Le sens tragique de la vie de l'Esprit chez Hegel implique deux modalités de la vie : une vie sans tragique, qui n'est pas encore la vie spirituelle, et une vie tragique, qui implique la vie éthique. Le tragique est ce qui dissout la pseudo-unité de la nature et de la moralité chez la belle âme. Il s'incarne d'abord dans la tragédie et la tension entre les humains et les dieux, mais la comédie révèle que cette tragédie (...) n'est pas la tragédie absolue, laquelle appartient à la religion révélée, en tant que tragédie de Dieu même, la Passion du Christ étant la tragédie absolue. La forte insistance de Hegel sur l'opposition du Bien et du Mal justifie la mort volontaire du Dieu -homme, l'intériorisation dans la conscience de soi du Mal existant et naturel. C'est dans l'Esprit de la communauté que la mort du Médiateur devient la douleur de la conscience malheureuse. L'histoire de l'Absolu, en tant qu'elle est conçue, devient philosophie, mais, en tant qu'elle est vécue, elle est et reste une tragédie. The tragical meaning of Hegel's life of the Spirit implies two modalities of life : i.e. a life devoid of the tragic, which is not yet a spiritual life and a tragical life which implies ethical life. The tragic is what dissolves the pseudo-unity of nature and morality with the beautiful soul. It first embodies itself within tragedy and the tension between gods and human beings but comedy reveals that such a tragedy is no absolute tragedy, the latter belonging to revealed religion as being the very tragedy of God himself, Christ's passion being the absolute tragedy. The strong instance made by Hegel on the opposition between Good and Evil accounts and justifies the voluntary death of God-Man, the interiorization within self consciousness of existing and natural Evil. It is within the spirit of the community that the Mediator's death becomes the pain of unhappy conscience. The history of the Absolute, conceived as it is, becomes true philosophy, but so long as it becomes experienced, turns out to be and remains tragedy. (shrink)

La théorie de la tragédie de Hegel est à juste titre célèbre. Toutefois, le développement logique de l’art aboutit selon lui non à la tragédie mais à la comédie. Cet article compare ce que Hegel considère comme étant la véritable comédie (chez Aristophane et Shakespeare) et ce qu’il appelle « l’humour subjectif » (qu’il trouve, par exemple, chez Jean Paul) : alors que les humoristes manifestent liberté et maîtrise en se livrant à leurs fantaisies, les personnages (...) comiques manifestent leur liberté en se détachant des fantaisies par le fait que leurs objectifs insensés sont frustrés, tout en conservant leur inébranlable assurance au cœur même de leurs échecs. Dans cet article, j’aborde également les différentes formes de subjectivité comique identifiées par Hegel, telles que le fou qui rit ouvertement de lui-même (Falstaff), celui qui reconnaît sa folie sans rire de lui-même (Strepsiade), ou celui qui ne reconnaît pas sa folie mais reste irrépressiblement sûr de lui-même dans cette folie (Don Quichotte). J’explique ensuite pourquoi, selon Hegel, la comédie mène logiquement à la religion, et porte ainsi à son terme le développement conceptuel de l’art. Pour Hegel, le cœur de la véritable religion (qu’il identifie avec le christianisme) réside dans l’amour et le pardon, qui impliquent tous deux de se déprendre de soi-même et d’atteindre ainsi une liberté infinie « divine » dans le fini (et non dans un « au-delà » transcendant). Il est clair que les personnages comiques ne«s’abandonnent » pas jusqu’à la mort ; mais ils font pourtant signe vers un don de soi et un amour religieux en montrant qu’ils ne sont pas liés à leurs objectifs finis mais jouissent d’une liberté « divine » dans leur finitude, qui est toute humaine et souvent irréligieuse. (shrink)

