Distinguished professor, philosopher, and Onassis Foundation Board of Directors Member Simon Critchley presents his latest book, issued by Patakis Publishers
"Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us" seeks to address where we are today, taking a careful look through the lens that is ancient Greek tragedy. Because tragedy reminds us of everything we seek to evade: death, our contradictions, and how insurmountably interdependent we all are.
“Frank, personal readings of hallowed plots, including Euripides’ Trojan Women and Aeschylus’ Oresteia.”
Photo: Andreas Simopoulos
We might think we are through with the past, but the past isn’t through with us. Tragedy permits us to come face to face with the things we don’t want to know about ourselves, but which still make us who we are. The book demolishes our common misconceptions about the poets, dramatists and philosophers of Ancient Greece – then presents these writers to us in an unfamiliar and original light. It is equally provocative and timely when it comes to exploring how tragedy continues to articulate the conflicts and contradictions of the world we live in.
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“The time is out of joint and something is rotten in the states we inhabit. We can smell it. Our countries are split, our houses are divided and the fragile web of family and friendship withers under the black sun of big-tech. Everything that passed as learning seems to have reached boiling point. We simmer and feel the heat, wondering what can be done.
This is not a time for consolation prizes and the fatuous banalities of the self-help industry and pop philosophy. Philosophy, as it is usually understood, is part of the problem, not part of the solution. By contrast, this book argues that if we want to understand ourselves better, then we have to go back to theatre, to the stage of our lives. What tragedy allows us to glimpse, in its harsh and unforgiving glare, is the burning core of our aliveness. If we give ourselves the chance to look at tragedy, we might see further and more clearly.” – Simon Critchley
“A valuable corrective… in [a] brash, freewheeling style…. Lively. …Critchley's inquiry offers many surprises, but most unexpected is his interest in the Greek sophists.”
Simon Critchley is Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York. His many books include Very Little … Almost Nothing (1997), Infinitely Demanding (2007, published in Greek translation in 2012), The Book of Dead Philosophers (2009, published in Greek translation in 2019) and The Faith of the Faithless (2012). His more recent works include the novella Memory Theatre, the essay Notes on Suicide (published in Greek translation in 2018), analyses of David Bowie and football, and the podcast Apply-Degger (Onassis Foundation, 2020) on Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time. His latest books are Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us (Pantheon, 2019) and Bald (Yale, 2021). He was series moderator of “The Stone”, a philosophy column in The New York Times, and co-editor of The Stone Reader (2016). He is an Onassis Foundation Board of Directors Member, and one half of the dark music duo Critchley & Simmons.
