Tragedy And Good : Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Plato is remembered as one of the worlds best known philosophers who along with his writings are widely studied. Plato was a student of the great Greek philosopher Socrates and later went on to be the teacher of Aristotle. Plato’s writings such as “The Republic”, “Apology” and “Symposium” reveal a great amount of insight on what was central to his worldview. He was a true philosopher as he was constantly searching for wisdom and believed questioning every aspect of life would lead him to the knowledge he sought. He was disgusted with the common occurrence of Greeks not thinking for themselves but simply accepting the popular opinion also known as doxa. Plato believed that we ought to search for and meditate on the ideal versions of beauty, justice, wisdom, and other concepts which he referred to as the forms. His hostility towards doxa, theory of the forms, and perspective on reality were the central ideas that shaped Plato’s worldview and led him to be the great philosopher who is still revered today.

Now let us take a look into the background of the story. Plato gives his ideals on a perfect society and everything it should include. He basically implies that justice is rightness, and rightness is whatever he feels it should be. He breaks society down into guardians, wage earners, and auxiliaries. Wage earners are people such as surgeons or shoemakers.

Tragedy is an element of literature. It is rooted in Greek mythology and ancient Greek society. Its definition is “A literary piece that consists of a courageous noble character who must confront powerful obstacles, either external or from within”, and “the protagonist usually has a tragic

Good and evil depend on each other for their existence. When one is missing the stories can not move on. This archetypal pattern is often seen throughout literature and in The Odyssey. A significantly

Plato made the source of his hope abundantly clear in his dialogue, Phaedo, “There is good hope that on arriving where I am going, if anywhere, I shall acquire what has been our chief preoccupation in our past life” (Phaedo, 67b-c). Plato’s ultimate hope and desire was to attain real wisdom. He had a true conundrum, however: he believed that the physical world was by very nature evil. Not only that, but he believed the physical dimension to which our bodies bind us was altogether false. In fact, he

Plato?s view of Justice can be seen in his model of The Tripartite Soul. In this model Plato outlines 3 sectors of his ideal society. This theoretical society is composed of Guardians, Auxiliaries, and Producers. The Guardians were the upper class citizens who had the authority to pass judgment. Guardians were rational and wise, and could participate and become involved in politics. The Auxiliaries were positioned as courageous citizens who helped preserve the spirit and emotion of a society by ?protecting and serving? much like a modern day public works department or police and fire squad. In the lowest tier of Plato?s ideal society were the Producers, whose job it was to create. The Producers were to use temperance in their lives, for they were classified as appetitive souls who could easily succumb to bodily desires. The Producers were to practice asceticism, which is the eradication of bodily desires.

            To identify the tragic hero in Sophocles’ renowned play “Antigone”, we should first consider both the elements present in Greek tragedies and what characteristics define a tragic hero. Aristotle’s definition of tragedy is: “Tragedy is a story taking the hero from happiness to misery because of a fatal flaw or mistake on his part. To be a true tragic hero he must also elicit a strong emotional response of pity and fear from the audience. This is known as catharsis or purging of emotion.” In most cases the tragic hero begins

Plato, in addition to being a philosopher, wrestled at the Olympic level, is one of the classical Greek authors, mathematicians and the founder of The Academy, the first higher learning institute in the west. In short, Plato is one of the great thinkers in history and his contributions to philosophy, ethics and politics are many and varied. One of Plato’s main philosophical ideas is based on the idea that the world

Plato assumed the existence of human life in a cave. In his view, human beings are tied as prisoners in a cave and they could only see the shadows of real

When hearing the word Tragedy, it would not be surprising if several different individuals would immediately think of several unique examples of the word. Perhaps one is an opera enthusiast who immediately thinks of Puccini’s La Boheme. Another is a war enthusiast that thinks about History Channel’s new episode highlighting the harshest and bloodiest battles of World War One. Even a third one obsessed with Greek mythology could generate a handful of examples of tragedy. Tragedy, like love or comedy is a universal theme that can be used to entertain, enlighten and excite its audiences. William Shakespeare, a world renown writer, was a master of this genre writing works, including Romeo and Juliet, Othello, and Hamlet. Another lesser known

Plato starts with the analogy of the sun, which points out the contrast between the visible and the intelligible worlds. Within the visible world man has eyes and objects to be seen, but man needs another object for the eyes to see the object. This object is the sun, which provides the light that is required by the eye to view the visible world. In correspondence, the Form of the Good in the intelligible world is equal to the sun by the way that the Good allows the forms to be known. Plato specifically states, “What gives truth to the things known and the power to know to the knower is the Form of the Good. And though it is the cause of knowledge and truth, it is also an object of knowledge” (508e). Along with

Generally, the paradox of tragedy discusses “how we can (not irrationally or absurdly) respond emotionally to a work of art all, given that we do not really believe the events or charters depicted in it are real.” While, in Pleasures of Tragedies, Feagin takes a more specific approach which aims at figuring out the possible explanation of the pleasures obtained from the tragedy.

Plato aims to give an account of the ethical life. Themes for example knowledge, the well-ordered life, and wisdom are connected into the discussion of ethical life, however, the principle of justice and the organization of the good life is the central topic of Plato's theories. Today we associate justice with the successful implementation and execution of political law. To the Ancient Greek's justice was used to describe the proper and correct method of living. Justice is harmony and was believed it could be achieved through learning. Plato first established that justice is good, and part of the good life in Book I. Plato listens to other philosophers theories and argues that justice is an excellence of character. The role that justice plays is to improve human nature. In addition to other things, justice is a form of goodness that cannot contribute in any activity that attempts to harm one's character.

Hundreds of years ago Greek plays were very popular. People would plan to go to these plays for entertainment and to have fun with their friends. These plays would also help to teach the audience all about Greek mythology. The main character in these plays often had something tragic occur at the end, such as death. This character was the referred to as the “tragic hero.” A couple hundred years later a Greek philosopher named Aristotle described tragedy with 4 simple elements, nobility of the character, the flaws of the tragic hero, the start of the tragic hero’s downfall, and his/her punishment. In Things Fall Apart, Oedipus, and Antigone there is a character that shows this definition of tragedy by the end of the book and or play. This is usually caused by something called hubris, excessive pride. Things Fall Apart, Oedipus, and Antigone all fulfill Aristotle 's definition of tragedy.

Georg Lukács differentiates between two worlds: the world of the integrated society and our world. These two worlds are in a way opposites of one another, the Greek world is one where the essence of everything is both within the soul and outside in the world. In our world this is changed and essence is something in which we live without. The ‘good’ is not found within or outside the individual, there will always be an internal debate about what is truly ‘good’. In the Greek world this ‘good’ is found, not created, and acted upon in a way that is instant, there is no debate. This essential nature of both the outer world and inner soul that the Greeks lived with is seen in their works of art: the epics and the tragedies. In the tragedy the “Antigone” the discovered, and uncreated, ‘good’ is exemplified by the title character, Antigone. Furthermore, this integrated society is shown in the actions of Antigone through her discovery and unquestioning action towards the already existent ‘good’.