An interview with the philosopher Howard Caygill, primarily concerning his book 'Resistance', conducted in December 2013.

Democracy and tragedy captured a delicate poise in ancient Athens. While many today perceive democracy as a finite, unquestionable and almost procedural form of governance that glorifies equality and liberty for their own sake, the Athenians saw it as so much more. Beyond the burgeoning equality and liberty, which were but fronts for a deeper goal, finitude, unimpeachability and procedural norms were constantly contradicted by boundlessness, subversion and disarray. In such a world, where certainty and immortality were luxuries beyond the (...) reach of humankind, tragedy gave comfort and inspired greatness. Before the disciplinary segregation and the delimiting of the poetic and artistic, tragic art dramatized the paradox of existence in a most political manner. The purpose of this paper is to explicitly highlight the crucial links that existed between democracy and tragedy during their formative years in ancient Athens. What was it about democracy that necessarily incited and depended upon the ascendency of tragedy during the time of the Athenian city-state? And why and how did a peculiar institution such as Athenian tragedy play so central a role in the democratic polis of Athens? (shrink)

Resumo No centro de seu pensamento político, Nietzsche incentiva à busca pela perfeição dos indivíduos. É a disputa pelo significado do perfeccionismo do pensamento de Nietzsche por diferentes correntes o objetivo deste artigo. Rawls faz uma leitura de um perfeccionismo nietzschiano que é elitista, anti-igualitário e ligado a regimes aristocráticos. Essa foi uma leitura predominante do pensador. Mas, nos últimos 25 anos, surgiram outras interpretações para a busca pela perfeição nietzschiana. Uma defende um perfeccionismo moral no pensamento do autor, que (...) seria igualitário e compatível com o ambiente democrático. Outra, mais recente, argumenta em prol de um perfeccionismo agonístico, visando a perpétua luta para superação de si mesmo como fundamental para o ambiente democrático.At the center of his political thinking, Nietzsche encourages the quest for the perfection of individuals. It is the dispute for the meaning of perfectionism of Nietzsche's thought by different currents the purpose of this article. Rawls reads a Nietzschean perfectionism that is elitist, anti-egalitarian, and bound up with aristocratic regimes. This was a prevalent reading of the thinker. But in the last 25 years, other interpretations have emerged for the quest for Nietzschean perfection. One defends a moral perfectionism in the author's thought, which would be egalitarian and compatible with the democratic environment. Another, more recent, argues for an agonistic perfectionism, aiming at the perpetual struggle to overcome itself as fundamental to the democratic environment. (shrink)

I discuss the possibility of overcoming domination by differentiating between two different economical approaches to the animality of the human being which correspond to the contrasting ways of politicizing life in culture and in civilization. While the economy of cilization representes an exploitative approach to animality, whose aims is the self-preservation of the group at the cost of normalizing the individual, the economy of culture stands for a nonexploitative approach to animality directed towards the pluralization of inherently singular forms of (...) life. An analysis of these economies shows that culture cannot be attained through a politics of domination and exploitation. (shrink)