Summary of Simon Critchley's Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 Tragedy exposes us to what we do not know about ourselves. It forces us to confront our past and its effects on us, which can be both terrifying and humbling. It helps us understand our dependence on others and the vulnerability of our existence.

#2 Tragedy is the imitation of action, and action is called into question through tragedy. The experience of tragedy invites us to consider how we act in the world, and what we should do. It is not about the cultivation of a solitary life of contemplation, but the difficulty and uncertainty of action in a world defined by ambiguity.

#3 The tradition yields us only ruins. The more closely we examine them, the more clearly we see how ruinous they are. But out of the ruins, no whole can be built. The tradition is dead; our task is to revivify life that has passed away.

#4 The we that is found in tragedy is invitational, an invitation to visit another sense of who we are and who we might become. If we don’t accept this invitation, we risk becoming even more stupefied by the present and the onrush of the future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822505223

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Insights on Simon Critchley's Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Tragedy exposes us to what we do not know about ourselves. It forces us to confront our past and its effects on us, which can be both terrifying and humbling. It helps us understand our dependence on others and the vulnerability of our existence.

#2

Tragedy is the imitation of action, and action is called into question through tragedy. The experience of tragedy invites us to consider how we act in the world, and what we should do. It is not about the cultivation of a solitary life of contemplation, but the difficulty and uncertainty of action in a world defined by ambiguity.

#3

The tradition yields us only ruins. The more closely we examine them, the more clearly we see how ruinous they are. But out of the ruins, no whole can be built. The tradition is dead; our task is to revivify life that has passed away.

#4

The we that is found in tragedy is invitational, an invitation to visit another sense of who we are and who we might become. If we don’t accept this invitation, we risk becoming even more stupefied by the present and the onrush of the future.

#5

Tragedy is about what suffers in us and in others, and how we might become cognizant of that suffering. It is a pathos that we undergo, and it is both something undergone and partially overtaken in action.

#6

Tragedy’s philosophy is sophistry, meaning it is a form of thinking that is opposite to philosophy’s. I want to defend a tragic philosophy, which is a form of thinking that is opposite to philosophy’s.

#7

The most famous example of Greek tragedy is Oedipus the King, which depicts the king as a tyrant and a pollution by the city that made him king. But the play requires some degree of complicity on our part in the disaster that destroys us.

#8

In tragedy, time is out of joint and the linear