More than two thousand years after Aristotle's Poetics, Hegel proposed his own original and highly influential theory of tragedy.
Unlike Aristotle, who defines tragedy in terms of specific requirements of plot and character, Hegel defines it as, at bottom, a dynamic contest between two opposing forces--in effect, a collision or conflict of rights.
According to this scheme, the most tragic events are those in which two esteemed values or goals are in opposition and one of them must give way. For instance, suppose in a particular case we find ourselves torn between our private conscientious opinions or religious beliefs and our legitimate duties and obligations to the state. Such would be the circumstance, for example, of a conscientious objector facing military service. And such indeed is the situation of Sophocles's play Antigone, whose title heroine finds herself caught between her religious and family obligations and her duties as a public citizen.
In essence, then, a properly constructed Hegelian tragedy involves a situation in which two rights or values are in fatal conflict. Thus it is not (strictly speaking) tragic when good defeats bad or when bad defeats good. From Hegel's point of view, the only tragic confrontation is one in which good is up against good and the contest is to the death.
Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts-Enter Hypertextopia-PHONEREADER Library -- Jean-Philippe Pastor
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Unlike Aristotle, who defines tragedy in terms of specific requirements of plot and character, Hegel defines it as, at bottom, a dynamic contest between two opposing forces--in effect, a collision or conflict of rights.
According to this scheme, the most tragic events are those in which two esteemed values or goals are in opposition and one of them must give way. For instance, suppose in a particular case we find ourselves torn between our private conscientious opinions or religious beliefs and our legitimate duties and obligations to the state. Such would be the circumstance, for example, of a conscientious objector facing military service. And such indeed is the situation of Sophocles's play Antigone, whose title heroine finds herself caught between her religious and family obligations and her duties as a public citizen.
In essence, then, a properly constructed Hegelian tragedy involves a situation in which two rights or values are in fatal conflict. Thus it is not (strictly speaking) tragic when good defeats bad or when bad defeats good. From Hegel's point of view, the only tragic confrontation is one in which good is up against good and the contest is to the death.
Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts-Enter Hypertextopia-PHONEREADER Library -- Jean-Philippe Pastor
métabole
hypertexte
Bookmark this on Delicious
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