Jules et Jim by François Truffaut or the Unbearable Lightness of the Feminine. Truffaut’s movie Jules et Jim (« Jules and Jim ») is an intimist movie but also a fresco of Europe throughout the first half of the 20th century, as it was torn apart by the two world wars and Nazism. At the same time, the film tells the story of the friendship that began during the Belle Epoque between two intellectuals, a French (Jim) and a German (Jules), (...) both madly in love with an English teacher (Catherine). In the insular tradition of the Elizabethan theatre, this is a story about love, treason, jealousy, hate, and finally murder and suicide. In its structure, it is a mix of farce, sentimental drama turned into tragedy, and which in the end reveals itself as a comedy of errors, with, nevertheless, very serious themes: love and war, desire and drives, femininity, maternity and semblance, competition between men for a woman etc. This movie brilliantly represents the Nouvelle vague and is a proof that Freud and Lacan were right when they established once and for all that the unconscious is a fundamental and necessary scene. Human destiny is set and its mysterious scripts are played out - from sexuality to death, from Eros to Thanatos - as the subject’s fantasy, the window through which he or she tackles reality. (shrink)

Après avoir présenté l’oscillation contemporaine entre un excès d’attention à la conjugalité au détriment de la filiation, puis un excès d’attention à la filiation au détriment de la conjugalité, et la spécificité de chacun de ces liens, l’auteur cherche à comprendre la fragilité conjugale actuelle à travers une histoire des idées et des images du couple amoureux en Occident. L’invention du mariage amoureux, qui coïncide avec l’invention du divorce (J. Milton), son apothéose avec le cinéma parlant hollywoodien, laissent aujourd’hui la (...) place à une profonde désaffection. L’Occident ne croit plus à l’un de ses mythes les plus fondamentaux. (shrink)

It gives me great pleasure and honor to introduce myself as the incoming Editor-in-Chief of Polis: The Journal for Ancient Greek and Roman Political Thought. For the last decade I have served as an Associate Editor and the Book Review Editor of the journal. I am very excited about charting new paths for the journal, while continuing to publish first-rate scholarship in our area strengths. Although ‘polis’ is a Greek word that identifies a specific Greek historical political institution, in many (...) important ways the culture of Greek political thought interacted with the political culture of Regal, Republican, and Imperial Rome through Greek settlements in the Western Mediterranean, Roman military conquest, and cultural Hellenization. In the last year the editorial staff of Polis decided to expand the domain of our journal to include scholarship on Roman political thought and Greek-language political thought from the Hellenistic and Roman Imperial periods. Although Polis has been publishing reviews of books devoted to these new domains for several issues, it is quite gratifying to publish an entire special issue, edited by Grant Nelsestuen and Associate Editor Daniel Kapust, devoted to Roman political thought. Additional articles on Roman political thought are in the journal’s publication queue and we look forward to becoming an important venue for the publication of original scholarship and book reviews on Roman political thought and its subsequent reception, along with our original remit for Greek political thought and its reception. The editorial staff of Polis has undergone a number of changes in conjunction with my new role. First and foremost, my mentor and predecessor Kyriakos Demetriou has retired from the position of Editor-in-Chief and become a member of our Editorial Board. I have had the privilege of working with Kyriakos for over 15 years, during which time he transformed the newsletter of the Society for Ancient Greek Political Thought into a pre-eminent peer-reviewed academic journal. I may only hope 15 years from now, that Polis has continued to grow as a source for landmark scholarship on Greek and Roman political thought. During the editorial transition, Associate Editors Rosanna Lauriola and Essam Safty have left our editorial staff. We are grateful for their service to the journal and wish them well in their scholarly endeavors. Finally, I am pleased to announce several additions to our editorial staff. Dimitri El Murr, Professor of Ancient Philosophy at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Université Paris Sciences et Lettres), has joined the journal as an Associate Editor responsible for the refereeing and editing of Francophone submissions to Polis. Demetra Kasimis, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, has joined as an Associate Editor responsible for the refereeing of submissions on the political aspects of Greek literature (such as epic, tragedy, and comedy). Matthew Simonton, Associate Professor of History at Arizona State University, has joined the journal as an Associate Editor and Book Review Editor. Finally, Dr. Alexandra Wilding has joined our editorial staff as the journal’s copy-editor. Learn from and enjoy the scholarship of our current issue. Submit to Polis your scholarship on ancient Greek and Roman political thought. Be a part of the future of Polis. Thornton Lockwood Editor-in-Chief. (shrink)

The first evaluation and critique of Hegel's theory of tragedy and comedy, this book also develops an original theory of both genres.

