Abstract
Tragedy is one of the oldest conceptual lenses of Western culture. Indeed; it would not be an exaggeration to say that tragedy is constitutive of Western culture itself. Writing more than two millennia ago, Thucydides thought that tragedy was an appropriate lens through which to view international relations. We interrogate this assumption. Does tragedy offer a plausible framework for examining international relations? If so, in what ways can the concept of tragedy revealed in ancient Greek, Shakespearean, and later dramas inform and enrich our understanding of international relations today? And, perhaps most importantly, if the lens of tragedy does illuminate aspects of international relations for us, can this knowledge enhance our chances of avoiding or reducing tragic outcomes in the future? The contributors to this volume by no means agree on the answers to these questions. We do, however, agree that these are crucial points of enquiry.
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Notes
- 1.
This text was first published as: “Understanding Tragedy and Understanding International Relations,” co-authored with Toni Erskine, in Erskine and Lebow, Tragedy and International Relations, (London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2012), pp. 1–20. The permission to republish this chapter here was granted on 18 June 2015 by Claire Smith, Senior Rights Assistant, Nature Publishing Group & Palgrave Macmillan, London, UK.
- 2.
Thucydides, The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War (revised edition of the Richard Crawley translation), ed by Robert B. Strassler (New York: Free Press (1996)).
- 3.
For useful introductions to this genre, see the following: ‘Tragedy’, in M. Banham (ed.) (1995) Cambridge Guide to Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 1118–20; S. L. Feagin (1998) ‘Tragedy’, in E. Craig (ed.) Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (London: Routledge), vol. 9, pp. 447–52; M. Weitz (1967) ‘Tragedy’, in P. Edwards (ed.) The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (London: Collier-Macmillan), pp. 155–61; J. Drakakis and N. Conn Liebler (1998) ‘Introduction’, in J. Drakakis and N. Conn Liebler (eds) Tragedy (London: Longman), pp. 1–20; and J. Wallace (2007) The Cambridge Introduction to Tragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). For an introduction to this genre and its constitutive concepts in the specific context of international relations, see R. N. Lebow (2003) The Tagic Vision of Politics: Ethics, Interests and Orders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
- 4.
S. Booth (1983) King Lear, Macbeth, Indefinition and Tragedy (New Haven: Tale University Press), p. 81.
- 5.
Drakakis and Liebler (1998) ‘Introduction’, p. 3. For a more critical account of j the esteem given to these Aristotelian categories in analyses of tragedy, see Booth (1983) King Lear, Macbeth, Indefinition and Tragedy, p. 82: ‘we still use Aristotle’s dicta on tragedy in the way we use a source of truth that, like the revealed truth of the Bible, is not available to human beings first hand.
- 6.
Aristotle, Poetics, inj. Barnes (ed.) (1984) Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2; The Revised Oxford Translation (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 1447a 15–18. (With Aristotle we follow the standard numbering procedure, which refers back to Immanuel Bekker’s 1931 edition of the Greek text and consists of a page number, column and line. Thus, Poetics 1447a 15–18 refers to lines 15 to 18 of the first column of page 1447 of Bekker’s edition.).
- 7.
Aristotle, Poetics, 1449b 23–7.
- 8.
Aristotle, Poetics, 1452a 2–10; See also the discussion in Feagin (1998) ‘Tragedy’, p. 448.
- 9.
Wallace highlights both the ‘functional’ and ‘formal’ aspects of Aristotle s definition of tragedy along these lines in Wallace (2007) The Cambridge Introduction to Tragedy, p. 118.
- 10.
Aristotle, Poetics, 1452a 10-1452b 10. Aristotle defines both ‘simple tragedies and those that distinguish themselves as superior, ‘complex’ examples.
- 11.
Aristotle, Poetics, 1453a 1–20.
- 12.
We have put scare quotes around ‘wrong’ simply as a reminder of the complex understanding of outcomes as the result of both actions (and misjudgements) of agents and forces and circumstances beyond the control bf these agents. It would be misleading to present this conception of tragedy as involving the protagonist choosing a course of action that is clearly wrong over one that is unambiguously right. As Drakakis and Conn Liebler note, the drama would then be devoid of the Aristotelian understanding of dilemma and, instead, take on 'the shape of simple melodrama, pitting forces clearly identifiable as ‘good’ and ‘evil’ respectively against each other, dnd not tragedy’. Rather, ‘ hamartia, “missing the mark”, is understood not as an optional or avoidable “error” resulting from some inadequacy or “flaw” in the “character” of the protagonist but as something that happens in consequence of the complex situation represented in the drama’. See Drakakis and Liebler (1998) ‘Introduction’, p. 9. Mervyn Frost makes a similar point in Chapter 2 of this volume, pp. 21–43.
- 13.
Aristotle, Poetics, 1453a 1–5.
- 14.
