As an academic, I spend a lot of my time preparing for class or writing. However, I often develop ideas that don't fit the my current course or project. I will think to myself, "That's an interesting idea. I'll have to return to it later". Then, I never do. I created this blog to catalogue those ideas.

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Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

I recently received my Ph.D. in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy at the University of Toronto. I have a wife named Kathy and two children, Thomas and Mary.

August 31, 2005

Tragic Flaws

Two summers ago, I read all of Greek tragedy for my comprehensive exams. Aside from making me incredibly depressed for a month, I realised something quite interesting: just about everything Aristotle says about tragic heroes is wrong. Aristotle had postulated the principle of the tragic flaw in tragedy. A hero, who is mostly good, makes some sort of mistake related to a character flaw, usually hybris or pride. However, from what I read, I realised that tragic heroes are almost never brought down by their flaws or by hybris. In fact, in most cases, the protagonist is actually destroyed by his or her virtues. In puzzling over this, I realised that Aristotle is, in fact, not trying to explain exactly what is happening in tragedy but what should be happening. He is answering a very specific challenge to the very existence of tragedy presented by Plato in the Republic Book III. Plato had argued that tragedy corrupted the audience. Aristotle's development of the tragic flaw is a response to this challenge.

I will begin with an example. Even Oedipus Rex, the tragedy on which Aristotle focuses, does not seem to conform to Aristotle's model. Oedipus's downfall is the result of one of his own virtues, his keen intellect and wish to investigate. Oedipus had become king of Thebes by answering the riddle of the Sphinx. His success in becoming king of Thebes and his downfall in discovering his own origins are the result of the same character trait. Aristotle identifies this trait with hybris (as does the character Tiresias in the play itself), however, there is nothing clearly proud in Oedipus's desire to discover the origin of the plague in Thebes. Oedipus is referred to literally dozens of times in the play as wishing to "see" in various forms of the verb. This curiosity and intellect is not a vice. Yet it is this curiosity and intellect that destroys him, not hubris, and when he realises this, he takes out his own eyes so as never to see again.

Oedipus Rex was the example of a tragic flaw Aristotle himself used and even this example is not very clear. It is better to look at the Poetics as a response to a challenge to tragedy by Plato. Plato charges that tragedy corrupts people by showing good people being crushed. This is especially true in tragedy where they are often crushed because they are good. This teaches the audience that they should not bother being good. If they are good, it will not benefit them, and may in fact destroy them. An example of this would be Antigone, in which Antigone's love for her family and for the gods leads to her death and the death of her betrothed. This is an intractable problem for tragedy. If one wants to evoke fear and pity, one must a) show bad people whom we should not pity being crushed, or b) show good people who should not be crushed being crushed. Either of these corrupts the audience. a) corrupts them by causing them to identify with bad characters, and b) corrupts them by teaching them goodness is of no benefit.

Aristotle's solution, then, is the "tragic flaw". In the tragic flaw a character is mostly good, but has a specific flaw that destroys him or her. This provides an escape from Plato's criticism. The hero is still greater than most of the audience members. Therefore, the audience can and should feel pity for the hero on his or her downfall. However, the hero has a flaw that causes the hero to fail. Therefore, the audience feels an appropriate moral fear that badness leads to bad results. In this way, Aristotle has threaded the dilemma raised by Plato. The audience may feel both pity and fear, and neither of them will be corrupting. On the contrary, the emotions will help people sympathise with heroes better than themselves while fearing the negative consequences of wickedness.

As such, Aristotle's analysis in the Poetics is not an accurate description of what had happened in tragedy up to that point. Rather, it is a vision of how tragedy ought to function, a vision that has been largely successful through the influence of the Poetics. He is responding specifically to a charge by Plato in the Republic, that tragedy necessarily evokes either inappropriate pity or fear. Instead, Aristotle argues that tragedy can be morally edifying as well as pleasurable.

10 Comments:

Blogger hotsirenita said...

I have to disagree about Oedipus. It was not his intellect and curiosity that led him to his fall, but fate. What happened was already prophesized, so one could argue that it could simply not be avoided. Remember that his parents did give him up in order to avoid the terrible fate, and he himself set off away from his home in fear of the prophecy given to him by the Delphic oracle.
In the end, Jocasta committed suicide and Oedipus blinded himself, because of the revelation of what had really happened (which could perhaps be labelled as υβρις?).

10:51 PM, August 31, 2005  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

'air of winter' draws an interesting distinction between prudential reasoning and genuinely moral reasoning; this would make a good topic for a future essay at The Lyceum. My own view is that it is a false distinction: moral reasoning is simply prudential.

The moral impulse is simply that impulse which teaches us to 'pursue the good and avoid evil'. When we shy away from evil for fear of the consequences, that is truly moral. When we pursue the good in order to obtain the reward, that too is truly moral. Yet in both cases we are simply acting prudently.

I agree, however, that there appears to be something sub-par about prudence - it connotes a kind of calculatedness that seems at odds with genuine goodness. The truly good person would easily and naturally do the good and avoid evil, without pausing in deliberation or perplexity, and without reasoning discursively to the prudent conclusion. But they would still be acting prudently!

11:28 PM, August 31, 2005  
Blogger Matt McGrath said...

In this particular case, it's not prudence at all, or even an act of morality, but rather conditioning in the Pavlovian sense.

There is nothing voluntary in it, at least not in the minds of Aristotle's envisaged audiences.

7:08 PM, September 01, 2005  
Blogger Daniel said...

Thank you for the responses, everyone.

I'm interested in the debate between Air of Winter and Dr. Burrell. I wrote a post a few weeks ago called Two Kinds of Selfishness that deals with two uses of the term "selfish" that correspond roughly to how "prudent" is being used. I'd like to hear more about what the "prudential" motive is. Is it another source of motivation above, say, thirst?

Thank you for your well constructed reply, Shulamite. I left out most of those things due to length restrictions (I try to keep all these essays under a thousand words), but they are worth noting.

One point I do need to disagree with you on, though, is whether or not intellectual curiosity should be compared to sexual appetite. Having a moderate and appropriate amount of an appetite is only relevant to the moral virtues or aretai ethikai. The mean is irrelevant to the intellectual virtues or aretai dianoetikai.

4:48 PM, September 02, 2005  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I agree somewhat with what Shulamite said. The tragic flaw need not be a vice. I have not read either Plato's or Aristotle's comments on the subject, but might it be the case that the tragic flaw consists in taking one personality characteristic TOO FAR, as opposed to simply having that characteristic?

12:29 PM, October 04, 2005  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

maybe people would be able to take this most more seriously if you didn't spell realized with an "s"

7:45 PM, December 18, 2007  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Anonymous", its an internet blogs about the whims of a Ph.d student. Lay off.

Maybe I'd be able to take you more seriously if you tried capitalizing the words you use to begin your sentences. And if "most more" of your tenses agreed. You might want to watch your grammar a little more closely when leaving comments about other peoples spelling.

Just a thought
--Jake

9:44 PM, December 19, 2007  
Blogger Alex said...

What a great post! I was just searching around for "tragic flaw" in thinking about Madame Bovary, because I had exactly your thought: what inevitably leads to Emma's downfall isn't a flaw, but a virtue. (Well, sortof.) It's her idealism that kills her: her unshakable belief in a pure, neverending, profound love.

1:45 PM, June 29, 2011  
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