Page 31 - GALIET THE HEROIC SPECTACLE OF MORALS: Hume IV

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woke up to a world eager for social novelties, and it gleefully set out to conquer a freedom that no one could identify and a progress that no one had defined.”103
That’s why we Greeks were never fond of infinitude and always opted in our entire corpus of philosophy for finitude’s perfection.
But going back to catharsis, how did you come up with this notion? I discovered it when I purgated with music.104
Music? And not tragedy?
Yes, music. I suppose I should have thought of the tragic hero. I often found that the tragic hero is neither eminently good nor just, but that his misfortune is brought by error or frailty [hammartia], not vice or depravity.105 If every life is akin a tragic plot, then it has elements of complexity, cause and effect, surprise, reversal. Certainly, we all feel these including Περιπετεια, when an action reverts to its opposite whether from probability or necessity. And also, it has elements of recognition or αναγνορισις. That supreme aha moment! When knowledge of a material fact supplants ignorance. So it is the best recognition, coinciding with reversal that will cause pity or fear. Never sympathy, Hume, never! Only misfortune and recognition! Upon this, good or bad fortune will depend.
Maybe I need to qualify my definition of spectator in my theory. Maybe I ought to call them ‘weak spectators:’ those that are eager to view works rhymed for profit.
That may be wise, Hume. But I do agree with you that, indeed, events do unravel by necessary or probable sequence, not by Medea’s Deus Ex Machina!
Ì Nietzsche to Hume. I must ruminate: why does Aristotle exalt purgation? Why does he promote resignation against courageous acceptance of one’s destiny? Yes, that Amor Fati ever so proud of its own heroism. How ridiculous to view tragedy as purgation! But what could tragedy be then? A tonic? An elixir? Eureka! Why not a tonic drunk and loved by every strong time and by every strong character! Nice! Only then, these strong men can feel pain as pleasure. I want to be clear and understood on this, though. By this, I do not say that I prefer war to peace, or cruelty to generosity, or suffering to joy. What slander that would be! I don’t predicate Dionysus, but Apollo, did you really think
103 Pessoa, Fernando. The Book of Disquietude. Trans. Richard Zenith. Manchester: Carcanet Press, 1996. 105.
104 Aristotle. Politics. 13341 b 32-1342 b 17. Aristotle. The Basic Works of Aristotle. Politics. Ed. Richard McKeon. New York: The Modern Library, 2001.
105 Aristotle. Poetics. Section 13.
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