What do you think?
Rate this book
Tragedy, the Greeks and Us
We might think we are through with the past, but the past isn't through with us. Tragedy permits us to come face to face with the things we don't want to know about ourselves, but which still make us who we are. It articulates the conflicts and contradictions that we need to address in order to better understand the world we live
in.
A work honed from a decade's teaching at the New School, where 'Critchley on Tragedy' is one of the most popular courses, Tragedy, the Greeks and Us is a compelling examination of the history of tragedy. Simon Critchley demolishes our common misconceptions about the poets, dramatists and philosophers of Ancient Greece - then presents these writers to us in an unfamiliar and original light.
in.
A work honed from a decade's teaching at the New School, where 'Critchley on Tragedy' is one of the most popular courses, Tragedy, the Greeks and Us is a compelling examination of the history of tragedy. Simon Critchley demolishes our common misconceptions about the poets, dramatists and philosophers of Ancient Greece - then presents these writers to us in an unfamiliar and original light.
336 pages, Paperback
Published March 5, 2020
186 people are currently reading
1604 people want to read
About the author
Simon Critchley
112 books380 followersSimon Critchley (born 27 February 1960 in Hertfordshire) is an English philosopher currently teaching at The New School. He works in continental philosophy. Critchley argues that philosophy commences in disappointment, either religious or political. These two axes may be said largely to inform his published work: religious disappointment raises the question of meaning and has to, as he sees it, deal with the problem of nihilism; political disappointment provokes the question of justice and raises the need for a coherent ethics [...]
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 51 reviews
July 31, 2025
Greek Tragedy With Our Own Blood
Simon Critchley's "Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us" (2019) explores ancient Greek tragedy and philosophy and discusses their continued significance. Critchley, Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School of Social Research, has written extensively on philosophy and on philosophy's relationship to literature. He has the gift of writing both for those highly read in philosophy and for the more general reader, as shown in his role as moderator for the New York Times philosophy column "The Stone". This gift for combining the scholarly and the popular is fully used in his study of Greek tragedy. His book draws on ancient texts, scholarly writing, and modern popular culture.
Critchley argues that the ancients need "a little of our own blood" to speak to us. He means that by becoming engaged with the passions and dilemmas of the ancient plays, "we" people of today can get a broader, deeper understanding of who we are and who we might become. Critchley writes:
"Without wanting to piggyback on the dizzying success of vampire fiction, the latter's portion of truth is that the ancients need a little of our true blood in order to speak to us. When revived, we will notice that when the ancients speak, they do not merely tell us about themselves. They tell us about us. But who is the 'us' that might still be claimed and compelled by these ancient texts, by these ruins? And here is both the beauty and strangeness of this thought: This 'us is not necessarily existent. It is us, but in some new way, some alien manner. It is us, but not as we have seen ourselves before, turned inside out and upside down."
With this enigmatic introduction, Critchley offers a complex portrayal of Greek tragedy that focuses on the ambiguities of the human condition and of the multi-faceted, competing characters of human goods that come into conflict in Greek tragedy and in human life. He discusses how seemingly autonomous individuals are controlled by their past, with little degree of self-knowledge. Critchley shows how Greek tragedy displays both the scope of and the severe limits of human reason. In a provocative passage, Critchley contrasts the polytheism of Greek tragedy with the monotheism of the three leading Western religions. He writes:
"What is preferable about the world of Greek tragedy is that it is a polytheistic world with a diversity of deeply flawed gods and rival conceptions of the good. It is my conviction, ... that the lesson of tragedy is that it is prudent to abandon any notion of monotheism whether it is either of the three Abrahamic monotheisms, a Platonic monotheism rooted in the metaphysical primacy of the Good, or indeed the secular monotheism of liberal democracy and human rights that still circles around a weak, deistic conception of God."
Late in his book, he characterizes tragedy and drama as showing what it means to be alive. In a conversation about the themes of tragedy, an actor tells Critchely he is overly taken with concepts. She says: "Of course, what theater is about is a certain experience of aliveness. That's all that matters. The rest is just ideas. Good ideas, maybe. But just ideas."
The development of Critchley's understanding of tragedy offers more than enough for a book, but Critchley offers still more. Critchley contrasts the approach to life of the Greek dramatists with the approach taken slightly thereafter by Greek philosophy, largely in the figures of Plato and Aristotle. Critchley contrasts the "philosophy of tragedy" of the philosophers with the "tragedy of philosophy" of the dramatists. He argues that philosophers tried to use reason to come to an idealistic, unitary understanding of the nature of life; and that through the centuries, as argued by Nietzsche, the claims of reason were dashed, leading to nihilism. The tragedians were wiser in their skepticism of the power of reason. They were more akin, in Critchley's telling to sophist thinkers such as Gorgias in emphasizing rhetoric and the irreducible character of many human separate human goods than to Plato and Aristotle.
The complexity of this book makes it wander and feel somewhat disjointed. The opening section of the book titled "Introduction" offers a broad, wide-ranging statement of Critchley's themes and aims. The following section "Tragedy" ranges widely and explores, among other things, a small number of Greek dramas, scholarly studies, and Hegel's thoughts on tragedy.
The third part of the book explores Greek sophistry, with a focus on Georgias and some of his little-known writings. I found this valuable. Critchley also discusses Plato's treatment of the sophists with a focus on the "Phaedrus" and the "Georgias". Critchley's discussion of the sophists and his sympathy with them over Plato and Aristotle reminded me of Carlin Romano's book, "America the Philosophical" which likewise prefers the sophists to the absolutism of Plato and Aristotle and links sophism to the American philosophy of pragmatism.
The fourth part of the book is a lengthy discussion of Plato's "Republic" and an exposition and critique of his views on tragedy. Then, the book offers an equally detailed treatment of Aristotle's "Poetics" together with a considerable discussion of Euripides as a possible counter-example to some of what Aristotle says. The book in all its parts moves back and forth between discussions of particular Greek plays, discussions of Greek philosophy, discussions of later-day philosophers and critics, and broad discussion and argument about tragedy's continued significance.
The "Acknowledgement" section of a book is usually routine, but I found Critchley's deeply moving. Critchley is not a classical philosopher by training and admits to the weaknesses in his study of ancient Greek. The child of an English working-class family, Critchley was initially a poor student before a perceptive history teacher recommended to the young 11 year old "The Greeks" by H.D.F. Kitto. I read Kitto's book early in my studies and was surprised to learn of its importance to Critchley. Critchley came relatively late to academic life. His book both brought back memories of my own study and enhanced my understanding of Greek drama and Greek philosophy.
Robin Friedman
Simon Critchley's "Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us" (2019) explores ancient Greek tragedy and philosophy and discusses their continued significance. Critchley, Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School of Social Research, has written extensively on philosophy and on philosophy's relationship to literature. He has the gift of writing both for those highly read in philosophy and for the more general reader, as shown in his role as moderator for the New York Times philosophy column "The Stone". This gift for combining the scholarly and the popular is fully used in his study of Greek tragedy. His book draws on ancient texts, scholarly writing, and modern popular culture.
Critchley argues that the ancients need "a little of our own blood" to speak to us. He means that by becoming engaged with the passions and dilemmas of the ancient plays, "we" people of today can get a broader, deeper understanding of who we are and who we might become. Critchley writes:
"Without wanting to piggyback on the dizzying success of vampire fiction, the latter's portion of truth is that the ancients need a little of our true blood in order to speak to us. When revived, we will notice that when the ancients speak, they do not merely tell us about themselves. They tell us about us. But who is the 'us' that might still be claimed and compelled by these ancient texts, by these ruins? And here is both the beauty and strangeness of this thought: This 'us is not necessarily existent. It is us, but in some new way, some alien manner. It is us, but not as we have seen ourselves before, turned inside out and upside down."
With this enigmatic introduction, Critchley offers a complex portrayal of Greek tragedy that focuses on the ambiguities of the human condition and of the multi-faceted, competing characters of human goods that come into conflict in Greek tragedy and in human life. He discusses how seemingly autonomous individuals are controlled by their past, with little degree of self-knowledge. Critchley shows how Greek tragedy displays both the scope of and the severe limits of human reason. In a provocative passage, Critchley contrasts the polytheism of Greek tragedy with the monotheism of the three leading Western religions. He writes:
"What is preferable about the world of Greek tragedy is that it is a polytheistic world with a diversity of deeply flawed gods and rival conceptions of the good. It is my conviction, ... that the lesson of tragedy is that it is prudent to abandon any notion of monotheism whether it is either of the three Abrahamic monotheisms, a Platonic monotheism rooted in the metaphysical primacy of the Good, or indeed the secular monotheism of liberal democracy and human rights that still circles around a weak, deistic conception of God."
Late in his book, he characterizes tragedy and drama as showing what it means to be alive. In a conversation about the themes of tragedy, an actor tells Critchely he is overly taken with concepts. She says: "Of course, what theater is about is a certain experience of aliveness. That's all that matters. The rest is just ideas. Good ideas, maybe. But just ideas."
The development of Critchley's understanding of tragedy offers more than enough for a book, but Critchley offers still more. Critchley contrasts the approach to life of the Greek dramatists with the approach taken slightly thereafter by Greek philosophy, largely in the figures of Plato and Aristotle. Critchley contrasts the "philosophy of tragedy" of the philosophers with the "tragedy of philosophy" of the dramatists. He argues that philosophers tried to use reason to come to an idealistic, unitary understanding of the nature of life; and that through the centuries, as argued by Nietzsche, the claims of reason were dashed, leading to nihilism. The tragedians were wiser in their skepticism of the power of reason. They were more akin, in Critchley's telling to sophist thinkers such as Gorgias in emphasizing rhetoric and the irreducible character of many human separate human goods than to Plato and Aristotle.
The complexity of this book makes it wander and feel somewhat disjointed. The opening section of the book titled "Introduction" offers a broad, wide-ranging statement of Critchley's themes and aims. The following section "Tragedy" ranges widely and explores, among other things, a small number of Greek dramas, scholarly studies, and Hegel's thoughts on tragedy.
