Philosophy and Tragedy (Warwick Studies in European Philosophy)

253 Pages·2000·1.4 MB·English

by  Miguel de Beistegui and Simon Sparks (Editors)

Philosophy and Tragedy
Tragedy has always been an important topic in philosophy, ever since
Aristotle first wrote about the subject in his Poetics, However, despite
tragedy’s consistent presence in post-Kantian thought, the relationship
between tragedy and philosophy has never before been systematically
addressed and investigated.
Philosophy and Tragedy is a unique and original collection of essays by
some of today’s leading philosophers on the encounter between philosophy
and tragedy in the work of Hegel, Hölderlin, Nietzsche, Heidegger and
Benjamin. The present volume asks the fundamental question why it is that
after Hegel, philosophy seems to have been preoccupied with the ‘tragic’
and explores the dynamics of the relationship between tragic form and
philosophical enquiry. The essays demonstrate how the model of tragedy
affords the most extreme and thorough presentation of conflicts which are
at the heart of continental philosophy, such as the topics of freedom,
necessity, identity and historicity, and reveal why tragedy is so essential to
modern philosophical thinking.
The contributors to this volume are: Miguel de Beistegui, Walter Brogan,
Jean-François Courtine, Françoise Dastur, Günter Figal, Marc Froment-
Meurice, Rodolphe Gasché, David Farrell Krell, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe,
Will McNeill, Simon Sparks.
Miguel de Beistegui is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of
Warwick. Simon Sparks is Leverhulme Trust Research Fellow at the
Department of Philosophy, University of Strasbourg.
Warwick Studies in European Philosophy
Edited by Andrew Benjamin
Professor of Philosophy, University of Warwick
This series presents the best and most original work being done within the
European philosophical tradition. The books included in the series seek not
merely to reflect what is taking place within European philosophy, but also
to contribute to the growth and development of that plural tradition. Work
written in the English language as well as translations into English are to be
included, engaging the tradition at all levels—whether by introductions
that show the contemporary philosophical force of certain works, or by
collections that explore an important thinker or topic, or by significant
contributions that call for their own critical evaluation.
Titles already published in the series:
Walter Benjamin’s Philosophy
Edited by Andrew Benjamin and Peter Osborne
Bataille: Writing the Sacred
Edited by Carolyn Bailey Gill
Emmanuel Levinas: The Genealogy of Ethics
John Llewelyn
Maurice Blanchot: The Demand of Writing
Edited by Carolyn Bailey Gill
Body- and Image-Space: Re-reading Walter Benjamin
Sigrid Weigel (trans. Georgina Paul)
Passion in Theory: Conceptions of Freud and Lacan
Robyn Ferrell
Hegel After Derrida
Edited by Stuart Barnett
Retreating the Political
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy
On Jean-Luc Nancy: The Sense of Philosophy
Edited by Darren Sheppard, Simon Sparks and Colin Thomas
Deleuze and Philosophy: The Difference Engineer
Edited by Keith Ansell Pearson
Very Little…Almost Nothing: Death, Philosophy, Literature
Simon Critchley
Blanchot: Extreme Contemporary
Leslie Hill
iii
Textures of Light: Vision and Touch in Irigaray, Levinas and Merleau-
Ponty
Cathryn Vasseleu
Essays on Otherness
Jean Laplanche
Philosophy and Tragedy
Edited by Miguel de Beistegui
and Simon Sparks
London and New York
First published 2000
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 2000 Miguel de Beistegui and Simon Sparks for selection and editorial
matter; the contributors for individual chapters.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Philosophy and tragedy/[edited by] Simon Sparks and Miguel de Beistegui.
p. cm.—(Warwick studies in European philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
(pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Tragic, The—History—19th century. 2. Philosophy,
German—19th century. 3. Tragic, The—History—20th century.
4. Philosophy, German-20th century. I. Sparks, Simon, 1970–
II. Beistegui, Miguel de, 1966–. III. Series.
BH301.T7P45 1999
128–dc21 99–28329
CIP
