Genealogy of the Tragic (ebook)

Argumento de Genealogy of the Tragic (ebook)

"[Billings'] Genealogy is an impressive study that pinpoints distinctions, elucidates complexities and helps to show how they arose and why they matter. His readings are adroit and scrupulously contextualized. . . . Here is a book whose subtlety and scope prompt further reflection on profoundly important matters."--Michael Silk, Times Literary Supplement

Winner of a 2015 Charles Goodwin Award of Merit, Society for Classical Studies

"There is no body of work as important for understanding the idea of the tragic as German Idealism, which fundamentally changed modernity's notions of tragedy. I can think of no better guide to these formidable writings than Joshua Billings, who takes the reader through them with clarity, deep knowledge, and revelatory exposition. A great achievement, this is a book that scholars and students of tragedy have needed for years."--Simon Goldhill, University of Cambridge

"This is a very fine book--meticulously researched and clearly written. Joshua Billings is in complete control of his material--and his combination of serious purpose and scholarly adroitness is hard to beat. Scholars and students alike will learn much from this study of the tragic as a philosophical ideal, a notion that continues to haunt us today."--James I. Porter, University of California, Irvine

"Readers of Greek tragedy and readers of German Idealism, whether classicists or not, have much to learn from this important book."--Constanze Güthenke, Princeton University0Preface xi
Note on Translations, Citations, and Abbreviations xv
INTRODUCTION: Tragedy and Philosophy around 1800 1
TRAGIC MODERNITIES
Chapter 1: Quarreling over Tragedy 19
Ancients and Moderns on Tragedy 21
Nach Athen: Literary Models in Germany 32
Chapter 2: The Antiquity of Tragedy 45
Guillaume Dubois de Rochefort: Tragedy and Cultural Difference 46
Johann Gottfried Herder: Tragedy for the Volk 53
Returns to the Greek: Translation, Philology, Performance 59
TRAGIC THEMES
Chapter 3: Revolutionary Freedom 75
The Tragic Sublime: Schiller and Schelling 80
Schiller?s System of Tragic Freedom 88
Criticism and Scholarship: A. W. Schlegel and Gottfried Hermann 97
Chapter 4: Greek and Modern Tragedy 105
Friedrich Schlegel: Nature, Art, Revolution 107
Schiller: "The Limits of Ancient and Modern Tragedy" 113
Schelling: Identity and History in the Philosophy of Art 123
Chapter 5: Tragic Theologies 133
A Poetic Religion 135
"Problems of Fate": "The Spirit of Christianity" and Empedocles 139
The Power of the Sacrifice: The Natural Law Essay 150
TRAGIC TEXTS
Chapter 6: Hegel?s Phenomenology: The Fate of Tragedy 161
The Ethical World of Tragedy 163
Error and Recognition 171
Tragic Knowing and Forgetting 177
The End of Tragedy 184
Chapter 7: Hölderlin?s Sophocles: Tragedy and Paradox 189
Tragedy and Vaterland 191
Sophocles, Ancient and Modern 196
"The Lawful Calculus" 200
"The Boldest Moment" 205
Vaterländische Umkehr 212
Exodos: Births of the Tragic 222
Bibliography 235
Index 251