J. -P. Vernant (1990) ‘Tensions and Ambiguities in Greek Tragedy’, in J. -P. Vernant and P. Vidal-Naquet (eds) Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece (New York: Zone Books), pp. 29–48.
- 15.
J. -P. Vernant (1972) ‘Greek Tragedy: Problems of Interpretation’, in R. Macksey and E. Donato (eds) The Structuralist Controversy: The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press), pp. 273–88, and Vernant (1990) ‘Tensions and Ambiguities in Greek Tragedy’; C. Segal (2001) Oedipus Tyrannus: Tragic Heroism and the Limits of Knowledge, 2nd edn (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 15–18, 20–2; S. Goldhill (1986) Reading Greek Tragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), and Goldhill (1990) The Great Dionysia and Civic Ideology’, in J. J. Winkler and R I. Zeitlin (eds) Nothing to Do with Dionysos?: Athenian Drama in Its Social Context (Princeton: Princeton University Press), pp. 97–129; J. J. Winkler (1990) ‘The Ephebes’ Song: Tragoidia and Polis’, in Winkler and Zeitlin (eds) Nothing to Do with Dionysos? pp. 20–62; F. I. Zeitlin (1986) Thebes: Theater of Self and Society in Athenian Drama’, in J. P. Euben (ed.) Greek Tragedy and Political Theory (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press), pp. 101–41; J. P Euben (1990) The Tragedy of Political Theory: The Road Not Taken (Princeton: Princeton University Press), pp. 50–9.
- 16.
Athena’s intervention saves Orestes in Aeschylus’ trilogy, putting an end to the feud that has all but destroyed the house of Atreus and making the city and its courts the proper; venue for dispute resolution. By contrast, Escalus’ intervention, which takes the form of Imposing the death penalty on dueling, compels Romeo to See Verona and sets in motion the chain of events that culminates in his arid Juliette’s suicides.
- 17.
C. Brown, ‘Tragedy, “Tragic Choices” and Contemporary International Political Theory’, Chapter 6, this volume, 75–85 (p. 75).
- 18.
A- C, Bradley ([1904] 2007) Shakespearean Tragedy, 4th edn (London: Palgrave Macmillan), p. xlviii.
- 19.
For this definition of tragedy, see Bradley ([1904] 2007) Shakespearean Tragedy, p. 9; for Bradley’s analysis of the role of fate in Shakespearean tragedy, see Bradley, pp. 16–20. It should be noted, however, that the degree to which Greek tragedy relies on fate, and the degree to which it allows for the influence of agency, are open to debate. We return to these questions in Chapter 14 and note that-although outcomes in Greek tragedies may seem preordained, the audience retains the impression that these outcomes also rely on the decisions and actions of individual agents.
- 20.
Lebow makes this point in In Search of Ourselves: The Politics and Ethics of Identity (forthcoming).
- 21.
It is interesting to note that Aristotle’s categories frequently seem very well-suited to Shakespearean as well as Greek tragedy. Not only does A. C. Bradley (implicitly) draw on Aristotelian concepts in his Shakespearean Tragedy, but Walter Kaufmann notes in Tragedy & Philosophy (New York: Anchor (1969)), p. 317, that ‘it is one of the great ironies of history that some of Aristotle’s ideas about tragedy seem to apply rather better to Shakespeare than to Aeschylus or Sophocles’.
- 22.
Hegel, Hegel's Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, trans. by T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press (1975)), vol. II, p. 1213.
- 23.
Wallace (2007) The Cambridge Introduction to Tragedy, p. 124.
- 24.
F. Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, trans. by Douglas Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press (2000)), p. vii. Benjamin Schupmann and Tracy Strong offer) valuable analyses of Nietzsche’s account of tragedy in Chapters 10 (pp. 129–143) and 11 (pp. 144–157) of this volume, respectively.
- 25.
A. Poole (1987) Tragedy: Shakespeare and the Greek Example (New York: Basil Blackwell), pp. 5, 7.
- 26.
Verdant (1990) ‘Tensions and Ambiguities in Greek Tragedy’, pp. 29–49, (pp. 32–3).
- 27.
We have been particularly influenced on this point by Vernant. See his (1990b) ‘The Historical Moment of Tragedy in Greece: Some of the Social and Psychological Conditions’, in Vernant and Vidal-Naquent (eds) Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece, pp. 23–8, and ‘Tensions and Ambiguities in Greek Tragedy’. In ‘Tensions and Ambiguities’, p. 33, Vernant observes that) ‘although tragedy, more than any other genre of literature … appears rooted in social reality, that does not mean that it is a reflection of it. It does not [reflect that reality but calls it into question’. For a similar argument that) ‘tragedy’s point … was the breaking of conventional boundaries,’ see J. P Euben, Chapter 7, this volume, pp. 86–96 (p. 92).
- 28.
Pooie (1987) Tragedy: Shakespeare and the Greek Example, p. 12.
