Tragedy and Philosophy

by Walter Kaufmann

This book develops a bold poetics based on the author's critical re-examination of the views of Plato, Aristotle, Hegel and Nietzsche on tragedy. Ancient Greek tragedy is revealed as surprisingly modern and experimental, while such concepts as mimesis, catharsis, hubris and the tragic collision are discussed from different perspectives.

"[Kaufmann] has attempted a searching analysis of the essence of tragedy. He offers a new definition and, without raising his voice, his version of poetics as against that of Aristotle." -- The New York Times

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Criticism, Tragedy, Literary Criticism, History, Literary Fiction

480 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Walter Arnold Kaufmann was a German-American philosopher, translator, and poet. A prolific author, he wrote extensively on a broad range of subjects, such as authenticity and death, moral philosophy and existentialism, theism and atheism, Christianity and Judaism, as well as philosophy and literature. He served for over 30 years as a Professor at Princeton University.

He is renowned as a scholar and translator of Nietzsche. He also wrote a 1965 book on Hegel, and a translation of most of Goethe's Faust.

Reviews

[Daryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Walter Kaufmann is best known for his translations and critical introductions to Nietzsche, but he was also quite a good philosopher in his own right, and deserves to be rediscovered. In Tragedy and Philosophy, he painstakingly lays out his case why the tragedies of Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Euripides have been misunderstood and appropriated to suit shifting cultural tastes ever since Plato and Aristotle. He discusses all of the major philosophers who have sought to define "tragedy," and explains why their genre criticism does not hold up. Most impressively, he offers his own definition of tragedy. His definition is historically informed by his knowledge of the Greek language, tragic literature, Western philosophy, and classical/philological scholarship. But it is also flexible enough to take into account major differences between the three Greek tragedians, Shakespeare, Goethe, and others. Finally, he considers such questions as whether or not historic events can be properly called "tragic," whether or not epics and novels can also be tragedies, and whether or not tragedy as a genre can be compatible with a Christian or humanist outlook. Despite some passages that read like lecture notes, on the whole, it is an eloquent and very convincing work of criticism (it's also occasionally feisty, in a good way). The main flaw is that Kaufmann's examples of post-WWII literature--Sartre's Dirty Hands & The Flies, Rolf Hochhuth's The Deputy & Soldiers, Brecht's Galileo, and William Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner--seem dated (the book was published in 1968).

[Bryn Hammond · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great counterweight to George Steiner's The Death of Tragedy, published shortly beforehand (in the 1960s).

Steiner: Tragedy issues from the bleak worldview of pagans. Optimism (Christianity, Enlightenment) was fatal to it; belief in progress makes it impossible.
Kaufmann: Aeschylus was optimistic and committed most of the 'fatal acts and impossibilities'. Greek tragedies were quite happy not to end in catastrophe. Tragedy merely meant 'immense suffering' on stage, such that an end of grace cannot erase the anguish from our minds. Tragedy is entirely possible today. It is the most humane of arts, as it works on sympathy, often for unlikely persons. It believes in courage and nobility, as comedy did not. Despair is the only killer of tragedy.

Both value poets above the commentators on poets; both are deeply versed in the poems, and love them intimately; both write to be understood and enjoyed; both are traumatised by the first half of the twentieth century, both remain humanists. Read both.

[Scott McCord · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quietly one of my favorites. I used to walk between classes holding my copy open against my chest. Walking with a book like Ichabod Crane. Not jargony, and VERY rich. Kaufmann argues with Plato and Aristotle as you might expect, but also with every classicist and philologist and art critic since them (or enough of every one, anyway). His style of Philosophy is mid-century existentialism (which is the most glamorous kind) and the element of tragedy he sorts out of ancient epic poetry, attic drama, modern crisis stuff like Ibsen and even moderner crisis stuff like Miller is ... well... ALSO existentialist.

Kaufmann engages with all the thinkers he ought to. And then some more. And if you've read Mimesis by Erich Auerbach (from a period JUST before Tragedy and Philosophy) Kaufmann gives a counterplea for Homer against Genesis. He does it tacitly by virtue of his concentration, and he does it directly too in his big chapter on Homer. I really like Kaufmann. That guy was just OK!

