Heroism Reconsidered

Abstract

Ever since Nietzsche declared that the advent of the analytical Socratic temper was responsible for the death of tragedy by suppressing the Dionysian spirit, analyses of the ideal tragic form have been accompanied by lamentations over its passing. There is a general consensus among those who claim that tragedies, as we have known them, can no longer be written that the rational temper is inimical to the creation of tragedy, that the scientific view of life is incompatible with the tragic view of life. For instance, in Tragic Sense of Life (1913), Unamuno argues that once the scientific spirit enters a people’s life, some of the discrepancies between the actual material order of the world and the preferred ideal order are explained, others accepted as truths. Thus a people loses its sense of mystery and so, too, its ‘tragic sense of life’. The writing of tragedy, Unamuno maintains, is the unintellectual manifestation of humanity’s frustrations and also a remedy for them. The intellectualization of life engenders an unfavorable climate because it is, at one and the same time, too skeptical and overly confident; that is, it dares to question and probe.