it's a risky view of things for the tragic, in a sense, gives up on justice. This is what happens in ancient Greek tragedy: the gods get away with it. There is no justice for humankind. In place of justice, what individual human beings can aspire to is the condition of the heroic - a noble embrace of their tragic predicament. It was said that the gods envied humans the opportunity to be heroic, as they could not be so, never being powerless, and so never victims of injustice. In fact, sometimes the gods were shamed by heroes, and so tried to rectify the injustice. The tragic, then, does, just about, hold onto the hope of redemption, though only at great personal cost. Someone usually has to die.
I came across this in an e-mail I wrote a while back, but I don't know where I first found it. Does anyone know?