The third part of the book explores Greek sophistry, with a focus on Georgias and some of his little-known writings. I found this valuable. Critchley also discusses Plato's treatment of the sophists with a focus on the "Phaedrus" and the "Georgias". Critchley's discussion of the sophists and his sympathy with them over Plato and Aristotle reminded me of Carlin Romano's book, "America the Philosophical" which likewise prefers the sophists to the absolutism of Plato and Aristotle and links sophism to the American philosophy of pragmatism.
The fourth part of the book is a lengthy discussion of Plato's "Republic" and an exposition and critique of his views on tragedy. Then, the book offers an equally detailed treatment of Aristotle's "Poetics" together with a considerable discussion of Euripides as a possible counter-example to some of what Aristotle says. The book in all its parts moves back and forth between discussions of particular Greek plays, discussions of Greek philosophy, discussions of later-day philosophers and critics, and broad discussion and argument about tragedy's continued significance.
The "Acknowledgement" section of a book is usually routine, but I found Critchley's deeply moving. Critchley is not a classical philosopher by training and admits to the weaknesses in his study of ancient Greek. The child of an English working-class family, Critchley was initially a poor student before a perceptive history teacher recommended to the young 11 year old "The Greeks" by H.D.F. Kitto. I read Kitto's book early in my studies and was surprised to learn of its importance to Critchley. Critchley came relatively late to academic life. His book both brought back memories of my own study and enhanced my understanding of Greek drama and Greek philosophy.
Robin Friedman
July 27, 2020
In ancient times the book that introduced me to the grand subject of Sophocles et al. was George Steiner’s The Death of Tragedy, as sonorous and epic as its subject, and which in turn set loose an avalanche of books eager to support or vigorously dissent from his argument. After that sturm und drang in the critical teapot, now long forgotten, comes Simon Critchley’s eccentric meditation, less grand and for me much more interesting in its variety of perspective, positions and reversals and pithy pronouncements that extend (as another reviewer noted) even unto the usually arid Acknowledgments at the end of the book — which is as good a place as any to begin quoting his thoughts:
“I am engaging with tragedy in order to aim at a certain style of philosophy whose origins I trace to Plato and Aristotle. I have come to find the metaphysical and moral assumptions to which that style is linked questionable. It is not that this this book is anti-philosophical. Far from it. It is rather that tragedy offers another way of thinking and experiencing, a dialectical modality of reflection that is at once more realist, more negative, more modest, and more devastating than much that takes the name of philosophy, conventionally understood, which tends to confuse art with moral tutorial.” (283-284)
That’s a good intro. It also marks the damage of time, of the philosophical landscape since Steiner wrote his book in the early 60s. “Tragedy can have no resonance in a society that believes in a just and reasonable god, nor in one that believes that man alone determines his destiny through the power of his own reason.” (That’s not Steiner, that’s just a handy summary I stole from another review.) Who now believes in such a god or such a destiny? Critchley begins from the opposite corner, arguing that philosophy as it is often practiced blinds us to the kind of thinking, reasoning, being expressed the Greek tragedies it pretends to explain. Here’s one more quote, and I promise it’s (almost) the last. But it’s a good one:
“Tragedy’s philosophy begins from the inevitable facticity of violence and the fragile necessity of reasoning in a world of conflictual force, a polytheistic world that continues to think of itself as monotheistic. If the acceptance of tragedy’s philosophy entails the abandonment of modern theological shibboleths like faith in progress, which is underlined by a linear conception of time and history that tragedy twists out of joint, then it might also possess the virtue of a modest political realism that has to begin where philosophy should begin, in my view, with disappointment. But although philosophy might begin in disappointment, it does not end there. Only the contrary, disappointment is the graveyard of those philosophies that insist maniacally upon affirmation, vitality, wonder and creation.”
If you’ve read this far, you’ve probably guessed that in a book of this sort you’ll also encounter the fine company of Plato & Aristotle & Aristophanes, Schelling & Nietzsche (above all), Vernant & Vidal-Naquet & Anne Carson. This is the kind of book on classics that give classics the life they require. It honors the recognition that “The ancients need our blood in order to revive and live among us.” Critchley helps us live among them, and among all those scholars and artists and readers who’ve poured out their blood and learning as a libation.
PS for those who buy hardbacks: Pantheon has produced a fine book to read and hold: great typography, clean design, strong paper. Odd to feel compelled to mention this, but this book is a welcome exception to some of the shabby trends I’ve noticed lately even from publishers of serious nonfiction.
“I am engaging with tragedy in order to aim at a certain style of philosophy whose origins I trace to Plato and Aristotle. I have come to find the metaphysical and moral assumptions to which that style is linked questionable. It is not that this this book is anti-philosophical. Far from it. It is rather that tragedy offers another way of thinking and experiencing, a dialectical modality of reflection that is at once more realist, more negative, more modest, and more devastating than much that takes the name of philosophy, conventionally understood, which tends to confuse art with moral tutorial.” (283-284)
That’s a good intro. It also marks the damage of time, of the philosophical landscape since Steiner wrote his book in the early 60s. “Tragedy can have no resonance in a society that believes in a just and reasonable god, nor in one that believes that man alone determines his destiny through the power of his own reason.” (That’s not Steiner, that’s just a handy summary I stole from another review.) Who now believes in such a god or such a destiny? Critchley begins from the opposite corner, arguing that philosophy as it is often practiced blinds us to the kind of thinking, reasoning, being expressed the Greek tragedies it pretends to explain. Here’s one more quote, and I promise it’s (almost) the last. But it’s a good one:
“Tragedy’s philosophy begins from the inevitable facticity of violence and the fragile necessity of reasoning in a world of conflictual force, a polytheistic world that continues to think of itself as monotheistic. If the acceptance of tragedy’s philosophy entails the abandonment of modern theological shibboleths like faith in progress, which is underlined by a linear conception of time and history that tragedy twists out of joint, then it might also possess the virtue of a modest political realism that has to begin where philosophy should begin, in my view, with disappointment. But although philosophy might begin in disappointment, it does not end there. Only the contrary, disappointment is the graveyard of those philosophies that insist maniacally upon affirmation, vitality, wonder and creation.”
If you’ve read this far, you’ve probably guessed that in a book of this sort you’ll also encounter the fine company of Plato & Aristotle & Aristophanes, Schelling & Nietzsche (above all), Vernant & Vidal-Naquet & Anne Carson. This is the kind of book on classics that give classics the life they require. It honors the recognition that “The ancients need our blood in order to revive and live among us.” Critchley helps us live among them, and among all those scholars and artists and readers who’ve poured out their blood and learning as a libation.
PS for those who buy hardbacks: Pantheon has produced a fine book to read and hold: great typography, clean design, strong paper. Odd to feel compelled to mention this, but this book is a welcome exception to some of the shabby trends I’ve noticed lately even from publishers of serious nonfiction.
May 23, 2019
In this work Simon Critchley explores Greek tragedies, arguing that the Attica tragedies import a philosophy, "tragedy's philosophy," which differs from the dominate philosophy of Rationalism handed down from us from Plato. All of this is fine, but it seems that at times Critchley is making claims that are self evident to the reader who has read the Greeks, and who has read Nietzsche. Nevertheless, the work is a wonderful guide into the wonderful world of Greek tragedy, which Critchley correctly shows is a world of ambiguity, eliding certainty, raising questions that remain open, and is a world that is only partially intelligible to human agency, where autonomy is necessarily limited by some acknowledgment of dependency.
July 27, 2020
I really respect Simon Critchley. I appreciate his work in the area of the philosophies of Heidegger and Levinas. I expected a lot and was excited by a glimpse of some central claim here about the possibility of a different approach to philosophy that reflects the moral ambiguity of tragedy. Sadly, I felt it never really delved deep enough into that possibility and the whole book remained a rambling introduction that covered a lot of area but did so only superficially.
May 15, 2024
Enjoyed the book a huge amount, particularly his discussions of Republic and Poetics. A lot went over my head, but in a great way. I won't think of catharsis in the same way.
December 22, 2024
A fascinating book.
December 13, 2023
This pleasurable read has been a companion and offered expansion to a current reading project of all extant ancient Greek tragedies. I think the author, Simon Critchley’s nonclassicist background, and his specialty as a philosopher/philosophy professor enhances the ancient works in a way that a classicist might not. I read a lot of introductions and notes on translations as I scour whatever editions of the 31 remaining tragedies I can find in Seoul (as I prefer hard copies). It is really hard to write all that this work has meant to me, as I found it so accessible, and to be such a great device to extend my readings in this vicinity. For example, I now understand that both Plato and Aristophanes are necessary continuations of my project. Plato for his dramatic dialogues, a contender for a more proper mode and antagonistic model to theater. Aristophanes presents a more conservative comic response to the liberal Euripidean tragedies. Both begin to host more human characters and begin to shape an intertextual universe of ancient Greek writings. I see many years remaining in lengthy readings here, and I am piqued to learn ancient Greek.
