On Tragic Wisdom
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This article argues for the necessity of “tragic wisdom” in the contemporary West, despite its having made tragedy part of its cultural unconsicous, for learning to live a good life actively and courageously. The article thus deals with three elements of the tragic vision: necessity, suffering, and an active response, which together affirm life. The first, which is further divided into absolute and contingent necessity, points first to the need to accept what happens to one. The second refers to the actuality of suffering. The active response concerns an affirmation of life, symbolized in part by the Dionysian reality of life found in Nietzsche, a learning to laugh with the tragic vision.