Is there an opposition between spectacles and the Church? Such is the question that normally comes to one's mind in reading the diatribes of the Fathers of the Church against spectacles. The subject is thicklish and should be handled with precision and tact, without preconceived prejudice. In examining the passages on the subject in ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM, the author has precisely made the attempt to solve the problem. Methodical in his proceedings, he first examines the part, spectacles played in the (...) life of the peoples of A n t i o c h and C o n s t a n t i n o p l e. So engrossed with the love of spectacles had they become, that the only two things, requested from their masters by this frivolous population, were: bread and games! The whole of Antioch, the whole of Constantinople was to be found in the Circus or in the Theatre. On holidays, christians rushed to the hippodrome, with the same ardor as the pagans. Like so many of the Fathers, C h r y s o s t o m, condemned this frequentation, which he considered an apostasy and a return to the idols, one of the greatest enemies of purity and one of the most serious obstacles to his pastoral mission. Seldom does he attack comedies and tragedies, directing his most strenuous efforts against Pantomimes. In latter years, taking up again the same textes, B o s- s u e t fell into regrettable exaggerations. Austere moralist and rigorist, he condemned the theatre without discrimination. In locating the debates, by first giving an historical account of the struggles which divided the Church and the theatre, the author ascertains that nowadays a more charitable and just conception of the spectacle and the artist, dedicating his life thereto, has been reached. The pleasure of the spectacle is innocent in itself and the Catholic Church finds no fault with it: the sole requirement, the Church imposes, being that this pleasure, in its application, be subjected to the principles of christian morals. (shrink)

Explores the full extent of Hegel's interest in tragedy and comedy throughout his works and extends from more literary and dramatic issues to questions about the role these genres play in the history of society and religion.

Tragedy is superior to comedy. This is the received view in much philosophical aesthetics, literary criticism and amongst many ordinary literary appreciators. The paper outlines three standard types of reasons given to underwrite the conceptual nature of the superiority claim, focusing on narrative structure, audience response and moral or human significance respectively. It sketches some possible inter-relations amongst the types of reasons given and raises various methodological worries about how the argument for tragedy’s superiority typically proceeds. The paper then outlines (...) a new normative account of a type of literary or dramatic comedy – ‘high comedy’ – which proves to be tragedy’s equal. High comedies, it will be argued, have complex narrative structures shaping audience responses underwriting the moral significance of the comic mode. The received view is unjustified and appreciating why this is so casts light on the nature and value of comedy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Aristotle's Poetics and the PaintersGraham ZankerAristotle's Poetics uses the example of painting as an analogy to illustrate certain facts about poetry, specifically epic, tragedy, and comedy. But the use of painting as an analogy, though ancillary to Aristotle's subject, should yield evidence, if properly evaluated, on how the philosopher thought about painting, because the use of a thing as an analogy actually depends on how its user regards the (...) thing. We can legitimately infer Aristotle's opinions about certain aspects of painting from his comments about poetic mimesis, because analogy is by nature reflexive, or symmetrical: if poetry resembles painting in certain respects, then painting must in turn resemble poetry in those respects. And since, as I hope to show, the characteristics in question can be clearly defined from the Poetics, and since the terms denoting them are given consistent meanings throughout the treatise in regard to poetry, it would be all the more inconceivable that Aristotle did not mean the same with these terms when he applied them to painting. In fact, Aristotle's views on painting are important for establishing how painting was perceived in the fourth century B.C., at least in certain respects which I suggest are well worth noting. Here I refer in particular to the question of subject matter, the aspect of morality, and the issue of idealization in classical Greek painting. This short essay, then, is offered as an example of how an ancient treatise on literary aesthetics can benefit the art historian, especially by providing a framework within which the Greeks themselves viewed the art of their time.It is vital, first of all, to establish precisely what Aristotle is referring to when he says that poets represent people in action and that it is necessary that these be (48a1-6). For this I offer the following provisional and unprejudicial translation, the precise points of reference of which will be defined in the course of my argument: "either serious men () or insignificant men ()..., either better () than our level or worse () or of like level () as well, just like the painters, [End Page 225] for Polygnotus depicted superior people (), Pauson inferior, and Dionysius people of like level ()."This passage is often taken to refer to the moral status of the characters in poetry and in the paintings of Polygnotus, Pauson, and Dionysius. This is particularly so in the case of modern art historians. Rouveret, for example, affirms without substantiation that "pour Aristote, toute action est colorée par un ethos, d'autre part, les ethé se regroupent en deux catégories principales, les et les. Ces deux groupes déterminent deux types de mimesis tragique et comique. La tragédie représente donc toujours des " (1989, 132).1 And, having defined and in this way, she tries to show (121-61) how the text illuminates Aristotle's comment that Polygnotus was an while Zeuxis was not (50a25).But there are compelling reasons for believing that the reference here is basically to social class, with a flow-on effect on moral status.2 [End Page 226] In that case, according to Aristotle, tragedians and Polygnotus depict people of superior social status, comedy and Pauson represent people of inferior social status, and an unspecified literary genre (a type of tragedy if the Cleophon of 48a12 is the Athenian tragedian mentioned in the Suda)3 as well as the painter Dionysius (in all likelihood the fifth-century painter mentioned by Pliny at NH 35.113) depict people of an average social status "like you and me" (). That the reference is primarily social is clear in that the, who are the proper province of tragedy according to Aristotle, are described at 53a10-12 as people of high repute and in great prosperity,, the "people of distinction" like Oedipus and Thyestes, who are members of distinguished families.4The social reference of these terms in the Poetics is secured, and the relationship of the concepts denoted by them to moral considerations can be illustrated by reference to 54a19-22. There Aristotle argues that it is a prime requisite of tragedy that its characters be morally good,, in order that the true tragic effect... (shrink)

