DNF 45%

I was so excited for this book and it was just way too complex and not what I was expecting at all

Simon Critchley has a very interesting, ironic, sardonic, and fun writing voice. He has his own way of structuring sentences, with a wry interest in pointing out something he finds interesting, humorous, or ironic in things, and you get this just from the way his sentences run.

This is a great look at the Greek tragedies - Euripdes, Aristophanes, Sophocles, etc. - and primarily through the lens/view of Plato and Aristotle. Simon Critchley is a very philosophy minded writer, so its no surprise that he views the tragedies through philosophical issues, a philosophical lens, etc.

For anyone who's read the tragedies, this makes a fun, interesting, and educating companion piece to the extant works that we have. ( )

Tragedy presents a world of conflict and troubling emotion, a world where private and public lives collide and collapse. A world where morality is ambiguous and the powerful humiliate and destroy the powerless. A world where justice always seems to be on both sides of a conflict and sugarcoated words serve as cover for clandestine operations of violence. A world rather like our own.

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. This is not a time for consolation prizes and the fatuous banalities of the self-help industry and pop philosophy.

Tragedy allows us to glimpse, in its harsh and unforgiving glare, the burning core of our aliveness. If we give ourselves the chance to look at tragedy, we might see further and more clearly ( )