Even if there is no kind of value that is loftier than Werther's lover, always overriding and pure, it still might be true that there is some way of life that is better than any other at integrating the many things that give a good life its worth. The view that there is can be called best life pluralism. What follows is an investigation of the strengths of this view, including its advantages over the moralistic versions of supreme value pluralism, for an account of tragedy. At stake is the issue of whether a certain kind of project can succeed, namely, the project envisioned by Martha Nussbaum and many others of finding an ethic in the Classical Greek tradition that can serve as a model for modern persons in liberal democracies. I will argue that it cannot succeed without moving tragic concepts more to the center of ethical thought than its optimism can allow. Here the issue will be what is lost in even the best of lives.