[Ivan Soto · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book enhanced even more the esteem in which I now hold Walter Kaufmann's superb scholarship. I recommend this book highly particularly to those who want to find out why we think of the 5th century BC so important in the development of philosophy and the arts. It's a great read all the way through!

[Will Buckingham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kaufmann sets a fairly narrow agenda (it's more a book on the Greek tragedians and philosophy than a book on tragedy conceived more broadly), but nevertheless this is a wonderfully readable book in a way that few philosophy books are, and was a pleasure even for a reader for whom -I confess, having read through the plays years ago, and having only the haziest memory of which is which - Sophocles blurs into Euripides, who in turn blurs into Aeschylus.

[John Feather]

it, as far as I can tell takes a view of tragedy beginning with Plato, aristotle, and socrates, then moves on to more modern philosophy, examining such things as Medea and Oedipus.

[Brad]

Walter Kaufmann is amazing.

[Jason Kassel, PhD · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book does important corrective work. Kaufmann resists the tendency to treat tragedy as mere literature or philosophy as abstract argument, insisting instead on their shared confrontation with suffering, conflict, and irreducible tension. His readings of Greek tragedy and Nietzsche are especially strong, and the prose remains unusually clear for a book doing such heavy conceptual lifting. At times polemical, but productively so. A reminder that philosophy once took form on the stage.

[brooke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Took a bit longer than I would have liked to finish but overall very insightful!

[Glenn · Rating 3 out of 5]

When we speak of tragedy, we are primarily concerned with a genre of literature, the tragic play. The tragic dramas of which Walter Kaufmann speaks, which he analyses, categorizes, critiques, and interrogates include the seven surviving plays of Aeschylus, the seven surviving plays of Sophocles, the eighteen or nineteen surviving plays of Euripides, the tragedies of Shakespeare (some of which are labelled "histories"), and a few more modern works.

If tragedy is a literary genre, what is philosophy? In this case, the aspects of philosophy which concern Kaufmann are analysis and ethics. Aristotle wrote a book called The Poetics. According to Aristotle, the three kinds of poetic arts were tragedy, epic poetry, and comedy. Either lyric poetry wasn't important in Aristotle's day, or he didn't consider lyrics an art form. Whereas Alfred North Whitehead once asserted that all philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato, Kaufmann's book is an extensive footnote to Aristotle's Poetics.

Kaufmann's discussion of the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Shakespeare is extensive. He refers to the opinions of the philosophers Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Sartre, among others. Late in the book he brings in works of Brecht and Hochhuth. To fully appreciate Kaufmann's analyses and opinions, it would help to be familiar with a number of these works. One reason it took me from September to February to finish this 386-page book, is that I stopped along the way to reread the complete plays of Sophocles in the 2001 translation by Paul Roche. I almost succumbed to the temptation to reread at least a couple Shakespeare's tragedies, but I had read Hamlet and King Lear fairly recently, so I was able to resist.

To boil Kaufmann down to his essence, a word he would probably reject, the point of this book is that tragedy is not easily defined in one or two phrases. The main common element of tragedy is that it evokes strong emotion, particularly, but not limited to, pity and fear. Kaufmann analyses at length philosophical vocabulary around tragedy and concludes that most writers on the subject have misunderstood Aristotle, but that's all right, because Aristotle was probably wrong.

You will note that Kaufmann devotes a lot of space to the opinions of Nietzsche. Kaufmann wrote a large biography of Nietzsche and was the editor and translator of the volume on Nietzsche in the Portable series. Kaufmann also published a two-volume edition of Goethe's Faust. These are subjects on which he was considered an authority. I don't see any reason to contest that. Walter Kaufmann wrote and lectured extensively on philosophical topics, translated works from the German and the Greek, and explored the relationship between drama and philosophy at length.

If any of the topics mentioned interest you, or if you are exploring the world of classical Greek drama, you may well find Kaufmann a worthwhile read.

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

This and nussbaum’s fragility of goodness are among the top ten books I’ve ever read. I have copies scattered around the globe and on my kindle too so where ever I find myself I always have these books to read and thus not be alone in a vast nihilistic universe.