What I would like to write here is all of the great Greek terminology used to describe Greek tragedies. To do so, I need to go back. In particular I felt Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us to be a wealth of knowledge and a wonderful resource. As I check this out of the library on a whim, I had better do so quickly or will lose the chance. One question helps to frame how the terms can be used to frame even our modern thinking:
ancient Greek words (and their meaning)
hybris - mimesis praxeos (imitation of action) - theoros (spectator) - theorein (to see) - theatron (theater) - theois (gods) - ho bios theois (life of the gods) - apate (deception, cheating, trickery, guile, fraud, deceit, cunning) - parapsyche - psychagogia - demokratia - theatrokratia - peitho (persuasion) - polis - harmantia (tragic error) - ate (tragic ruination) - tragikotatos (the most tragic) - tragikos (tragic) - tragos (he-goat) - tragikos legein (tragic talk) - megethos (grandeur) - agon (tragic contest) - dithyrambs (ancient Greek hymns) - protagonist (first actor) - deuteragonist (second actor) - tritagonist (third actor) - antagonist - ekstasis (standing outside of oneself, loss of self) - daimon - kratos (power) / nomos (law) - deinon (uncanny) - koinon (common) - eleutherostomou (free-spoken) - anarchion - katharsis (catharsis, purgation) - xenoi (foreigners) - apolis (without a city) - autarchia (self-determination) - logistikos (reason) / thymos (spiritedness) - epithymia (appetite) - organon (instrument) - phronesis (practical judgement) - doxa (irreducibility of opinion) - praxis action) - poiesis (poetry) - poietai (poets) - logology - antilogia (contradiction) - sophos (wise) - sophistes (skilled craftsman) - logoi (speeches) - dissoi logoi (double arguments) - hodos (method) - elenkos (refutation) - epideixis (display speech) - bia (force, violence) - deus ex machina - techne psychagogia (rhetoric) - eidos (ideas) - politeia (regime) - dike (just, right) - eudaimonia (flourishing, blessedness) - arete (virtue) - hoi polloi (the many) - paideia (education) - apseudos (falsehood) - choregos (sponsors of dramas) - epiekes (decent man) - sophrosune (self-control, moderation) - diegesis (narration, speaking in one’s own voice) - mimesis (imitation, speaking in the voice of another) - mimetikous (imitators, tragic poets) - pharmakon (poison and cure) - methodos/methodou (customary procedure) - hodou (path, way, road) - phainomena - onta (being) - aletheia (truth) - tragidopoios (maker of tragedy) - eidolon (craftsman of a phantom, Homer) - logistikos (calculating) - bouleusis (deliberation) - alogiston (irrational) - aphrodision (sex) - ton pollon (belongs to the many) - homooiosis theo (likeness to gods, philosophers) - telos (goal) - dramatas (dramas) - drontas (people in action) - komoi (villages) - komodoi (comic performers) - dran (acting, happening, Doric word) - prattein mimesis (enactive imitation, Athenian word) - praxis (action) - pathos (feeling) - mimesis apraxeos (imitation of inaction) - physikai (natural) - ex arches (from the beginning) - arche (origin) - to geloion (ridiculous) - ousia (essence, being) - stichomythia (single-line dialogue) - stasima (choral odes) - persinousa (bring to an end) - mythos (plot) - ethos (character) - metabole (change, transformation) - ta katholou (universal, general) - peripeteia (reversal, unexpected metabole) - anagnorisis (recognition, ignorance > knowledge) - prologue - parados - episode - stasimon - exodos - eleos (pity) - phobos (fear) - kalliste (most beautiful) - ex tes opseos (spectacle) - to teratodes (sensational, monstrous) - homoiosis (lifelike, possess likeness) - to omalon (consistency) - omalos anomalon (oxymoron: consistently inconsistent) - anomalos (irregular) - mechane (crane, theatrical machine, device of artifice) - syllogismou (reasoning) - kalon (beautiful) - euteles (tawdry) - phortike (vulgar) - epitome (summary or abstract of a longer work) - gelota (laughter) - phronesis (prudence) - phronimos (prudent person) - parabasis (comic moment when the chorus addresses the audience directly)
Comic structures according to…
- homonyms (puns)
- synonyms
- paronyms
What I would like to write here is all of the great Greek terminology used to describe Greek tragedies. To do so, I need to go back. In particular I felt Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us to be a wealth of knowledge and a wonderful resource. As I check this out of the library on a whim, I had better do so quickly or will lose the chance. One question helps to frame how the terms can be used to frame even our modern thinking:
Is tragedy mimesis praxeos or prattein mimeseos?
ancient Greek words (and their meaning)
hybris - mimesis praxeos (imitation of action) - theoros (spectator) - theorein (to see) - theatron (theater) - theois (gods) - ho bios theois (life of the gods) - apate (deception, cheating, trickery, guile, fraud, deceit, cunning) - parapsyche - psychagogia - demokratia - theatrokratia - peitho (persuasion) - polis - harmantia (tragic error) - ate (tragic ruination) - tragikotatos (the most tragic) - tragikos (tragic) - tragos (he-goat) - tragikos legein (tragic talk) - megethos (grandeur) - agon (tragic contest) - dithyrambs (ancient Greek hymns) - protagonist (first actor) - deuteragonist (second actor) - tritagonist (third actor) - antagonist - ekstasis (standing outside of oneself, loss of self) - daimon - kratos (power) / nomos (law) - deinon (uncanny) - koinon (common) - eleutherostomou (free-spoken) - anarchion - katharsis (catharsis, purgation) - xenoi (foreigners) - apolis (without a city) - autarchia (self-determination) - logistikos (reason) / thymos (spiritedness) - epithymia (appetite) - organon (instrument) - phronesis (practical judgement) - doxa (irreducibility of opinion) - praxis action) - poiesis (poetry) - poietai (poets) - logology - antilogia (contradiction) - sophos (wise) - sophistes (skilled craftsman) - logoi (speeches) - dissoi logoi (double arguments) - hodos (method) - elenkos (refutation) - epideixis (display speech) - bia (force, violence) - deus ex machina - techne psychagogia (rhetoric) - eidos (ideas) - politeia (regime) - dike (just, right) - eudaimonia (flourishing, blessedness) - arete (virtue) - hoi polloi (the many) - paideia (education) - apseudos (falsehood) - choregos (sponsors of dramas) - epiekes (decent man) - sophrosune (self-control, moderation) - diegesis (narration, speaking in one’s own voice) - mimesis (imitation, speaking in the voice of another) - mimetikous (imitators, tragic poets) - pharmakon (poison and cure) - methodos/methodou (customary procedure) - hodou (path, way, road) - phainomena - onta (being) - aletheia (truth) - tragidopoios (maker of tragedy) - eidolon (craftsman of a phantom, Homer) - logistikos (calculating) - bouleusis (deliberation) - alogiston (irrational) - aphrodision (sex) - ton pollon (belongs to the many) - homooiosis theo (likeness to gods, philosophers) - telos (goal) - dramatas (dramas) - drontas (people in action) - komoi (villages) - komodoi (comic performers) - dran (acting, happening, Doric word) - prattein mimesis (enactive imitation, Athenian word) - praxis (action) - pathos (feeling) - mimesis apraxeos (imitation of inaction) - physikai (natural) - ex arches (from the beginning) - arche (origin) - to geloion (ridiculous) - ousia (essence, being) - stichomythia (single-line dialogue) - stasima (choral odes) - persinousa (bring to an end) - mythos (plot) - ethos (character) - metabole (change, transformation) - ta katholou (universal, general) - peripeteia (reversal, unexpected metabole) - anagnorisis (recognition, ignorance > knowledge) - prologue - parados - episode - stasimon - exodos - eleos (pity) - phobos (fear) - kalliste (most beautiful) - ex tes opseos (spectacle) - to teratodes (sensational, monstrous) - homoiosis (lifelike, possess likeness) - to omalon (consistency) - omalos anomalon (oxymoron: consistently inconsistent) - anomalos (irregular) - mechane (crane, theatrical machine, device of artifice) - syllogismou (reasoning) - kalon (beautiful) - euteles (tawdry) - phortike (vulgar) - epitome (summary or abstract of a longer work) - gelota (laughter) - phronesis (prudence) - phronimos (prudent person) - parabasis (comic moment when the chorus addresses the audience directly)
Comic structures according to…
- homonyms (puns)
- synonyms
- paronyms
October 12, 2025
ted talk ass bitch ass. how do you manage to drain all the blood out of greek tragedy? with your unrepentant smugness? it’s like a book of lines he is waiting to use to dazzle mid-wits at an overpriced and crowded bad restaurant inexplicably garnished with good reviews. pomposity-plus, philosophy-lite; serving up Nietzsche quote canapés between half thought out scraps at odd hours.
i got this in a bargain bin. i do this to myself entirely for the love of the game. concerned family members are pleading with me to just read something else. put the disastrously mid book down. but you don’t understand! he is out there alive and well, sucking the life out of the very cool things that i love!!! and i’m taking down names. i’m purchasing a 3D printer and downloading a CAD file off the deep web labelled “gun”. i went to the intersection of philosophy and popular paperback non-fiction and donned a ski mask.
every once in a while i like to kick back and relax by reading a book i know is gonna suck through the pants, as a treat.
i think what pushes me to these heights of despair here is that he has obviously read and thought enough to be cool, but no, he is actively straining with all his might to dollop out this shit. imagine being capable of depth and flattening yourself out for idiot-proof digestibility and polite bourgeois applause.
i got this in a bargain bin. i do this to myself entirely for the love of the game. concerned family members are pleading with me to just read something else. put the disastrously mid book down. but you don’t understand! he is out there alive and well, sucking the life out of the very cool things that i love!!! and i’m taking down names. i’m purchasing a 3D printer and downloading a CAD file off the deep web labelled “gun”. i went to the intersection of philosophy and popular paperback non-fiction and donned a ski mask.
every once in a while i like to kick back and relax by reading a book i know is gonna suck through the pants, as a treat.
i think what pushes me to these heights of despair here is that he has obviously read and thought enough to be cool, but no, he is actively straining with all his might to dollop out this shit. imagine being capable of depth and flattening yourself out for idiot-proof digestibility and polite bourgeois applause.
May 19, 2019
Critchley mentions in this epilogue that despite not being a classicist, he has an interest in ancient Greek theatre. This book is primarily a work of a philosopher, however. It looks at theatre ("the spectacle of politics looking at itself") from the perspective of Plato and Aristotle, but with multiple other views thrown in.
Plato chooses to reject theatre from his Republic, but Aristotle's Poetics goes into some detail on what theatre is, what effect it's supposed to have and its value.
Critchley takes all of these various perspectives and creates a work that skirts the ground between a full academic work and pop philosophy. It's entirely accessible, regardless of your knowledge of classics or philosophy, but Critchley doesn't shy away from pulling in views from Hegel or Nietzsche.