At the very end of Plato's Symposium our narrator awakes to find Socrates still hard at it, and making Agathon and Aristophanes agree that the composition of tragedy and comedy is really one and the same thing:… προсαναγκάӡειν τὸν Σωκράτη ὁμολογεῖν αὐτοὺс τοῦ αὐτοῦ ἀνδρὸс εἷναι κωμωιδίαν καὶ τραγωιδίαν ἐπἰсταϲθαι ποιεῖν, καὶ τὸν τέχνηι τραγωιδοποιὸν ὄντα καὶ κωμωιδοποιὸν εἷναι. ταῦτα δὴ ἀναγκαӡομένουϲ αὐτοὺϲ … the two playwrights succumb to sleep, leaving Socrates triumphant. Socrates had to ‘force’ his case; and it (...) is a fact that, though we know of well over 100 fifth-century playwrights, we do not know of a single one who produced both tragedy and comedy. In a famous fragment the comedian Antiphanes complains that the tragedians have an easy time—familiar stories, the deus ex machina etc.—ἡμῖν δὲ ταῦτ' οὐκ ἔсτιν … It is a matter of ‘them’ and ‘us’. Furthermore, there was an entire separate genre besides tragedy and comedy. As Demetrius put it, τραγωιδία χάριταϲ μὲν παραλαμβάνει ἐν πολλοῖϲ, ὁ δὲ γέλωϲ ἐχθρὸϲ τραγωιδίαϲ· οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐπινοήϲειεν ἄν τιϲ τραγωιδίαν παίӡουϲαν, ἐπεὶ ϲάτυρον γράψει ἀντὶ τραγωιδίαϲ. (shrink)

In _The Tragedy and Comedy of Life,_ Seth Benardete focuses on the idea of the good in what is widely regarded as one of Plato's most challenging and complex dialogues, the _Philebus._ Traditionally the _Philebus_ is interpreted as affirming the doctrine that the good resides in thought and mind rather than in pleasure or the body. Benardete challenges this view, arguing that Socrates vindicates the life of the mind over the life of pleasure not by separating the two and advocating (...) a strict asceticism, but by mixing pleasure and pain with mind in such a way that the philosophic life emerges as the only possible human life. Benardete combines a probing and challenging commentary that subtly mirrors and illuminates the complexities of this dialogue with the finest English translation of the _Philebus_ yet available. The result is a work that will be of great value to classicists, philosophers, and political theorists alike. (shrink)

