Kierkegaard and the rebirth of tragedy: Philosophy, poetry and the problem of the irrational (with constant reference to Aristotle and Sophocles)
by Greenspan, Daniel Joshua, Ph.D., VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY, 2006, 365 pages; 3239083

Abstract:

My dissertation, Kierkegaard and the Rebirth of Tragedy, explores Kierkegaard's return as both philosopher and religious poet to the ancient moral problem of reason's relationship to the irrational, a practical matter of cultivating virtue in both individual souls and the cities they compose. Kierkegaard, I illustrate, responding to a moral crisis in the second enlightenment, returns to the first, devising an interpretation of this problematic relation and a prescription that draw as much on the concepts developed by Greece's tragic poets as they do the moral-psychology of the philosophers supplanting them. This ancient narrative, dramatically-philosophically augmented and transformed by Kierkegaard in the play of his pseudonymous cast, turns, I claim, on two exemplars of virtue: Sophocles' Oedipus and Aristotle's phronimos. Kierkegaard's return to tragedy, his philosophical embrace of the irrationality of tragedy's daimones, leads, I conclude, to a radically different understanding and valuation of both reason, the passions, and their virtuous relation in the philosopher's care of the soul.

 
AdviserJohn D. Caputo
SchoolVILLANOVA UNIVERSITY
SourceDAI/A 67-10, p. , Mar 2007
Source TypeDissertation
SubjectsReligion; Literature; Philosophy
Publication Number3239083
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