Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the revised edition
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Chapter 1 Luck and ethics
- Part I Tragedy: fragility and ambition
- Chapter 2 Aeschylus and practical conflict
- Chapter 3 Sophocles' Antigone: conflict, vision, and simplification
- Conclusion to Part I
- Part II Plato: goodness without fragility?
- Part III Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life
- Notes
- Bibliography
- General index
- Index of passages
Conclusion to Part I
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the revised edition
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Chapter 1 Luck and ethics
- Part I Tragedy: fragility and ambition
- Chapter 2 Aeschylus and practical conflict
- Chapter 3 Sophocles' Antigone: conflict, vision, and simplification
- Conclusion to Part I
- Part II Plato: goodness without fragility?
- Part III Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life
- Notes
- Bibliography
- General index
- Index of passages
Summary
Our discussions of tragedy so far have started from our second question, about the plurality of the values and the possibility of conflict among them. This has led, in turn, to some discussion of our first question, about the vulnerability of certain values taken singly, and also of our third, about the disrupting power of the passions. For it turns out that some very vulnerable single values are also dangerous grounds of conflict and occasions for passional upheaval; and stratagems for eliminating conflict have also rendered each of these more stable in its own right. (These connections among the problems will be further elaborated in the chapters that follow: especially Chapter 4, pp. 116–17; Chapter 5, §v; Chapter 6, pp. 181 and 196–7; and Chapter 7, p. 221.) It might, however, seem more symmetrical and systematic if, at this point, we devoted an entire chapter to tragedy's perception of the vulnerability of individual values, such as love, friendship, and political commitment. We shall not do this here, for two reasons. First, Chapter 13 is just such a reading of a (Euripidean) tragedy: it asks about the fragility of a good human life through its commitment to love and to social values. This chapter can be read at this point rather than later by any reader interested in pursuing the issues in chronological sequence. Its argument in no way relies on later material.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Fragility of GoodnessLuck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, pp. 83 - 84Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001