Tragedy and repetition. XPONIKA AIΣΘHTIKHΣ / Annales d'esthetique / Annals for Aesthetics, Vol.46. Volume B (2011), 191-202.

Abstract  According to writers such as Nietzsche, Steiner, and Oudemans and Lardinois the tragic culture of the Greeks has become entirely alien to us. They argue that within the Christian and modern worldview there is no place for tragedy anymore. In this article it is claimed that this does not entail in any shape or form that tragic events cannot take place anymore within Christian and modern culture. In modern culture this particularly happens, with no lack of tragic irony, precisely in the domain in which we believed tragedy had been eliminated: (our interaction with) technology.

Although technological tragedies differ in many respects from classical tragedies, they also show deep continuities. Just as in the case of their classical models, the behavior of the tragic heroes of our time is characterized by miscalculation (hamartia), blindness (atè) with regard to the tragic reality and foolhardiness (hybris).Now, tragic events do not automatically raise tragic awareness. Tragedies are characterized by the fact that the tragic heroes – unlike the spectators – are unaware of the fate that is befalling them, and coming about because of them. But most tragedies also have a reversal of circumstances (peripéteia), a moment at which hopeful expectation crumbles and the hero suddenly becomes aware of his tragic position. Postmodernity is another way of saying that modern culture recognizes itself as tragic.

"In an era of heightened existential vulnerability and awareness of finitude there is a correspondingly heightened need for new contexts of human understanding. Here we owe an enormous debt of gratitude to de Mul for providing us with a superb explication of the thought of Wilhelm Dilthey, whose precocious insights into the finitude and historical contingency of human understanding promise to contribute immeasurably to the widening of its horizons."

Robert D. Stolorow, Human Studies. A Journal for Philosophy and the Social Sciences (2012) Read entire review

Also see The Tragedy of Finitude

Jos de Mul. Database aesthetics. Newsletter International Association of Aesthetics, no.30, 2006, 1-3.

Jos de Mul. Radical romanticism. CafePhilosophy (Sydney), April/May, 2009, 8-12.

Jos de Mul. International Symposium “Aesthetics and the Dialogue among Culture". Chengdu, June 26-28, 2006. In: Newsletter of the International Association for Aesthetics, no.31, Autumn 2006, p. 1-2.

Jos de Mul. The logic of aesthetic development. In: V. Morger (Hrsg.), Abstractband 8. Tagung Entwicklungspsychologie, Bern 1987, 192.

Jos de Mul. Database aesthetics. Weblog Jos de Mul.

Jos de Mul. Image without origin. On Nietzsche's transcendental metaphor. In: P.J. McCormick (ed.) The reasons of Art/L'Art et ses Raisons, Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 273-286.

Jos de Mul. Genetic structuralism and conceptual relativism. In: Paul Weingartner & Gerhard Schurz, Berichte des 11. Internationalen Wittgenstein-Symposium, Wien (Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky), 1987, 31-34.

Jos de Mul. The Art of Forgetfulness. Schopenhauer and contemporary repetitive music. In: R. Woodfield (ed.) XIth International Congress in Aesthetics. Sixty-four selected papers, Nottingham 1990, 143-146.