Each chapter explores an element of Greek theatre and each is challenging and provoking. It's probably not a great introduction to classics or Greek theatre but it's a great read.
Plato chooses to reject theatre from his Republic, but Aristotle's Poetics goes into some detail on what theatre is, what effect it's supposed to have and its value.
Critchley takes all of these various perspectives and creates a work that skirts the ground between a full academic work and pop philosophy. It's entirely accessible, regardless of your knowledge of classics or philosophy, but Critchley doesn't shy away from pulling in views from Hegel or Nietzsche.
Each chapter explores an element of Greek theatre and each is challenging and provoking. It's probably not a great introduction to classics or Greek theatre but it's a great read.
January 31, 2023
Apasionante
June 9, 2019
Fascinating -- the link between classic Greek Tragedy and its political context. It sets forth a strong counter argument to Plato and Aristotle's strong criticism of the Sophists, the dramatists, and the poets.
May 20, 2020
I have had very mixed feelings about this book. As a reader, I cannot say for sure that I enjoyed reading every pages. The chapters on Platonic and Aristotlean evaluations of tragedy can be a little long-winded and out of place, and I'd question why focusing on them instead of many other thinkers who have had more interesting things said about tragedy. I can appreciate that Critchley is taking aim at a "certain style of philosophy that can be traced back to Plato and Aristotle", maybe I am already convinced many years ago that the style of philosophy in question here is mere silliness, there's no need for him to preach me again as I'm converted.
As I've always admired Simon Critchley, in fact, his earlier work "Very little...almost nothing" opened up a very different intellectual dimension for me to pursue when I was a philosophy student, I expected a lot more from this book then a "taking aim" at some silliness. To be fair, it may be the case that that silliness still exists in the academia and that's why Critchley feels that another book against them is warranted.
Having said that, this book is a very good introduction to the world of Attic tragedy, especially if you have learned about tragedy from a philosophy lecture at the first instance. This book tells you why you should never appreciate tragedy as "philosophy's tragedy", which leads to silliness.
As I've always admired Simon Critchley, in fact, his earlier work "Very little...almost nothing" opened up a very different intellectual dimension for me to pursue when I was a philosophy student, I expected a lot more from this book then a "taking aim" at some silliness. To be fair, it may be the case that that silliness still exists in the academia and that's why Critchley feels that another book against them is warranted.
Having said that, this book is a very good introduction to the world of Attic tragedy, especially if you have learned about tragedy from a philosophy lecture at the first instance. This book tells you why you should never appreciate tragedy as "philosophy's tragedy", which leads to silliness.
May 24, 2020
A philosophical look at the nature of ancient Athenian tragedy and how we interact with it (and how it interacts with us?). A rather dense text, delightful at times, but at others a bit of a slog. A lot of the emphasis is rather on philosophy than tragedy. There are extensive bits about Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, among others, and their thoughts on tragedy (among other things). There are some odd assertions (like that Socrates admired craftsmen and craftsmanship, but had no practical skills himself - was he not a stonemason?). There are sections on comedy that seem beyond what might be a reasonable comparison and contrast with tragedy. Indeed, the book feels like it meanders in topic and scope a bit, and while it is often well-written enough that sections of the book are enjoyable, I felt the book lacked coherence, and this made it harder to enjoy the book as a unified whole, or indeed to say definitively what the author was trying to say about ancient Greek tragedy.
January 4, 2022
I tend to like ambitious books and the sheer guts of Tragedy, The Greeks and Us were sure to make an impression. True, like most such ambitious endeavors, Chritchley’s takes on more than it can handle, but its open invitation for the cyclical infusion of the classics with the blood of the new generations is impassioned and earnest. The main claims of the book, tragedy as a mode of discourse superior to philosophy in the expression of humanity’s ‘ever-partial agency’ (272), are not all that different from Bernard Williams’ in Shame and Necessity (1993) or indeed any number of literary-ethical offerings since. Yet, the oral overly-caffeinated affect of the prose makes for a highly engaging read, akin to discussing the classics over beers with a well-read companion.
February 8, 2023
This book is an absolute wealth of knowledge. Deep dive into Greek tragedies with hundreds of explicit references to reinforce his points. This factor was so enlightening to me, especially in reference to different interpretations of Socrates or Aristotle. I similarly enjoyed the references to philosophical GOATs Hegel, Nietzsche, Kant (ick but W). Incredibly smart dude. Also a bit of a mind F at times 😂 but it was perfect for my Greek itch atm
September 21, 2023
Πολλές επαναλήψεις, ελάχιστες πρωτότυπες παρατηρήσεις.
Προτιμήστε άλλο βιβλίο για την αρχαία ελληνική τραγωδία, όπως το
"Μύθος και τραγωδία στην Αρχαία Ελλάδα".
Προτιμήστε άλλο βιβλίο για την αρχαία ελληνική τραγωδία, όπως το
"Μύθος και τραγωδία στην Αρχαία Ελλάδα".
August 20, 2024
“We find human beings somehow compelled to follow a path of suffering that allows them to raise questions that admit no easy answer: What will happen to me? How can I choose the right path of action? The overwhelming experience of tragedy is a disorientation expressed in one bewildered and frequently repeated question: What shall I do?”
Tragedy, the Greeks and Us is a philosophical journey during which Simon Critchley attempts to make sense of the core aspects of ancient Greek tragedy which are rarely, if ever, easily comprehensible and explore what tragedy meant to Greeks, what it can give us as modern humans and what the relationship between tragedy and philosophy and sophism is.
I am not a philosopher, nor have I ever actively researched or attempted to understand ancient or more modern philosophy. Some things went over my head when reading this book, but for the most part, it was an absolute joy to read, delightfully challenging and time-consuming. I highlighted passage after passage, scribbled explanations for words to myself in the margins and spent a good few moments googling people, terms and ideologies. I gained so much new insight not just into tragedy but also ancient philosophy and its ”battle” against sophists. Yes, sometimes my head hurt from trying to comprehend everything Critchley was saying, but it was the best kind of brain pain: I could feel my thinking develop. I had never considered a philosophical point of view into tragedy and I loved learning about the reasoning behind Socrates and Plato’s hatred, even fear, of tragedy (it was morally questionable, deceptive, amoral, dangerously excessive, a tool for tyranny and so on) but also behind why Aristotle deemed it as more grand than epic poetry. Critchley explores these handful of philosophers in depth, really diving deep into their thoughts and dissecting them, and criticizes not just them but also the way their ideas are often misunderstood. For example, Aristotle declaring Euripides as the most tragic of all poets, was not necessarily that great a compliment: most likely he meant by it that he sells well, even though his plays are otherwise deeply flawed. Critchley also raised some intriguing points about how Aristotle’s seemingly benign and respectful approach to tragedy – a world away from what Plato and Socrates had to say about it – also has its issues: Aristotle bends tragedy to his scientific worldview, engages with it dispassionately and is adamant that good tragedy follows a very specific set of rules. He might be more appreciative, but also stern, which leads him to disregard many plays that are now considered masterpieces of tragic drama.
Critchley is very interested in Greek sophists and talks a lot about what sophism was, what philosophers thought of it and what it can give to us in our quest to understand Greek tragedy. I had never read much about sophists – these ”whores of wisdom” – and their argument that everything can, in fact, be argued, that the weaker’s argument can always be made stronger through good enough verbal skills, and I absolutely loved how Critchley paralleled the ideas of thinkers like Gorgias, with authors like Euripides, whose plays, such as The Trojan Women, feature monologues and arguments straight out of the sophists’ toolkit. Helen managed to avoid execution through clever speech, even though the rational choice would be to listen to Hecabe, who is opposing her, and put her to death. Cassandra convinces the viewer that even in defeat, Trojans won the war, because they died as noble heroes. This made me think about how often, in tragedy, power of speech or violence trumps reason and logic. People act more on their emotions than their wisdom.
One of my favorite passages in the book was: ”The core contradiction of tragedy is that we both know and we don’t know at one and the same time and are destroyed in the process.In this book, we will keep circling this difficult, indeed intolerable, thought: How can we both know and not know?” The contradictory co-existing of fate and free will is, as he puts it, intolerable because it makes no sense when you think about it but also is the only thing that does make sense in the context of tragedy. Without that ounce of free will, the knowledge that if a character would just stop and think they could change things, tragedy wouldn’t hit as hard as it does: humans cannot be completely powerless, because if they are, what is the point of watching a tragedy? A viewer or reader needs to be able to hope and beg for a different outcome and a have a reason to do so. Oedipus is, obviously, the most famous example of this contradiction and is used by Critchley throughout the book as the poster boy of the fate vs. free will debate. Critchley does not arrive in any easy explanation or analysis of this dilemma because there is none. But it’s an interesting thing to think about.
Critchley emphasizes tragedy as something inherently contradictory, difficult to parse, double and multilayered. This layered nature of tragedy is one of the key things which makes it tragic. Justice is many different things, depending on who you ask, and there is never a single good or bad, a single truth. No character can escape unscathed because there is no one good way out. Even time is doubled, tripled, layered. As he puts it: “Tragedy is full of ghosts, ancient and modern, and the line separating the living from the dead is continually blurred. This means that in tragedy the dead don’t stay dead and the living are not fully alive. What tragedy renders unstable is the line that separates the living from the dead, enlivening the dead and deadening the living.” Long dead people can appear as spirits, people can die but still haunt the narrative and the presence of the modern era in which the plays were written can be felt in the dialogue and themes. When Medea makes her speech about the cruel situation of women, she is not talking about the life of women in the mythical past, but the realities of women in Athens in Euripides’ time, and when Athena creates a court to judge Orestes, the play is in discussion with the political structures of Aeschylus’ time. I loved how Critchley described theatre as ”politics looking at itself”: just like playwrights have always done and still do, they are commenting on the current through figures of the past or myth.
