Bruno Bauer's critical theory of tragedy. The aesthetics of collision

Abstract

The aim of my article is to retrace Bruno Bauer's critical theory of tragedy in his The Trumpet of the Last Judgement against Hegel, the Atheist and the Antichrist (1841), Hegel's Doctrine of Religion and Art (1842), and in his political writings of the same period. I will show how Bauer's critical theory of tragedy represents a profound politicization of Hegel's own conception of tragic action. Bauer modifies Hegel's theory in two relevant aspects. Firstly, he gives a political modern contour to the tragic characters. Unlike Hegel, they are not seen as unaware of their role in ethical conflict; on the contrary, they recognize their actions as colliding with their corresponding opposite ethical power. To show Bauer's emendation, I will deal with his critique of Hegel's famous reading of Sophocles’ Antigone, showing to what extent the Greek heroine represents for Bauer himself the principle of self-liberation of universal self-consciousness. Secondly, according to Bauer, tragedy should not be exiled in the ancient world (the Greeks) or be weakened in modern drama, as in Hegel's aesthetics. Instead, tragedy is a crucial experience of modern critical subjectivities in their struggle to overcome the principle of exclusion, incorporated by the (Christian) State.