The book holds the French translation of Hegel's 1828 review of K.W.F. Solger's Posthumous Writings and Correspondence, published by his friends in 1818, along with a lengthy introduction in French. In his review, Hegel distinguished between Solger's little-known theory of aesthetic irony, which he had likened to Hegel's own dialectic of the Absolute, from the romantic irony of Friedrich Schlegel.

There are relatively few recent works which attempt a serious and genuinely philosophical engagement with Hegel’s writings on aesthetics. Eschewing many of the limited ways in which Hegel is brought into conversations in contemporary literary criticism, Mark Roche has essayed a study of Hegel’s theory of the dramatic genres that seeks not simply to reiterate Hegel’s own thought, but to provide an immanent critique of Hegel’s theory that will be useful for the current critical debate.

Dans Les Nuées, Aristophane adresse des critiques à Socrate auxquelles Platon répond philosophiquement dans l’Apologie. Or le Socrate des Nuées porte des traits de Protagoras, et certains reproches attribués à l’un valent pour l’autre. Comme pour Socrate, Platon a composé pour Protagoras une apologie, dans le Théétète. Si nous comparons les accusations de la pièce à ce que Platon prête à Protagoras, nous constatons qu’il se fait son défenseur. Mais pour quelle raison et à quel point de vue? Par une (...) analyse des concepts de geloion et de mimèsis comique, on montre comment Platon déploie une stratégie de réappropriation de la pensée de Protagoras – pour lui donner un tour philosophique qui constitue en même temps une réflexion critique sur le statut de l’objet comique.In the Apology, Plato gives a philosophical answer to critics contained in Aristophanes’ Clouds. However, through Socrates, The Clouds target Protagoras too. As a matter of fact, Plato composed an apology for him, as well in the Theaetetus, that answers the charges in the comedy against Protagoras, becoming in a certain way his « lawyer ». But why and what for? Analysing the concepts of geloion and comic mimesis, we show how Plato undertakes to give a philosophical reading of Protagoras’ thought, which, in the same time, constitutes a critical thinking about the object of comedy. (shrink)

Este artículo es una discusión con el concepto platónico de diálogo entendido como comedia, Plato’s Cratylus: The Comedy of Language (Ewegen, 2014. No hay traducción al español) fue usado como el recurso central de este artículo, el cual provee la base para diferentes interpretaciones en América Latina como las que defiende la profesora Buarque (2011) en nuestra región y, de manera mucho más general Gregorio Lury et al. (2018) en Ibero America. Sumado a ello, a diferencia del trabajo mencionado, este (...) trabajo lleva a cabo una comparación con la obra de Platón usando una metodología de carácter hermenéutico basado en los escritos de Platón y sus múltiples referencias a la risa a través de su reflexión escrita; se toma como punto de referencia la consigna hermenéutica de tomar la clara interpretación como un todo. El presente trabajo tiende entonces, a diferencia de la propuesta de Ewegen, a establecer el esfuerzo platónico mucho más próximo a a la tragedia que a la comedia como género de interpretación. Aunque existan secciones referidas enteramente a asuntos graciosos en los cuales el humor se aprecia, esta no puede ser la clave para la interpretación platónica como lo sostiene el enfoque de Ewegen. La forma del diálogo platónico debe ser entendida en un proyecto educativo, es decir de transformación. (shrink)