From the point of view of a gender historian, I really appreciated all the sections about sec, sexuality, gender and queerness in tragedy. The physical act of acting is already a gender-blurring thing, due to men playing women in front of an audience of mostly men, but so is, it was considered, the act of emoting when watching a tragedy. One thing that Socrates feared was men becoming womanly as they lament the events of a tragedy. I also really loved the way Critchley discussed the complex relationship between women characters and glory, and how, for a woman to be glorious or strong, she has to step outside of the feminine sphere and become masculine. Antigone is described as manly, and thus, her ending is glorious. For a male character, a womanly death is a huge shame. But even though women becoming ”manly” was the ultimate glory, tragedies are littered with strong, powerful and clever women. The idea that these were plays written by men, for men, acted out by men, but still featured characters like Clytemnestra – a woman who is often referred to as a ”nightmare for the patriarchy” – is just fascinating. What did these men think when they saw a character like her or Medea? There is a similar dynamic between slave characters and foreigners in tragedy: these people were not allowed in politics or the upper society, nor were they always allowed in theatres, yet both categories are strongly present in tragedy. Critchley described that the visibility denied to these people in real life is given to them in fiction.
I’m not gonna go super deep into all the stuff I loved about the way Critchley tackled Euripides and essentially defended him from people like Aristotle who seemed to have a less than high view of him (which, I think, is rude cause he is a genius) due to his use of the deus ex machina (something Critchley argues was purposeful specifically to deny the viewer an easy ending and a satisfying conclusion because there is none to be found) and his general excessive gloominess, but I do wanna highlight a quote that made me cackle: ”He was born to never live in peace with himself and to prevent the rest of mankind from doing do.” I agree that Euripides is especially horrible in his plays and denies an ”acceptable” ending from a moral standpoint, and I just love the idea that he did it on purpose, to fuck with his audience, cause yeah, mission accomplished. When you finish a story like Hecabe or The Bacchae, you are left with a feeling of ”Dear lord, what did I just read?”.
As for the questions of what can we get from Greek tragedy as modern people, well, it's a many faceted answer that Critchley gives. First of all, naturally, these are just fabulous stories and they deserve to be enjoyed. But they can also aid us in developing a "tragic" point of view, which is an ability to look at something and understand it as a multifaceted thing, something without easy answers, something in which everyone shares blame, some more than others, of course. When thinking about big issues of our world, this kind of point of view can help. Tragedy can be a way to explore your emotions, come face to face with feelings that are hard to deal with or give us tools with which to make sense of our own world. The Greeks were vastly different, but also not that different: the tragedies still ring true. Critchley also highlights how every generation has to "reinvent" the classics for themselves, rethink them and re-evaluate them, look at them from a new perspective, which I thought was interesting.
The last thing I wanna highlight was how I appreciated the way Critchley highlights the importance of understanding the context in which these plays were written. Most of the surviving tragedies of the three great tragedians were written right before, during or after wars. This was a society marked by war, and, as Critchley puts it, these tragedies were written by combat veterans, acted by combat veterans to an audience of combat veterans. Echoes of catastrophes that had hit Athens presently or in the recent past can be seen in these plays – plague, war, displacement, loss and political upheaval. Understanding this gives so much more weight to plays like The Trojan Women (a story of captive women), Ajax (a story of a soldier who commits suicide) and Philoctetes (a story of a wounded soldier left behind).
There are so many fascinathing things I could write about (the problematic nature of the term catharsis, the position of the viewer, the idea of mimesis as either a natural action or something dangerous, the allure of the dreadful, the similarities and differences of two sides of the same literary coin, comedy and tragedy, and so on) but I must end this review at some point. I loved this book a lot, even though it was difficult to fathom and I have to admit that I did not understand everything. But it made me love Greek tragedy even more. I’ll end this review by a) recommending this book highly to anyone interested in philosophy and/or tragedy and b) with a quote that stuck with me while reading: ”What can happen in tragedy is that we can give ourselves over to that intensity of life, to the happening of aliveness, and open ourselves to the core. One looks at the core of aliveness and it looks back. Just for a moment.”
Tragedy, the Greeks and Us is a philosophical journey during which Simon Critchley attempts to make sense of the core aspects of ancient Greek tragedy which are rarely, if ever, easily comprehensible and explore what tragedy meant to Greeks, what it can give us as modern humans and what the relationship between tragedy and philosophy and sophism is.
I am not a philosopher, nor have I ever actively researched or attempted to understand ancient or more modern philosophy. Some things went over my head when reading this book, but for the most part, it was an absolute joy to read, delightfully challenging and time-consuming. I highlighted passage after passage, scribbled explanations for words to myself in the margins and spent a good few moments googling people, terms and ideologies. I gained so much new insight not just into tragedy but also ancient philosophy and its ”battle” against sophists. Yes, sometimes my head hurt from trying to comprehend everything Critchley was saying, but it was the best kind of brain pain: I could feel my thinking develop. I had never considered a philosophical point of view into tragedy and I loved learning about the reasoning behind Socrates and Plato’s hatred, even fear, of tragedy (it was morally questionable, deceptive, amoral, dangerously excessive, a tool for tyranny and so on) but also behind why Aristotle deemed it as more grand than epic poetry. Critchley explores these handful of philosophers in depth, really diving deep into their thoughts and dissecting them, and criticizes not just them but also the way their ideas are often misunderstood. For example, Aristotle declaring Euripides as the most tragic of all poets, was not necessarily that great a compliment: most likely he meant by it that he sells well, even though his plays are otherwise deeply flawed. Critchley also raised some intriguing points about how Aristotle’s seemingly benign and respectful approach to tragedy – a world away from what Plato and Socrates had to say about it – also has its issues: Aristotle bends tragedy to his scientific worldview, engages with it dispassionately and is adamant that good tragedy follows a very specific set of rules. He might be more appreciative, but also stern, which leads him to disregard many plays that are now considered masterpieces of tragic drama.
Critchley is very interested in Greek sophists and talks a lot about what sophism was, what philosophers thought of it and what it can give to us in our quest to understand Greek tragedy. I had never read much about sophists – these ”whores of wisdom” – and their argument that everything can, in fact, be argued, that the weaker’s argument can always be made stronger through good enough verbal skills, and I absolutely loved how Critchley paralleled the ideas of thinkers like Gorgias, with authors like Euripides, whose plays, such as The Trojan Women, feature monologues and arguments straight out of the sophists’ toolkit. Helen managed to avoid execution through clever speech, even though the rational choice would be to listen to Hecabe, who is opposing her, and put her to death. Cassandra convinces the viewer that even in defeat, Trojans won the war, because they died as noble heroes. This made me think about how often, in tragedy, power of speech or violence trumps reason and logic. People act more on their emotions than their wisdom.
One of my favorite passages in the book was: ”The core contradiction of tragedy is that we both know and we don’t know at one and the same time and are destroyed in the process.In this book, we will keep circling this difficult, indeed intolerable, thought: How can we both know and not know?” The contradictory co-existing of fate and free will is, as he puts it, intolerable because it makes no sense when you think about it but also is the only thing that does make sense in the context of tragedy. Without that ounce of free will, the knowledge that if a character would just stop and think they could change things, tragedy wouldn’t hit as hard as it does: humans cannot be completely powerless, because if they are, what is the point of watching a tragedy? A viewer or reader needs to be able to hope and beg for a different outcome and a have a reason to do so. Oedipus is, obviously, the most famous example of this contradiction and is used by Critchley throughout the book as the poster boy of the fate vs. free will debate. Critchley does not arrive in any easy explanation or analysis of this dilemma because there is none. But it’s an interesting thing to think about.
Critchley emphasizes tragedy as something inherently contradictory, difficult to parse, double and multilayered. This layered nature of tragedy is one of the key things which makes it tragic. Justice is many different things, depending on who you ask, and there is never a single good or bad, a single truth. No character can escape unscathed because there is no one good way out. Even time is doubled, tripled, layered. As he puts it: “Tragedy is full of ghosts, ancient and modern, and the line separating the living from the dead is continually blurred. This means that in tragedy the dead don’t stay dead and the living are not fully alive. What tragedy renders unstable is the line that separates the living from the dead, enlivening the dead and deadening the living.” Long dead people can appear as spirits, people can die but still haunt the narrative and the presence of the modern era in which the plays were written can be felt in the dialogue and themes. When Medea makes her speech about the cruel situation of women, she is not talking about the life of women in the mythical past, but the realities of women in Athens in Euripides’ time, and when Athena creates a court to judge Orestes, the play is in discussion with the political structures of Aeschylus’ time. I loved how Critchley described theatre as ”politics looking at itself”: just like playwrights have always done and still do, they are commenting on the current through figures of the past or myth.
From the point of view of a gender historian, I really appreciated all the sections about sec, sexuality, gender and queerness in tragedy. The physical act of acting is already a gender-blurring thing, due to men playing women in front of an audience of mostly men, but so is, it was considered, the act of emoting when watching a tragedy. One thing that Socrates feared was men becoming womanly as they lament the events of a tragedy. I also really loved the way Critchley discussed the complex relationship between women characters and glory, and how, for a woman to be glorious or strong, she has to step outside of the feminine sphere and become masculine. Antigone is described as manly, and thus, her ending is glorious. For a male character, a womanly death is a huge shame. But even though women becoming ”manly” was the ultimate glory, tragedies are littered with strong, powerful and clever women. The idea that these were plays written by men, for men, acted out by men, but still featured characters like Clytemnestra – a woman who is often referred to as a ”nightmare for the patriarchy” – is just fascinating. What did these men think when they saw a character like her or Medea? There is a similar dynamic between slave characters and foreigners in tragedy: these people were not allowed in politics or the upper society, nor were they always allowed in theatres, yet both categories are strongly present in tragedy. Critchley described that the visibility denied to these people in real life is given to them in fiction.
