The current situation of the tragic
Essay published by UNED Edition in 2006 under the formal title, “Ethics of today´s truths. Homage to Gianni Vattimo”. This essay consists of two big thematic sections:
- ACTION AND ORIGIN IN TRAGEDY. The occidental theater up to today has its origin in the tragedy that is configured around the concept of “action”, and Aristotle theorizes it for the first time in his well-known “Poetic”. But this key concept does not only inaugurate a theatrical genre, it also forms a key piece in the entire posterior philosophical construction of Philosophy, which is also invented during that time.
- CATHARSIS: ACTION, PASSION OR SUBMISSION? The “religious” origin of tragedy surrounding Dionysian festivities soon becomes the fundamental “educational” element of the masses through a subtle instrument: “catharsis”. What is “education” for some is simply “propaganda” for others or modes of submission on behalf of power, as has been discussed throughout history until actuality with a Bertolt Brecht or an Augusto Boal. In any case, already since Greece, tragedy has turned into the genre par excellence of the dictatorships that finance it; while comedy, on the other hand, has turned into the genre of the rebellion against all powers, through humor and has thus been persecuted by those aforementioned powers.
- “COMEDY VERSUS PHILOSOPHY AND MONOTHEISM”, the next book to be published, will explain in depth, the lengthy battle of comedy, of laughter, against dominant censorships: that of the monotheism which condemns it as “irreverent” and “dissolute” for putting into question the divine, the human and the social; and the battle of philosophy, which has left it separate from its own official history so as to not consider it sufficiently “serious” and “profound”.
That is why, since Christianity’s rise to power, the sanctimonious is always tragedy and it is confirmed since the XIX century until today, with the inrush of socialism and communism, which continues to look down upon comedy. Because in short, socialism and communism do not cease to be secular Christianity.
Translated by Natalia Perellón
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