As one would expect, Benardete's commentary, too, is much more concerned with the literary dimension of the dialogue than are its predecessors; so much so in fact that they cannot really be compared. The difference is almost as fundamental as that between a world constituted by visual experiences and one constituted by aural ones. Benardete evinces no interest in some of the issues which most exercise other commentators, such as whether the theory of forms has undergone any revisions. On the (...) other hand he offers many provocative insights of a kind that more argument-focused commentators neglect; for example, that the tension between the fixed limits of the Philebus and the fact that the Philebus is only a segment of a conversation that began before the part recorded, and has not yet ended when the record stops, is an image of the tension portrayed within the dialogue between the limit and the unlimited. This is not merely a nice point about Plato's use of imagery, but it implies that we must read the dialogue as a whole in a different way than we read a self-contained argument. On more specific issues as well, Benardete asks questions and provides insight into matters that do not interest more analytic commentators. (shrink)

While both Isaiah Berlin and William James are widely seen as pluralists, this paper contends that neither is a pluralist tout court. Berlin certainly is a pluralist when it comes to morality and politics, but he is a monist when it comes to nature. And James is, paradoxically, both a pluralist and a monist as regards all of reality. These claims are advanced by showing how both thinkers’ approaches contrast with those of monists, not least Plato, Hegel, and Nietzsche. They (...) are also shown to be associated with different narrative genres: tragedy in Berlin’s case, and tragicomedy in James’. The paper then concludes with a brief discussion of an alternative approach, one that treads a path in between monism and pluralism and, because of this, favours a particular form of comedy. (shrink)

Following Freud’s analysis of the fragile line between the uncanny double and its comic redoubling, I identify the doubling of the double found in critical moments of Hegelian dialectic as producing a kind of comic effect. It almost goes without saying that two provides greater pleasure than one, the loneliest number. Many also find two to be preferable to three, the tired trope of dialectic as a teleological waltz. Two seems to offer lightness, relieving one from her loneliness and lacking (...) the complications of a third who comes in between. And yet, we learn through Marx and Freud that the double (even the double of tragedy and farce) borders on something closer to horror than comedy. -/- In the following, I would like to explore why four is funnier than two in my staging of dialectic as the doubling of the double or, to borrow a movie title from Laurel and Hardy, “Twice Two” (Roach et al. 1933a). I will begin by exploring the formulations of the double in the form of a pair of opposites and in the form of a pair of twins. The literary tropes of the double as the odd couple, on one side, and the twins, on the other, appear to serve very different narrative functions, which incite different kinds of affective responses from the audience. However, the form of the opposed double sometimes conceals the realization that the empty or fragmented content of the first is only reduplicated in the second. The “straight man” of the odd couple cannot see himself in his counterpart “the comic.” The redoubling of the double, however, forces not only the audience, but the original double on stage to confront what was already present, but unrealized, from the beginning. To illustrate this redoubling of the double within the opening of Hegel’s Science of Logic, I consider two short films by Laurel and Hardy in which the comic duo redoubles itself. The formula (2 x 2) produces a comic excess through the dialectical redoubling of there uncanny double. (shrink)

Intergenerational justice and democratic theory -- A narrative turn -- Archê, finitude, and community in Aristophanes -- Mothers, powerlessness, and intergenerational agency in Euripides -- Freedom, responsibility, and transgenerational orientation in Aeschylus -- Art, space, and possibilities for intergenerational justice in our time.

Students of the Orestes are fortunate to have two excellent commentaries at their disposal, by C. W. Willink and M. L. West . Neither will help them to understand this line, which is ‘the only allusion to Ganymede's horsemanship’ , because ‘no story of riding by Ganymede is known’ . But we are repeatedly reminded that the scene with the Phrygian has far fewer affinities with tragedy than with comedy, and εριπιδαριστοφαíζεται Comedy provides the clue, specifically at Ar. Vesp. 50If. (...) and Lys. 676ff. The reference is to the variety of equestrianism for which Ganymede is far from unknown . For Innoavvr) here describes a σχμα ρωτικóν and the line means Ganymedes concubinus, Iovis supini inguini insidens et equitans, sc. inter causas fuit malorum propter Iunonis invidiam Troianis immissorum. (shrink)

