Abstract
Chapter 4 argues that polemics attempting to claim Milton’s Samson Agonistes as either a celebration or condemnation of terrorism profoundly mistake the value of the play’s literary and philosophical investigation into fanaticism. Milton’s play inherits the problem of “passive action” that Donne brought into view and Hobbes attempted to dismiss. Developing a new theory of tragedy to address the problem of fanaticism, Milton bars his audience—and Samson himself—from knowledge of whether or not Samson is an organ of divine might. This tragic unknowability is the major aesthetic, epistemological, and ethical problem with which the witness of fanatical violence confronts modernity.
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