Tragedy and Citizenship Conflict, Reconciliation, and Democracy from Haemon to Hegel
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Derek W. M. Barker - Author
Price: $60.00 Hardcover - 198 pages
Release Date: November 2008
ISBN10: N/A ISBN13: 978-0-7914-7629-1
Price: $23.95 Paperback - 198 pages
Release Date: July 2009
ISBN10: N/A ISBN13: 978-0-7914-7630-7
Price: $23.95 Electronic - 198 pages
Release Date: November 2008
ISBN10: N/A ISBN13: 978-0-7914-7740-3
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Summary
A study of attitudes toward tragedy in both democratic and nondemocratic political theory.
Tragedy and Citizenship provides a wide-ranging exploration of attitudes toward tragedy and their implications for politics. Derek W. M. Barker reads the history of political thought as a contest between the tragic view of politics that accepts conflict and uncertainty, and an optimistic perspective that sees conflict as self-dissolving. Drawing on Aristotle’s political thought, alongside a novel reading of the Antigone that centers on Haemon, its most neglected character, Barker provides contemporary democratic theory with a theory of tragedy. He sees Hegel’s philosophy of reconciliation as a critical turning point that results in the elimination of citizenship. By linking Hegel’s failure to address the tragic dimensions of politics to Richard Rorty, John Rawls, and Judith Butler, Barkeroffers a major reassessment of contemporary political theory and a fresh perspective on the most urgent challenges facing democratic politics.
“In Tragedy and Citizenship, Derek Barker undertakes a wide-ranging journey in political theory from ancient Greek theatre to contemporary American postmodernism. He takes seriously the view that tragedy (i.e., conflict, suffering, imperfect knowledge) is an integral part of the human condition that requires some kind of response.” — Polis
“In this engaging, insightful study, Barker argues that tragic drama in democratic Athens sought to teach citizens about the inevitability of conflict and the danger of flawed responses to it.” — CHOICE
Derek W. M. Barker is a program officer at the Kettering Foundation.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Conflict, Reconciliation, and Citizenship
1. Listening to Haemon: Citizenship in the Antigone
2. Pity, Fear, and Citizenship: The Politics of Aristotle’s Poetics
3. Hegel and the Politics of Reconciliation
4. Redescription as Reconciliation: Richard Rorty
5. John Rawls and Hegelian Political Philosophy
6. Judith Butler’s Postmodern Antigone
Conclusion: Tragedy, Citizenship, and the Human
Condition