In Umberto Eco’s classic novel The Name of the Rose, we are introduced to a decidedly Platonic fear of laughter. According to the blind librarian Jorge de Burgos, “[l]aughter is weakness, corruption, the foolishness of our flesh. It is the peasant’s entertainment, the drunkard’s license;... laughter remains base, a defense for the simple, a mystery desecrated for the plebeians.”1 Laughter could not accompany insight or clarity or revelation. By destroying the last known copy of the second part of Aristotle’s Poetics, (...) which delves into comedy after the already-familiar investigation of tragedy, de Burgos hopes to undermine any argument that claims to find significance in comic content. Indeed, the central plot of... (shrink)

A partir de la afirmación de S. Critchley de que el psicoanálisis es la prolongación, profundización y complicación de lo que él llama paradigma trágico-heroico , se trata de precisar que lo trágico es lo que hace inseparables la teoría y la experiencia psicoanalítica de la risa y los fenómenos ligados a ella. Esto, en general, ha sido insuficientemente indagado. Siguiendo estos argumentos, se presentan algunas observaciones en torno a esa especie de exhortación “volver a las cosas mismas”, tan afín (...) al método freudiano, al “uso” de lo trágico-heroico en Lacan, al concepto de Cosa al aporte de Freud al humor . Por otra parte, y en completa relación con lo anterior, se destacan algunos señalamientos lacanianos que ubican al “cuerpo” como central en la experiencia de lo cómico. Y por último, se examina la contraposición Bergson - Freud - Lacan en torno a la risa, lo mecánico y el lenguaje. (shrink)

While it has perhaps always accompanied philosophical thought – one immediately thinks of Plato’s Dialogues – the problem of the communication of that thought, and therefore of its capacity to be taught, has acquired a new insistence in the work of post-Kantian thinkers. As evidence of this one could cite Fichte’s repeated efforts to formulate a definitive version of his Wissenschaftslehre, the model of the Bildungsroman that Hegel adopts for his Phenomenology of Spirit, Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous works, Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, (...) and Heidegger’s uncompleted Being and Time. Certainly each of these thinkers, as well as their projects, are quite distinct from the others, but their works are also signposts. It is not a question here of reducing the puzzles and difficulties of these works to some single element, some trace of a philosophical zeitgeist. Rather, it is enough to indicate this preoccupation with the problem of the communicability of thinking in order to raise the question of the modality of such a communication. How has thinking come to be so fundamentally troubled by its own expression? That Kant’s Critical philosophy has precipitated this preoccupation ought to come as no surprise, for it was Kant, most famously in the Critique of Pure Reason, who sought to definitively set the limits of philosophical thinking. In doing so, however, Kant is unable to remain utterly silent about what he himself sets outside the bounds of meaningful thought and speech: things-in-themselves. The mere fact that this meaningless element is an essential component of Kant’s philosophical exposition is an indication of the paradoxical logic of the limit: to postulate a limit is simultaneously to set out its obverse side. In Kant’s case, then, the demarcation of what can be thought carries with it the implicit thinking of what is ruled out of bounds for thought. Beginning with Fichte, the philosophical project of Kant’s successors and inheritors is then largely determined by an effort to incorporate or at least accommodate this alien element within thinking. The initial phase of this effort is marked by a tragic motif, a conjoining of thought with the experience of loss and suffering that is characteristic of Romanticism, that culminates in the dialectic of Hegel’s Absolute Knowing. In Absolute Knowing, thought has not vanquished its limitations, it has instead discovered the resources with which it can perpetually surmount them. This first phase is followed by a reaction or response to this seeming completion and overcoming of the Kantian limitation. Now, the tragic movement of thought comes to be understood as itself limited, and necessarily so according to the logic of the limit that imposes itself upon every gesture of closure. Tragedy thereby gives way to comedy insofar as the limitation that is incorporated as an obstacle to be overcome by tragic thought is shown to be the external condition of that very thought. Finally, if the comic is the fate of the limitations of tragedy, the thought of comedy itself demands a third mode of thinking, one capable of something more than the mere reiteration of the limit between comedy and tragedy that troubles them both. This third form of expression is parody, an expression appropriate to a thinking that repeats and completes the threefold movement of tragic thought while, in this very repetition, creating a limitless domain of thoughtful expression. (shrink)