The passion of infinity : Kierkegaard, Aristotle and the rebirth of tragedy / Daniel Greenspan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Greenspan, Daniel.

Series:

Kierkegaard Studies. Monograph Series

Kierkegaard studies. Monograph series, 1434-2952 ; 19

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Tragedy.

Kierkegaard, Sren, 1813-1855.

Kierkegaard, Sren.

Aristotle.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (348 p.)

Place of Publication:

Berlin ; New York : Walter de Gruyter, c2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The Passion of Infinity generates a historical narrative surrounding the concept of the irrational as a threat which rational culture has made a series of attempts to understand and relieve. It begins with a reading of Sophocles' Oedipus as the paradigmatic figure of a reason that, having transgressed its mortal limit, becomes catastrophically reversed. It then moves through Aristotle's ethics, psychology and theory of tragedy, which redefine reason's collapses in moral-psychological rather than religious terms. By changing the way in which the irrational is conceived, and the nature of its relation to reason, Aristotle eliminates the concept of an irrationality which reason cannot in principle dissolve. The book culminates in an extensive reading of Kierkegaard's pseudonyms, who, in a critical retrieval of both Greek tragedy and Aristotle, prescribe their apparently pathological age a paradoxical task: develop a finite form of subjectivity willing to undergo an unthinkable thought - allow the transcendence of a god to enter into the mind as well as the marrow, to make a tragic appearance in which a limit to the immanence of human reason can again be established.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I Ancient Greece

Chapter 1. Reason and the Irrational: Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus

Chapter 2. Literature and Moral Psychology: From Homer to Sophocles

Chapter 3. Aristotle's Poetics: Oedipus and the Problem of Tragedy

Chapter 4. Psuche Redux: Philosophy and the New Psychology

Chapter 5. Psychologizing Oedipus: Reason and Unreason in Aristotle's Ethics

Part II Golden Age Denmark

Chapter 6. Tragedy as Historical Idea: Either/Or's "Ancient Drama Reflected in the Modern"

Chapter 7. Stages on Life's Way: Hamartia after Modernity

Chapter 8. Fear and Trembling: Tragedy, Comedy and the Heroism of Abraham

Chapter 9. The Concept of Anxiety: Fate and the Tragic Logos of Second Ethics

Chapter 10. Moral Psychology in the Pseudonyms, Search for a Method

Chapter 11. Ethics Contra Ethics: Climacus on Eternal Happiness and Tragic Virtue

Chapter 12. Kierkegaard and the Tragedy of Authorship

Backmatter

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [317]-326) and index.

ISBN:

9786613397256

9781283397254

1283397250

9783110211177

3110211173

OCLC:

476206312