Essays discussion

How are we to understand this project of interpreting history as the unfolding of a tragic destiny? What about this choice of tragedy as a model for interpreting the present age? What conceptions of history and of ethico-political life collaborate in such a choice? What directives emerge out of such a model? The claim is not that tragedy is one among competing models for thinking the “logic” of history, but that it is privileged, even mandated, by history itself. This, in part, is what Heidegger means when he proposes that “In the history of what is essential, it is the prerogative, but equally the responsibility, of every descendent to become the murderer of their predecessors, and that they themselves submit to the fate of a necessary murder!”

Source: On Germans and Other Greeks: Tragedy and Ethical Life

Well, you could embrace postmodern historiography, declare there is no objective truth or that there are many truths, and then rethink history into an unfolding of a happier destiny. I'm only half kidding. I don't like postmodernism because it says things about us I don't like, but over the years I've begrudgingly admitted to myself they might have something when it comes to history.