Abstract
The modus operandi that drives philosophy by nature possesses a tragic flaw. Obviously, justification for this claim depends in part on what I mean by the ideas of tragedy and philosophy. In brief, I assume that the term ‘tragic’ applies properly to an agent who engages in a noble effort that inevitably fails and fails because of the nature of the agent. I shall elaborate on this conception later. The term ‘philosophy’, in the most straightforward sense, may be understood with the aid of the etymology of the word, namely, ‘the love of wisdom’. However, this characterization of it in turn depends on what is meant by ‘love’ and ‘wisdom’. Both terms will play a role in the discussion to follow, and the meaning I give them will, I trust, become evident in that context.
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Notes
I follow John Mansley Robinson in An Introduction to Early Greek Philosophy: The Chief Fraqments and Ancient Testimony, with Connective Commentary (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,1968), p.245.
Willard Van Orman Quine, Word and Object (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1960), p.ix.
Willard Van Orman Quine, ‘Ontological Relativity’, in Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969, pp.26–68.
Brand Blanshard, The Nature of Thought (New York: Humanities Press, 1964).
Carl R. Hausman, ‘Sophocles and the Metaphysical Question of Tragedy’, The Personalist, vol. 47, no. 4, Autumn 1966, 509–19.
I use the word ‘literary’ and the conception of literature with reference to expression that functions aesthetically. To function aesthetically is to function so that attention is directed toward its object for its own sake, for its intrinsic value, as such value constitutes or enhances the content and form of the expression. In the present context, I must bypass the many issues connected with characterizing what is properly called ‘literary’ or ‘literature’ in this sense of aesthetic function.
Ibid., p.510.
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© 1993 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Hausman, C.R. (1993). Philosophy and Tragedy: The Flaw of Eros and the Triumph of Agape. In: Georgopoulos, N. (eds) Tragedy and Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22759-4_9
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