This article focuses on two problems associated with tragedy. One ancient: what is it that draws us to the dramatic presentation of events of terrible suffering and loss? And one modern: namely, that while tragedies are still performed and appreciated, little new tragedy is being written. It will be argued in relation to the second problem that the vitality of tragedy as a dramatic form requires a less rigid approach to what might be considered tragic. And in relation to the (...) first problem it will be argued that this more expansive conception of tragedy will allow an understanding of the ‘pay-off’ of tragedy in a way that draws both on the tradition that focuses on tragedy as cathartic therapeutic, and on the tradition that sees it as a thought laboratory that allows ethical dilemmas to be posed and explored from different perspectives. This argument constitutes a two-fold dialectical synthesis and the effect of this is to facilitate an understanding of tragedy as establishing a ‘critical distance’ that sets the scene for the possibility of thinking. (shrink)

The sublime in classical aesthetics arrived at a famous formulation with Kant as a subjective quality more elevated than beauty, linked to commotion and respect followed by reaffirmation. However, a new interpretation of the Schopenhauerian sublime is necessary in its transforming appreciation of the importance of this feeling as a psychological state, which is not yet metaphysical as usually understood, when dealing with struggling situations without resolution. Here the focus will be on a variety of the sonorous sublime in contemporary (...) music, which finds resonances with Schopenhauer’s sublime: Witold Lutoslawski’s Three Poems of Henri Michaux for mixed chorus and orchestra focuses on unpredictability and form-contrariness, “picturing” surrealist texts of uncertainty in Pensées, violence in Le Grand Combat, and resignation in Repos dans Malheur. (shrink)

For Reid perception, broadly speaking, was a complex of two very different mental states. Calling such views dual component theory, A. D. Smith questions whether any such theory, and whether Reid's version in particular, is a viable theory of perception. The aim of this paper is to defend Reidian Dual Component Theory from Smith's critique. Answering Smith's critique reveals the depth and resilience of Reid's approach to perception, highlighting specifically the continued interest of his thought about the relationship between sensation (...) and perception, the nature of illusion, the immediacy of perception, and the content of perceptual belief. (shrink)

This article sets out to offer a new reconceptualisation of the common good as the mechanism providing the temporal coordinates for revolutionary politics. The first section investigates the pairing of commonality and goodness, revealing its nature as a synthesis of apparently irreconcilable opposites. The second section examines how this irreconcilability is overcome, advancing the argument that to heal the divide, a double movement of definition and concealment is necessary, whereby the process of definition of what constitutes the common good is (...) accompanied by an expropriation, or hollowing out, of meaning. The third section offers a proposal for overcoming this epistemological impasse about the nature of the common good, by contrasting chronos and kairós, chronological time and what in English can be translated as ‘opportune time’, and offering kairós as the chance to create, within the fissures of the totalitarianism of chronological time, the timescape for revolutionary politics. This proposal is carried on in the second part of this article, starting with ‘Chronos and Kairós’ section, where the concept of kairós is expanded upon and coupled with the Epicurean and Lucretian idea of the clinamen, the swerve of the atoms that introduces the element of chance against Democritean determinism. With the support of Antonio Negri’s reading of kairós and clinamen, the article argues in ‘Alma Venus: Love, Desire and Revolution’ section that these two concepts provide the spatial and temporal coordinates for revolutionary politics, in tension and critical engagement with Ackerman’s idea of constitutional moments, to conclude in ‘Conclusions: Kairós and Revolutionary Politics’ section, that the common good is to be defined as that which takes place and is identified/identifiable within these coordinates. (shrink)