An enlarged way of thinking: tragedy, philosophy and Kant’s Critique of judgment

摘要

This thesis examines the problematic of tragedy with the aim of identifying its significance in contemporary philosophy. Whilst there is a renewed interest in tragedy in contemporary philosophy, it has focused mostly on the ‘tragic idea’ or on the tragedies themselves, which not only relegates the contemporary discourse on tragedy to the history of ideas, but, more significantly, occludes the possibility of new forms of tragedy. In contrast, this thesis employs the paradigm of the ‘enlarged way of thinking’ (erweiterten Denkungsart) from Kant’s Critique of Judgment to consider tragedy as a major contribution to the goal of expanding the scope of philosophy.udIn Part I, this thesis argues that Kant’s call for an enlarged way of thinking represents a response to the failure of philosophy to reconcile nature and freedom, transforming the task of philosophy from outlining the conditions for objective knowledge to the task of mutual communicability. In Part II it examines the role of tragedy in the work of G. W. F. Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger and Cornelius Castoriadis. It is argued that, apart from Nietzsche’s bifurcation of philosophy and tragedy, the philosophical discourse on tragedy does not so much depart from Kant as build from his example of responding to the failure of philosophy.udThis approach gives us reason to consider the growing interest in tragedy in contemporary philosophy not simply as a new instalment in the history of ideas but as the expression of a present crisis. The recent turn to tragedy will be surveyed in the final chapter to conclude that Kant’s enlarged way of thinking provides an exemplary procedure for both exploring this crisis and navigating a way through it, redirecting the goal of philosophy away from an exclusive focus on knowledge towards mutual communicability.