ISBN 0-203-98175-8 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-415-19141-6 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-19142-4 (pbk)
Contents
List of contributors viii
Acknowledgements x
Introduction 1
Miguel de Beistegui and Simon Sparks
I Hegel
1 Hegel: or the tragedy of thinking 10
Miguel de Beistegui
2 Self-dissolving seriousness: on the comic in the Hegelian 37
conception of tragedy
Rodolphe Gasché
II Hölderlin
3 Of tragic metaphor 57
Jean-François Courtine
4 Tragedy and speculation 76
Françoise Dastur
5 A small number of houses in a universe of tragedy: notes on 86
Aristotle’s and Hölderlin’s ‘Anmerkungen’
David Farrell Krell
6 Hölderlin’s theatre 115
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe
III Nietzsche
7 Aesthetically limited reason: on Nietzsche’s The Birth of 136
Tragedy
Günter Figal
8 Zarathustra: the tragic figure of the last philosopher 148
Walter Brogan
vii
IV Heidegger
9 A ‘scarcely pondered word’. The place of tragedy: 163
Heidegger, Aristotle, Sophocles
Will McNeill
V Benjamin
10 Fatalities: freedom and the question of language in Walter 185
Benjamin’s reading of tragedy
Simon Sparks
VI Last Words
11 Aphasia: or the last word 212
Marc Froment-Meurice
Index 230
List of contributors
Miguel de Beistegui is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of
Warwick. He has published essays on Heidegger in English and in
French, and is author of Heidegger and the Political: Dystopias.
Walter Brogan is Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University. He is
the author of several articles on Nietzsche and has published extensively
in Ancient Greek Philosophy and Contemporary Continental
Philosophy. He is the cotranslator of Heidegger’s Metaphysics Θ 1–3: On
the Essence and Actuality of Force, and is currently working on a book
for SUNY Press on Heidegger’s interpretation of Aristotle.
Jean-François Courtine is Professor of Philosophy at the Université de
Paris (X), and the Director of the Husserl Archives in Paris. Translator
of Schelling’s work into French, he has written extensively on German
Idealism and phenomenology. His books include Heidegger et la
phénoménologie and Extase de la raison: Essais sur Schelling.
Françoise Dastur is Professor of Philosophy at the Université de Nice.
One of the leading interpreters of Hölderlin in France, she is the author
of Hölderlin, le retournement natal: Tragédie et modernité & nature et
poésie, as well as works on Heidegger, Husserl and the question of death.
All her books are currently being translated into English.
Günter Figal is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tübingen.
One of Germany’s foremost interpreters of recent German thought, he
has published extensively on Nietzsche.
Marc Froment-Meurice is a Professor in the Department of Romance
Languages, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, USA.
Rodolphe Gasché is Professor of Comparative Literature at the State
University of New York, Buffalo. His books include The Tain of the
Mirror and Inventions of Difference.
David Farrell Krell is Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University,
Chicago. He is the author of, amongst other works, Daimon Life:
Heidegger and Life-Philosophy and Lunar Voices: Of Tragedy, Poetry,
Fiction and Thought.
ix
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe is Professor of Philosophy at the Université des
Sciences Humaines de Strasbourg. Since the appearance of his first essays
on and translations of Hölderlin in the 1970s, he has been one of the
leading interpreters of Hölderlin in France. Amongst his most recent
works are Musica ficta (figures de Wagner) and Metaphrasis. In English
his publications include The Literary Absolute and Retreating the
Political (both co-authored with Jean-Luc Nancy), Typography,
Heidegger, Art and Politics and The Subject of Philosophy.
Will McNeill is Associate Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University,
Chicago. He has translated or co-translated several Heidegger volumes,
and is author of The Glance of the Eye: Heidegger, Aristotle, and the
Ends of Theory.
Simon Sparks is a Leverhulme Trust Research Scholar at the Université
des Sciences Humaines de Strasbourg. He is the co-editor of On Jean-
Luc Nancy and editor and co-translator of Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and
Jean-Luc Nancy’s Retreating the Political.