I’m not gonna go super deep into all the stuff I loved about the way Critchley tackled Euripides and essentially defended him from people like Aristotle who seemed to have a less than high view of him (which, I think, is rude cause he is a genius) due to his use of the deus ex machina (something Critchley argues was purposeful specifically to deny the viewer an easy ending and a satisfying conclusion because there is none to be found) and his general excessive gloominess, but I do wanna highlight a quote that made me cackle: ”He was born to never live in peace with himself and to prevent the rest of mankind from doing do.” I agree that Euripides is especially horrible in his plays and denies an ”acceptable” ending from a moral standpoint, and I just love the idea that he did it on purpose, to fuck with his audience, cause yeah, mission accomplished. When you finish a story like Hecabe or The Bacchae, you are left with a feeling of ”Dear lord, what did I just read?”.
As for the questions of what can we get from Greek tragedy as modern people, well, it's a many faceted answer that Critchley gives. First of all, naturally, these are just fabulous stories and they deserve to be enjoyed. But they can also aid us in developing a "tragic" point of view, which is an ability to look at something and understand it as a multifaceted thing, something without easy answers, something in which everyone shares blame, some more than others, of course. When thinking about big issues of our world, this kind of point of view can help. Tragedy can be a way to explore your emotions, come face to face with feelings that are hard to deal with or give us tools with which to make sense of our own world. The Greeks were vastly different, but also not that different: the tragedies still ring true. Critchley also highlights how every generation has to "reinvent" the classics for themselves, rethink them and re-evaluate them, look at them from a new perspective, which I thought was interesting.
The last thing I wanna highlight was how I appreciated the way Critchley highlights the importance of understanding the context in which these plays were written. Most of the surviving tragedies of the three great tragedians were written right before, during or after wars. This was a society marked by war, and, as Critchley puts it, these tragedies were written by combat veterans, acted by combat veterans to an audience of combat veterans. Echoes of catastrophes that had hit Athens presently or in the recent past can be seen in these plays – plague, war, displacement, loss and political upheaval. Understanding this gives so much more weight to plays like The Trojan Women (a story of captive women), Ajax (a story of a soldier who commits suicide) and Philoctetes (a story of a wounded soldier left behind).
There are so many fascinathing things I could write about (the problematic nature of the term catharsis, the position of the viewer, the idea of mimesis as either a natural action or something dangerous, the allure of the dreadful, the similarities and differences of two sides of the same literary coin, comedy and tragedy, and so on) but I must end this review at some point. I loved this book a lot, even though it was difficult to fathom and I have to admit that I did not understand everything. But it made me love Greek tragedy even more. I’ll end this review by a) recommending this book highly to anyone interested in philosophy and/or tragedy and b) with a quote that stuck with me while reading: ”What can happen in tragedy is that we can give ourselves over to that intensity of life, to the happening of aliveness, and open ourselves to the core. One looks at the core of aliveness and it looks back. Just for a moment.”
June 19, 2025
3.5 Lo re leeré tras leer mas tragedias, un excelente libro al que no le pude sacar el maximo provecho
March 19, 2020
Critchley's insight is essentially that tragedy and philosophy take fundamentally opposite world views, in that philosophy (going back to Socrates) principally attempts to unify, while tragedy embraces uncertainty and dualities without attempting to resolve them. He argues that for philosophy (and this is a somewhat overly broad generalization, but not necessarily unfairly) the fundamental disciplinary assumption is that there is some kind of basic root truth which can be gotten to, and the types of questions philosophers pose are intended to discern that unified truth. Tragedy, on the other hand, stages competing perspectives, worldviews, ideas, and outlooks without an attempt to choose between them to find the "most true" outlook. In other words, tragedy fundamentally runs on uncertainty and self-contradiction. Critchley makes a really compelling argument that this is more or less at the heart of why Socrates and Plato would expel tragic poets from the ideal city in The Republic, and why they hated democracy (which also embraces competing ideas without trying to resolve them into a singular transcendent unity).
Critchley's stated project is to think a different approach to philosophy, built around embracing tragic contradictions and rejecting the Platonic ideal of a transcendent truth. I'm not sure that he really gets there, but this book definitely raises some interesting questions about the way both philosophy and tragedy work.
Critchley's stated project is to think a different approach to philosophy, built around embracing tragic contradictions and rejecting the Platonic ideal of a transcendent truth. I'm not sure that he really gets there, but this book definitely raises some interesting questions about the way both philosophy and tragedy work.
May 22, 2025
Critchley is significantly more radical than he knows. To make a statement about the origin and nature of Ancient Greek philosophy or literature is truly to make a claim about the origins of our world. Despite the various debates about the veracity and purpose of the concept of the ‘west’ (some vague unified tradition which has undergone a certain level of coherence and influence, beginning in Ancient Greece through Christianity and Rome through to today) the invention of the concept of the west has retrospectively made it real. Because we have been living in this non-existent phantasm of the west for so long we have, quite like phantom limb syndrome, invented the West. United seemingly only by race and continent, Plato becomes the ancestor to the Anglo-Saxon. When Critchley suggests, as he does in the introduction, that philosophy does not start from wonder, but rather from ‘disappointment’ he is (consciously or not) declaring a great deal of rupture from the world we have created now. Intellectual inquiry and as deriving from disappointment is radically breaking from the West, it declares a new starting point slightly changed but whose trajectory is strikingly similar to the trajectory of the West. It is the world of the Early Plato, and truly the new world order of Galileo as well; but origins are of little conscious significance to Critchley.
He begins the work with an admirable defense of leftist and continental understanding of Tradition. ‘Feeding the Ancients with our own blood’ is a wonderful phrase, and the argument is well stated. Traditionalism is not a conservative thing, indeed the politically right wing are truly a very avant-garde group when understood in its proper history. The pre-Socratic (and thus traditionally pre-philosophical) authors are engaged with as deeply as they should be, as delightfully post-modern as they are truly. Through skillful readings of Aristophanes, Sophocles, Aeschylus and others he develops a coherent (though inconsistent) worldview which is delightfully contemporary. His theory of tragedy is in healthy conversation with Hegel and German idealism in general, emphasizing and seeing the consequences of literary violence. A great knowledge and frequent reference to German idealism is perhaps the chief virtue of Critchley’s work, among them at least. However his Hegel is very old-fashioned, understood primarily in response to the Kantian tradition and his immediate reception, a common reading of Hegel typical of secular continental philosophy. However, this is problematic of the whole work and indeed of Critchley’s œuvre in its entirety, Hegel is de-theologized. Derrida, Levinas, Nietzsche and Heidegger are the primary philosophical influences for Critchley’s work but they are all understood without all of their theological grounding. His Hegel, as for his Heidegger and Nietzsche, is not simply non-theological he is a new man with the Christian influence teased out. Tragedy as the Nietzschean ‘dangerous perhaps’ is not understood within its proper context of an opposition to the Apollonian Will-to-truth, morality of good and evil, slave morality, (among other brilliant epithets) which he typifies as Christianity. There is, even, room for a good argument in his favor while not excluding the theological factor: perhaps he could emphasize the Platonic character of Christian thought. But no, despite Greek being as much the language of Saint John as it is Euripides, the second word in the title is left stunted and thus confused.
Part 2 gets into the meat of his point, it is a book about tragedy. Despite this, the central importance of this part, it is without a doubt the worst one. The part boils down to a putting Greek tragedy through the pre-built machine of critical theory; applying each methodology as a dishwasher applies water and then soap. It is not quite bad as it is uninteresting as a work of philosophy although perhaps as pop philosophy it could be useful to someone. Parts of it read like pure and uninteresting book reports, whether like in chapter ten it is overt or the other ones where the responsibility for sensing the book reportedness to the reader who checks his sources; constant and repeated reliance on the Cambridge Companion to Greek tragedy. Critchley frequently does the ritual of acknowledging his lack of scholarly knowledge of this subject snd acknowledging the comparatively low quality of his Greek. I believe he should probably have taken Mark Twain’s famous advice to leave a letter you are about to send on the fireplace for seven days before sending it. Or perhaps act like Lincoln to his generals and write out the angry letter to the disobedient generals before putting your finger back off the trigger and saying something more sympathetic. Because as a work of popular philosophy meant to reach more people but also striving to be an original work of philosophy, it makes enormous claims without proper support.
In a change of quality which is quick enough to give the reader whiplash, part 3 primarily concerning Sophistry is the best chapter in the book. It contains an original (at least to my knowledge) and inspiring rereading of the Greek Sophists so ritually maligned by the standard philosophical tradition. He reads the narrative and story of the villainous mustache-twirling sophist as properly the easily reproduced historically vacuous narrative it is. His defense of the Sophists has within it sympathetic readings of the available fragments from them. Particularly his treatment of Gorgias is wonderful. However, in an off-handed remark Nietzsche surely would’ve picked up on as well, he makes a curious point: he reads the Sophists as similar to modern day university professors; with both taking money for providing intellectual output. The claim has some value, and if Critchley conveyed a thorough knowledge of Greek history the claim could be improved. Also, Plato and Aristotle both had strong ties to the highest echelons of Greek power. But the value and importance of Plato’s critique of the sophists is not properly conveyed, indeed the trial and death of Socrates is not properly contemplated. In the Apology Socrates engaged with and Plato distances Socrates from the Sophists for some pretty good reasons Critchley does not engage with. Plato’s critique of the Sophists is far more important and far more engaging than the caricatured typical story claiming Plato’s name. For example, in the Protagoras Plato critiques the Sophists for not properly forming new and fulfilling students, new human people who can live in a better society. The goal of the apprentice is to recreate his master in the crafts, which Plato finds admirable, but philosophy is something which is supposed to form and create a new kind of character. This is not possible within the Sophistic mode of teaching where lectures the students will forget (thus Socratic dialogue) simply drop ideas on to the students without proper formation. Indeed if we wish to extend this critique to the modern academy (which Critchley covertly advocates for) we may make reference to the critique of Angela Davis and Jonathan Jackson of ‘radical professorship’ being an oxymoron since professors are still institutional workers and this conditioned by it. Is this not Plato’s critique of the Sophists in modern form? Here a deep problem of the entire work shows: it says more than it means. Close reading is all the rage in literary criticism (Critchley is an old fashioned 18th century literary theorist before all else). But what they call close reading for the majority of Christendom simply called exegesis, although localized to the Biblical texts. The precise intricacies to be teased out through close reading necessitated in deep engagement with traditional figures extends to the fascinating practice of beginning books or essays with a quote. These brilliant quotes which begin the work function as highlighting a precise and particular element of a classic work easy to miss; thereby rereading and reappreciating the work. Through trying to cover the entire structure of all of the golden age of Greek thought he disobeys his beginning axiom of feeding the ancients with our own blood, rather giving them an unsympathetic drop. His reading of the Gorgias is interesting and I like how Plato is treated as a contemporary to be critique one work snd affirm another. Although he is more often than not fighting a caricature from intro to philosophy classes taught a hundred years ago, he fights it valiantly and valuably.
