Tragedy: Sophocles, Nietzsche and the Defiance of Reason

The concept of tragedy is one of the foremost contributions of ancient Greek culture to the Western tradition. It centres around the fundamental and disquieting insight that human life is subject to dark and elusive forces which lie outside the governance of reason or justice. The tragic sense of life is at a great distance from most modern worldviews, which are governed by rational values such as justice and intelligibility. The deep belief of modern culture in a controllable and perfectible world gives added poignancy to the Greek insight that many aspects of our lives - both private and public - are fundamentally beyond our control and that ignoring this is deeply problematic and potentially dangerous.
This course first examines how the tragic worldview is expressed in the great dramas of Greek antiquity, such as Aeschylus’ Prometheus, Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and Antigone and Euripides’ Bacchae. Next, attention is paid – through study of the Old Testament book of Job and Marlowe’s Faust – to the continuing importance of the tragic worldview in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Finally, after exploring the political and philosophical conditions that caused the ever-decreasing importance of tragic modes of thought in modern times, the course turns to the remarkable new meaning the tragic legacy of the Greeks took on at the end of the nineteenth century. At a time of unbridled belief in the possibilities of science and technology, the ancient Greeks were of unique value in calling to mind the dangers involved in ignoring or suppressing those aspects of human life that defy the authority of reason. Through Friedrich Nietzsche’s mightily influential The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music and a series of important works it inspired – a.o. by Thomas Mann, Joseph Conrad and Albert Camus – it will be shown how the tragic worldview of the Greeks inspired artists to reject the dogmatism of reason and to find beauty, happiness and truth in the irrational, subconscious and at times dark recesses of the human soul.

 
Format
Class meets two times a week. Students are expected to thoroughly prepare class readings of both primary and secondary literature, to make their own notes and to actively participate in the textual analyses and interpretative discussions conducting during the seminars.