The Athenian’s Rehabilitation of Tragedy

Abstract

This chapter asks why the Laws’ Athenian appears the invite the very thing that he teaches citizens to avoid. The city is threatened by rule that does not submit to divine law and by citizenship that insists on independent judgment, or so he claims. Yet he speaks of politics in ways that seem to flirt with these very perils. Why? I suggest that the answer lies in the Laws’ rehabilitation of tragedy. The Athenian famously describes Magnesia “the truest tragedy.” On his account, tragedy is the imitation of the best way of life, where that imitation exaggerates its own seriousness yet at the same time fills the soul with reverent awe. It is therefore of some interest that this definition should precisely correspond to the Athenian’s formula for the practically best regime. At its practical best, politics overstates the degree to which imitation of god can be accomplished by human beings, even as it paradoxically calls attention to how such imitation must fall short. The Athenian might emphasize the orderliness and providence of nature and speak of human vulnerability more obliquely than the traditional poets. But he does not foresee a politics that would dispense with the humble affects that tragedy summons up. Magnesia remains “tragic” in that its exaggerated seriousness militates against pride. The pretensions of its laws are intended to make citizens and office holders feel small and to look outside themselves for moral guidance. Magnesians would refrain from believing themselves capable of moral independence, lest they betray an impious insolence. It is such insolence that takes the place, in the Magnesian tragedy, of the oblivion of human vulnerability and divine mysteriousness traditionally dramatized by the tragic poets.