- 29.
We have avoided the label ‘trilogy’ here simply because the plays were not written as such, but, rather, are what remain of three different sets of plays, written by Sophocles for three separate competitions.
- 30.
Sophocles did not compose these plays in chronological order. Rather, they were written in the order of Antigone, Oedipus Tyrarmos and Oedipus at Colonus.
- 31.
F. M. Comford (1907) Thucydides Mythistoricus (London: Arnold), pp. 176–82; G. Crane, Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity, pp. 241–6; T. Rood (1999) ‘Thucydides’ Persian Wars’, in C. Shuttleworth Kraus (ed.) The Limits of Hisipriography: Genre Narrative in Ancient Historical Texts (Leiden: Brill), pp. 141–68; Lebow (2003) The Tragic Vision of Politics, pp. 126–41.
- 32.
R. N. Lebow (2008) A Cultural Theory of International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), Ch. 9 for an analysis of the Bush administration’s motives.
- 33.
B. Woodward (2004) Plan of Attack (New York: Simon & Schuster); M. R. Gordon and B. E. Trainor (2006) Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq (New York: Pantheon); M. Isakoff and D. Com (2006) Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War (New York: Crown); T E. Ricks (2006) Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (New York: Penguin). Also, see the contributions to this volume by [James Mayall, Richard Beardsworth, and Tracy Strong, in Chapters 3 (pp. 44–52), 8 (pp. 97–111) and 11 (pp. 14–157) respectively.
- 34.
See, for example, H. Morgenthau (1958) Dilemmas of Politics (Chicago: Chicago University Press), R. Niebuhr (1938) Beyond Tragedy: Essays on the Christian Interpretation of History (London: Nisbet and Company), and H. 1 Butterfield (1931) The Whig Interpretation of History (London: Bell). As cited by Mervyn Frost in Chapter 1 of this volume, pp. 1–18; H. F. Gutbrod provides—an analysis of each theorist’s account of tragedy in (2001) Irony, Conflict, Dilemma: Three Tragic Situations in International Relations (University of London: unpublished dissertation). For a concise account of IR’s classical realism, with particular attention to its relationship with the notion of tragedy; See R. N. Lebow (2010) ‘Classical Realism’, in T. Dunne, M. Kurki, and S. Smith (eds) International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 58–76.
- 35.
See B. Orend (2006) The Morality of War (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press), pp. 154–7. ‘Normative IR theory’, ‘international political theory, and ‘international ethics’ are broadly interchangeable labels for a field of study within IR that variously draws on moral philosophy and political theory to explore moral expectations, decisions and dilemmas in world politics. For an introduction to this field, see T. Erskine (2010) ‘Normative IR Theory’, in Dunne, Kurki, and Smith (eds) International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity, 2nd edn, pp. 37–57.
- 36.
Orend (2006) The Morality of War, p. 155 (Emphasis in the original). Note that this type of tragic moral dilemma is addressed in Chapters 2, 6 and 12 of this volume by Mervyjn Frost, Chris Brown and Catherine Lu respectively.
- 37.
M. Walzer ([1977] 2006) Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, 4th edn (New York: Basic Books), pp. 251–68. Note that Walzer does not present this as a ‘moral tragedy’; this is Orend’s unique contribution. Walzer, Orend would maintain, overlooks the tragic dimension of this situation. Nevertheless, as we note below, Walzer’s rationale for the division between jus in hello and jus ad helium considerations—for which his “supreme emergency” argument is a controversial exception—is an excellent illustration of one of the insights that we have taken from tragedy.
- 38.
The same insight into the dangerous repercussions of assuming that one has exclusive access to interpreting the just course of action in cases of conflict underlines the call of ‘Walzer and other just war theorists to separate just ad helium from jus in bello considerations, thereby preventing subjective under-standings of the justness of going to war from lending legitimacy to evading principles of just conduct; See Walzer ([1977] 2006) Just and Unjust Wars. See also F. de Vitoria, ‘On the Law of War’, in Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1991)), pp. 306–7 [2.1], for his argument that one of the reasons for waging a just war with restraint is that one can never be sure of the ultimate! justice of one’s cause. Indeed, the difficulty of discerning the justice of any war should make us both humble in our claims to justice and moderate in our use of force. We are very grateful to Cian O’Driscoll for drawing bur attention to this passage.
- 39.
J. P. Euben, ‘The Tragedy of Tragedy’, Chapter 7, this volume, pp. 86–96.
- 40.
H. J. Morgenthau, letter to Michael Oakeshott, 22 May 1949, Morgenthau Papers, Library of Congress.
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Erskine, T., Lebow, R.N. (2016). Understanding Tragedy and Understanding International Relations. In: Lebow, R. (eds) Richard Ned Lebow: Essential Texts on Classics, History, Ethics, and International Relations. Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40024-2_2
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