4 is devoted to a specific reading of Plato’s Republic. His reading is primarily devoted to a particular view of it as a book which intertwines specific claims about poetry/tragedy and politics as this is the subject matter of the book. He is correct to state that Plato is the source of the very long and hegemonic dismissal of democracy found in the history of western philosophy. Critchley’s tying it to Plato’s critique of sophistry and poetry is an admirable and accurate reading with a great deal of newness. A virtue of the book is also revealed here in its portrayal of Homer, Homer is here accurately understood as simply the testament of the core of the Greek consciousness. Homer’s discernible view of mind is admirably defended and the importance and radicalité of Plato’s critique of Homer is well explained. Also, with such a strictly textualist approach he avoids collapsing Platonism into the easily repeatable cliches of chair-ness or divided lines. With that being said, this is not a very accurate Plato. Plato is here deprived of much of the inspiration which gave form to his work: mathematics and historical context. The Republic, as is well established, is a work which engages with math frequently. Many parts of it which do not seem to relate to math at all in reality do, as with harmony. Also, the historical context of the book is not dealt with as much as is required, a problem typical to his entire book. Lacking Historical thinking is a foundational problem of almost all major continental philosophers with only the possible exception of Foucault and Zizek. Both of whom even still struggle with exact historical facts. The context of the Pelopenessian war which Socrates fought in is not conveyed. The further importance of Sparta’s militant aristocracy and how it relates to the figure of the Guardians in the Republic is not clear. Sparta was a constant threat and source of admiration for the Athenian consciousness which is not totally developed in this book. Not just in Plato but in all the book. The section on book X is wonderful however owing perhaps to that books frequent assignment in aesthetics classrooms.
The last part which supports his general thesis is a part of Aristotle’s Poetics. While he provides a centrally literary reading of the Republic he provides a centrally political reading of the Poetics which is a very useful interpretation. But it suffers from many of the problems inherent to his piece on the Republic; Aristotle’s work is not understood in the context of Aristotle’s general project, he ties ‘Aristotle’ to the specific problem dealt with here. In a way he would not accept of a man tying all of Heidegger to Being and Time and like he warns against reading Nietzsche solely as the author of The Birth of Tragedy. Throughout the book I thought frequently of Aristotle’s ‘Sophistical Refutations’. This is a primarily logical work listing what would later be called logic fallacies inherent to Sophistic ideas, Aristotle as the first great philosopher to explain the necessity of an essential coherence to a philosophy; and thus is misconstrued as being a systematic thinker. But many of the arguments presented in this book represent themselves as being dialectical in the Hegelian sense but rather do not rise to the level of the truth as the ‘whole’ of a thing, but rather as two claims rising to an essential contrarianism.
He begins the work with an admirable defense of leftist and continental understanding of Tradition. ‘Feeding the Ancients with our own blood’ is a wonderful phrase, and the argument is well stated. Traditionalism is not a conservative thing, indeed the politically right wing are truly a very avant-garde group when understood in its proper history. The pre-Socratic (and thus traditionally pre-philosophical) authors are engaged with as deeply as they should be, as delightfully post-modern as they are truly. Through skillful readings of Aristophanes, Sophocles, Aeschylus and others he develops a coherent (though inconsistent) worldview which is delightfully contemporary. His theory of tragedy is in healthy conversation with Hegel and German idealism in general, emphasizing and seeing the consequences of literary violence. A great knowledge and frequent reference to German idealism is perhaps the chief virtue of Critchley’s work, among them at least. However his Hegel is very old-fashioned, understood primarily in response to the Kantian tradition and his immediate reception, a common reading of Hegel typical of secular continental philosophy. However, this is problematic of the whole work and indeed of Critchley’s œuvre in its entirety, Hegel is de-theologized. Derrida, Levinas, Nietzsche and Heidegger are the primary philosophical influences for Critchley’s work but they are all understood without all of their theological grounding. His Hegel, as for his Heidegger and Nietzsche, is not simply non-theological he is a new man with the Christian influence teased out. Tragedy as the Nietzschean ‘dangerous perhaps’ is not understood within its proper context of an opposition to the Apollonian Will-to-truth, morality of good and evil, slave morality, (among other brilliant epithets) which he typifies as Christianity. There is, even, room for a good argument in his favor while not excluding the theological factor: perhaps he could emphasize the Platonic character of Christian thought. But no, despite Greek being as much the language of Saint John as it is Euripides, the second word in the title is left stunted and thus confused.
Part 2 gets into the meat of his point, it is a book about tragedy. Despite this, the central importance of this part, it is without a doubt the worst one. The part boils down to a putting Greek tragedy through the pre-built machine of critical theory; applying each methodology as a dishwasher applies water and then soap. It is not quite bad as it is uninteresting as a work of philosophy although perhaps as pop philosophy it could be useful to someone. Parts of it read like pure and uninteresting book reports, whether like in chapter ten it is overt or the other ones where the responsibility for sensing the book reportedness to the reader who checks his sources; constant and repeated reliance on the Cambridge Companion to Greek tragedy. Critchley frequently does the ritual of acknowledging his lack of scholarly knowledge of this subject snd acknowledging the comparatively low quality of his Greek. I believe he should probably have taken Mark Twain’s famous advice to leave a letter you are about to send on the fireplace for seven days before sending it. Or perhaps act like Lincoln to his generals and write out the angry letter to the disobedient generals before putting your finger back off the trigger and saying something more sympathetic. Because as a work of popular philosophy meant to reach more people but also striving to be an original work of philosophy, it makes enormous claims without proper support.
In a change of quality which is quick enough to give the reader whiplash, part 3 primarily concerning Sophistry is the best chapter in the book. It contains an original (at least to my knowledge) and inspiring rereading of the Greek Sophists so ritually maligned by the standard philosophical tradition. He reads the narrative and story of the villainous mustache-twirling sophist as properly the easily reproduced historically vacuous narrative it is. His defense of the Sophists has within it sympathetic readings of the available fragments from them. Particularly his treatment of Gorgias is wonderful. However, in an off-handed remark Nietzsche surely would’ve picked up on as well, he makes a curious point: he reads the Sophists as similar to modern day university professors; with both taking money for providing intellectual output. The claim has some value, and if Critchley conveyed a thorough knowledge of Greek history the claim could be improved. Also, Plato and Aristotle both had strong ties to the highest echelons of Greek power. But the value and importance of Plato’s critique of the sophists is not properly conveyed, indeed the trial and death of Socrates is not properly contemplated. In the Apology Socrates engaged with and Plato distances Socrates from the Sophists for some pretty good reasons Critchley does not engage with. Plato’s critique of the Sophists is far more important and far more engaging than the caricatured typical story claiming Plato’s name. For example, in the Protagoras Plato critiques the Sophists for not properly forming new and fulfilling students, new human people who can live in a better society. The goal of the apprentice is to recreate his master in the crafts, which Plato finds admirable, but philosophy is something which is supposed to form and create a new kind of character. This is not possible within the Sophistic mode of teaching where lectures the students will forget (thus Socratic dialogue) simply drop ideas on to the students without proper formation. Indeed if we wish to extend this critique to the modern academy (which Critchley covertly advocates for) we may make reference to the critique of Angela Davis and Jonathan Jackson of ‘radical professorship’ being an oxymoron since professors are still institutional workers and this conditioned by it. Is this not Plato’s critique of the Sophists in modern form? Here a deep problem of the entire work shows: it says more than it means. Close reading is all the rage in literary criticism (Critchley is an old fashioned 18th century literary theorist before all else). But what they call close reading for the majority of Christendom simply called exegesis, although localized to the Biblical texts. The precise intricacies to be teased out through close reading necessitated in deep engagement with traditional figures extends to the fascinating practice of beginning books or essays with a quote. These brilliant quotes which begin the work function as highlighting a precise and particular element of a classic work easy to miss; thereby rereading and reappreciating the work. Through trying to cover the entire structure of all of the golden age of Greek thought he disobeys his beginning axiom of feeding the ancients with our own blood, rather giving them an unsympathetic drop. His reading of the Gorgias is interesting and I like how Plato is treated as a contemporary to be critique one work snd affirm another. Although he is more often than not fighting a caricature from intro to philosophy classes taught a hundred years ago, he fights it valiantly and valuably.
4 is devoted to a specific reading of Plato’s Republic. His reading is primarily devoted to a particular view of it as a book which intertwines specific claims about poetry/tragedy and politics as this is the subject matter of the book. He is correct to state that Plato is the source of the very long and hegemonic dismissal of democracy found in the history of western philosophy. Critchley’s tying it to Plato’s critique of sophistry and poetry is an admirable and accurate reading with a great deal of newness. A virtue of the book is also revealed here in its portrayal of Homer, Homer is here accurately understood as simply the testament of the core of the Greek consciousness. Homer’s discernible view of mind is admirably defended and the importance and radicalité of Plato’s critique of Homer is well explained. Also, with such a strictly textualist approach he avoids collapsing Platonism into the easily repeatable cliches of chair-ness or divided lines. With that being said, this is not a very accurate Plato. Plato is here deprived of much of the inspiration which gave form to his work: mathematics and historical context. The Republic, as is well established, is a work which engages with math frequently. Many parts of it which do not seem to relate to math at all in reality do, as with harmony. Also, the historical context of the book is not dealt with as much as is required, a problem typical to his entire book. Lacking Historical thinking is a foundational problem of almost all major continental philosophers with only the possible exception of Foucault and Zizek. Both of whom even still struggle with exact historical facts. The context of the Pelopenessian war which Socrates fought in is not conveyed. The further importance of Sparta’s militant aristocracy and how it relates to the figure of the Guardians in the Republic is not clear. Sparta was a constant threat and source of admiration for the Athenian consciousness which is not totally developed in this book. Not just in Plato but in all the book. The section on book X is wonderful however owing perhaps to that books frequent assignment in aesthetics classrooms.
