bound by the City written by Denise Eileen McCoskey and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2010-07-02 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection offers a vibrant exploration of the bonds between sexual difference and political structure in Greek tragedy. In looking at how the acts of violence and tortured kinship relations are depicted in the work of all three major Greek tragic playwrights—Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides—the contributors shed light on the workings and failings of the Greek polis, and explore the means by which sexual difference and the city take shape in relation to each other. The volume complements and expands the efforts of current feminist interpretations of Antigone and the Oresteia by considering the meanings of tragedy for ancient Athenian audiences while also unveiling the reverberations of Greek tragedy's formulations and dilemmas in modern political life and for contemporary political philosophy.
Download or read book The Fragility of Goodness written by Martha C. Nussbaum and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2001-01-15 with total page 587 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a study of ancient views about 'moral luck'. It examines the fundamental ethical problem that many of the valued constituents of a well-lived life are vulnerable to factors outside a person's control, and asks how this affects our appraisal of persons and their lives. The Greeks made a profound contribution to these questions, yet neither the problems nor the Greek views of them have received the attention they deserve. This book thus recovers a central dimension of Greek thought and addresses major issues in contemporary ethical theory. One of its most original aspects is its interrelated treatment of both literary and philosophical texts. The Fragility of Goodness has proven to be important reading for philosophers and classicists, and its non-technical style makes it accessible to any educated person interested in the difficult problems it tackles. This edition, first published in 2001, features a preface by Martha Nussbaum.
Download or read book Sophocles and the Politics of Tragedy written by Jonathan N. Badger and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focuses on Sophocles' dramatization of fundamental political impasses and applies these to the competing political theories of Thomas, Bacon and Locke.
Download or read book Greek Tragedy written by Edith Hall and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-01-21 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illustrated introduction to ancient Greek tragedy, written by one of its most distinguished experts, which provides all the background information necessary for understanding the context and content of the dramas. A special feature is an individual essay on every one of the surviving 33 plays.
Download or read book Tragedy and Philosophy written by Walter Kaufmann and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critical re-examination of the views of Plato, Aristotle, Hegel and Nietzsche on tragedy. Ancient Greek tragedy is revealed as surprisingly modern and experimental, while such concepts as mimesis, catharsis, hubris and the tragic collision are discussed from different perspectives.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Political Thought written by Stephen Salkever and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-27 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Political Thought provides a guide to understanding the central texts and problems in ancient Greek political thought, from Homer through the Stoics and Epicureans. Composed of essays specially commissioned for this volume and written by leading scholars of classics, political science, and philosophy, the Companion brings these texts to life by analysing what they have to tell us about the problems of political life. Focusing on texts by Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, and Aristotle, among others, they examine perennial issues, including rights and virtues, democracy and the rule of law, community formation and maintenance, and the ways in which theorizing of several genres can and cannot assist political practice.
