TRAGEDY, THE GREEKS AND US

'The oldest extant piece of theatre that we possess, Aeschylus's The Persians, from 472BCE, depicts the defeated enemy not with triumph but with sympathy, and with an anticipation of the possible humiliation that might face the Athenians should they repeat the hybris of the Persians by invading Greece and desecrating the altars of the enemy's gods.' Simon Critchley explores tragedy in the theatre and its revelatory and transformative power, probing the dazzling words and tempestuous emotions in the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and above all Euripides' Trojan Women and Aeschylus' Oresteia. He provides substantial introductory material on tragedy and ancient philosophy in a genuinely invigorating text which guides us through layers of myth, reason, history and their interpretation. The Ancient Greeks hold a mirror up to us in which we see all the desolation and delusion of our lives, but also the terrifying beauty and intensity of existence. The modern philosopher encourages us to go back to theatre and to the stage of our lives in today's world of conflict and troubling emotion, where private and public lives collide and collapse. Today is a world where morality is ambiguous, and the powerful humiliate and destroy the powerless, a world of rage, grief and war where sugar-coated words serve as a cover for clandestine operations of violence. 322pp.