The last part which supports his general thesis is a part of Aristotle’s Poetics. While he provides a centrally literary reading of the Republic he provides a centrally political reading of the Poetics which is a very useful interpretation. But it suffers from many of the problems inherent to his piece on the Republic; Aristotle’s work is not understood in the context of Aristotle’s general project, he ties ‘Aristotle’ to the specific problem dealt with here. In a way he would not accept of a man tying all of Heidegger to Being and Time and like he warns against reading Nietzsche solely as the author of The Birth of Tragedy. Throughout the book I thought frequently of Aristotle’s ‘Sophistical Refutations’. This is a primarily logical work listing what would later be called logic fallacies inherent to Sophistic ideas, Aristotle as the first great philosopher to explain the necessity of an essential coherence to a philosophy; and thus is misconstrued as being a systematic thinker. But many of the arguments presented in this book represent themselves as being dialectical in the Hegelian sense but rather do not rise to the level of the truth as the ‘whole’ of a thing, but rather as two claims rising to an essential contrarianism.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 2, 2020
This was an enjoyable, thought-provoking listen. I enjoy John Lee's narration, and he does not disappoint here. I've been thinking I should read the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and this convinced me that those works still have a lot of relevancy for our lives.
There are also some great one-liners such as "think of the classical equivalent of twerking" and "Make Athens Great Again."
There are also some great one-liners such as "think of the classical equivalent of twerking" and "Make Athens Great Again."
September 7, 2022
Χωρίς να είναι κακό δεν είναι καλό. Και να ένα φιλοσοφικό ζήτημα! Για έναν κλασικιστή είναι μάλλον κάτι μέτριο. Σε κάποιον που του αρέσει η θεματική θα έχει σίγουρα αρκετά να δώσει ετούτο το βιβλίο. Εξαρτάται λοιπόν από το τι ψάχνει κανείς. Εγώ απόλαυσα τη βιβλιογραφία που μου έδωσε ιδέες για άλλα διαβάσματα αλλά με κούρασε κάπως ή όχι πάντα καλή συνοχή. Δεν κέρδισα όσα περίμενα, σίγουρα δεν έχασα, κάπου διαφώνησα. Δίνει αφορμή για συζήτηση με κάποιον που θα το διαβάσει λοιπόν!
September 1, 2019
Interesting. Good book.
April 1, 2020
Some interesting points. But not up to his usual standard.
December 26, 2024
"The concept of being is a fiction in all philosophical theories that aim to uncover an underlying ontological reality are arrogantly implausible, indeed delusional".
The history of philosophy has imbued art with the notion of soul growth. Every time we go to the theater, the movies, or read a book, it is necessary to look for the intellectual lesson of the performance. This Socratic and Aristotelian approach attempts to regulate the grief, fear, and pity of a seemingly non-contradictory life. But here comes Critchley with a hammer to undermine that perverse ontology. If the Greek citizen went to the theater not to learn, but to give free rein to his most perverse feelings or to confront his ambiguity, why shouldn't we do the same?
Tragedy, like society's psychoanalyst, lays down its patients (not on a divan but on a hillside), confronting them with their most asphyxiating conflicts, ambiguities, inconsistencies, and contradictions, but with the intention that they do not succumb to the rational tyranny of renouncing the Nietsechean life force.
The incessant question of “What shall I do?” because you are not only an effect of your human agency, but also a byproduct of fate. We are both victims and perpetrators. “Tragedy requires our collusion with that fate,” as Critchley wrote. As Hegel said, both statements are correct, both alternatives are moral, and both sides are invariably wrong. There is no clear pathway. The disorientation of not knowing what to do, but still having to accept the tragic responsibility of action or inaction.
Like Cassandra, Agamemnon, or Oedipus, we must embrace contradiction as a possibility for living a more humane life. We are only fusible characters and as in tragedy, perhaps as in normal life, the plot is more important than the character.
The history of philosophy has imbued art with the notion of soul growth. Every time we go to the theater, the movies, or read a book, it is necessary to look for the intellectual lesson of the performance. This Socratic and Aristotelian approach attempts to regulate the grief, fear, and pity of a seemingly non-contradictory life. But here comes Critchley with a hammer to undermine that perverse ontology. If the Greek citizen went to the theater not to learn, but to give free rein to his most perverse feelings or to confront his ambiguity, why shouldn't we do the same?
Tragedy, like society's psychoanalyst, lays down its patients (not on a divan but on a hillside), confronting them with their most asphyxiating conflicts, ambiguities, inconsistencies, and contradictions, but with the intention that they do not succumb to the rational tyranny of renouncing the Nietsechean life force.
The incessant question of “What shall I do?” because you are not only an effect of your human agency, but also a byproduct of fate. We are both victims and perpetrators. “Tragedy requires our collusion with that fate,” as Critchley wrote. As Hegel said, both statements are correct, both alternatives are moral, and both sides are invariably wrong. There is no clear pathway. The disorientation of not knowing what to do, but still having to accept the tragic responsibility of action or inaction.
Like Cassandra, Agamemnon, or Oedipus, we must embrace contradiction as a possibility for living a more humane life. We are only fusible characters and as in tragedy, perhaps as in normal life, the plot is more important than the character.
November 28, 2021
As someone who read 47 thousand books of literary criticism (slight exaggeration, but not in memory) while working on my graduate degree in England, I've largely avoided or yawned through the genre in recent decades, which means it would have been easy to have missed Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us, which would have been a major loss. I don't remember the last time a critical book transformed my understanding of a form I thought I was familiar with, but this has sent me back to Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides with absolutely fresh eyes. At its core, Critchley's book is a guerilla manual for those engaged in the seemingly unending struggle to free literature/art/drama from frameworks designed to contain and paralyze its subversive potential. By focusing on "tragedy's philosophy"--the world view that emerges from paying close attention to the plays--rather than the "philosophy of tragedy" promulgated by Plato (and to a lesser degree Aristotle), Critchley shapes an approach to tragedy as a profoundly democratic art form--recall that Plato would have had it banished from his idealist republic--engaging a world of opposing and antagonistic perspectives, each with its claim to truth. Focusing on tragedy of way of thinking action in circumstances where no clear solution is available, he breathes life into plays I'd allowed to sit far too long on the shelf.
There's some heavy going in the chapters on Plato and Aristotle, but if you have some background, they're worth it. The core of the book comes through clearly without them, and you can get the gist without simplifications in the first 85 pages plus epilog.
There's some heavy going in the chapters on Plato and Aristotle, but if you have some background, they're worth it. The core of the book comes through clearly without them, and you can get the gist without simplifications in the first 85 pages plus epilog.
April 18, 2021
I really had no business reading this book. Its audience is more the maybe 1,00o classicists I imagine are left in the world, a smattering of philosophers and drama people who take drama probably too seriously. Yet, his premise to someone unfamiliar with philosophical arguments about tragedy is enlightening. He meticulously parses Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Poetics to make his case that, instead of being threatening as Sophocles warns, Greek tragedy gives humans a realistic frame of reference to deal with the confusing vagaries that fate, gods and their own attempts at taking action that humans face. The more acceptable philosophy espoused by Sophocles and so many who followed, by contrast, provides confining, linear attempts to create unified theories that always fall short of providing meaning in life. Between tragedy and philosophy, then, the world presumably is divided between the ordered and the free, the beautiful and the stern, the rule makers and the poets. Maybe the tragedies set off a dichotomy we would all benefit from understanding better. Unfortunately, for me at least, the enlightening is caught in a web of references to philosophers and the tragedies themselves that general readers will not know. The "Us" in his title is a very small group. Written at maybe more the level of a Gaddis book, Critchley's ideas might actually achieve some impact.
December 16, 2023
Critchley argues that Tragedy offers us a view of the divided self, driven by forces beyond our control, that opposes that calm and unified self idealized by philosophy. He is a witty and learned writer—who can mix allusions to punk rock with readings of the classical drams in their original Greek. And I agree with his valuing of ambiguity, emotion, and uncertainty.
But having said that, I found this book, while short, repetitive and a bit tedious. I wish that Critchley had spent more time with the thinkers he admires (the Sophists, the Tragedians, especially Euripides) and less wit those he opposes (Plato and Aristotle). And I really wish he’d cut out all the metadiscursive forecasting of what he will say later and summarizing of what he said before. There’s an even shorter and better book inside this fairly brief and good one.
But having said that, I found this book, while short, repetitive and a bit tedious. I wish that Critchley had spent more time with the thinkers he admires (the Sophists, the Tragedians, especially Euripides) and less wit those he opposes (Plato and Aristotle). And I really wish he’d cut out all the metadiscursive forecasting of what he will say later and summarizing of what he said before. There’s an even shorter and better book inside this fairly brief and good one.
May 28, 2025
I found this book really thought-provoking and well-written -- and surprisingly accessible, given its dense and scholarly content -- but I felt a bit mislead by the premise and title. I was expecting something totally different than what I actually read; I thought this book would be about the relevance of tragedy today and the lessons it could impart, rather than being mostly about philosophy. I think the fact that I felt mislead marred my reading experience a little, coupled with the fact that it sometimes wasn't too clear where every little section or argument was going. That being said, it's a cohesive and interesting read. As a classicist, I appreciated it, despite not necessarily agreeing with everything Critchley says. I have a feeling, though, that I will return to this. I can't stay away from tragedy for long.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 51 reviews