[lbo-talk] question for classical scholars... joanna 123hop at comcast.net:
I don't get it: how is Oedipus at Colonus a tragedy? I mean, he dies, but that in itself does not constitute tragedy. Otherwise, there seems to be no major conflict, no reversal.....
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The classical definition of what a tragedy is (fatal flaw, turnaround, etc.) comes from Aristotle's Poetics. Actual Greek tragedies did not coincide with Aristotle's schema. ;) On the other hand, Renaissance and later tragedies were consciously written following Aristotle's outline.
Joanna again on the "God Delusion."
>
> But could you say more about the difference between
negative theology
> and atheism. I think most people who call themselves
atheists mean that
> they do not believe in god, nor in any significance
to religion or
> religious feeling in any form....except as a form of
delusion -- of self
> and others.
Jeffrey probably knows a lot more about this than I do, but being a big fan of Plotinus, Maimonides, Meister Eckhardt and my main man Heidegger, I do know something.
NT holds that God is so unknowable, so absolutely unlike anything else, that it is meaningless to make affirmative predictions of him/her/it. One cannot say, for instance, that God is "powerful" or "wise," or even "is," as these are terms with a content we only know from our experience of the non-divine. The most we can say is that God is NOT something or other. Mysticism and atheism are quite close to each other you know -- one says that god is Nothing (capital N) and the other that God is nothing (lower-case n).
I should really go back and read some more of that stuff. God do I love Angelus Silesius.
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