Introduction

Abstract

To rethink tragedy is, of necessity, to acknowledge a history of prior thought. Indeed, the magisterial bulk and sheer weighti- ness of that history still cast a long shadow over the present. The subject of tragedy has preoccupied a formidable range of thinkers, from Aristotle to Hegel, from Schopenhauer to Lacan. Moreover, while the creation of tragic art may have waned in the modern era, interpretations of tragedy multiplied and proliferated. Greek tragedy, in particular, was often hailed as an exemplary source of insight into ethical and philosophical questions; in its very remoteness from the present, it could throw light on the dilemmas of modernity. As Dennis Schmidt has argued, the growing self-doubt of philosophy, the questioning of reason, analytical method, and conceptual knowledge as primary values, has much to do with the turn to tragedy, as the form that most eloquently dramatizes the stubborn persistence of human blindness, vulnerability, and error.1