Why the tragic is often considered. Summary: Tragic, its manifestation in art and in life

Introduction …………………………………………………………………………… ..3

1. Tragedy is an irreparable loss and the assertion of immortality ……………… ..4

2. General philosophical aspects of the tragic ………………. …………………… ... 5

3. Tragic in art ……………………………………………………… .7

4. Tragic in life …………………………………………………………… ..12

Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………… .16

References ………………………………………………………………… 18

INTRODUCTION

Aesthetically evaluating phenomena, a person determines the degree of his dominance over the world. This measure depends on the level and nature of the development of society, its production. The latter reveals one or another meaning for a person of the natural - natural properties of objects, determines their aesthetic properties. This explains that the aesthetic manifests itself in different forms: beautiful, ugly, sublime, base, tragic, comic, etc.

The expansion of a person's social practice entails an expansion of the range of aesthetic properties and aesthetically valued phenomena.

There is no epoch in the history of mankind that is not saturated with tragic events. Man is mortal, and every person living a conscious life cannot somehow help comprehend his attitude to death and immortality. Finally, great art in its philosophical reflections on the world always gravitates toward tragic topic. Throughout the history of world art passes as one of the general themes of the tragic. In other words, the history of society, and the history of art, and the life of the individual come into contact with the problem of the tragic in one way or another. All this determines its importance for aesthetics.

1. TRAGEDY - INCREDIBLE LOSS AND STATEMENT OF IMMORTALITY

The 20th century is a century of the greatest social upheavals, crises, and violent changes that create the most complicated and tense situations in one or another point of the world. Therefore, a theoretical analysis of the problem of the tragic for us is introspection and understanding of the world in which we live.

In art-different peoples, tragic death turns into resurrection, and sorrow turns into joy. For example, ancient Indian aesthetics expressed this pattern through the concept of "samsara", which means the cycle of life and death, the reincarnation of a deceased person into another living being, depending on the nature of the life lived. The reincarnation of souls among the ancient Indians was associated with the idea of ​​aesthetic improvement, an ascent to the more beautiful. The Vedas, the oldest monument of Indian literature, affirmed the beauty of the afterlife and the joy of going into it.

Since ancient times, human consciousness could not come to terms with non-existence. As soon as people began to think about death, they asserted immortality, and in non-existence people took the place of evil and accompanied him there with laughter.

Paradoxically, it is not tragedy that speaks of death, but satire. Satire proves the mortality of living and even triumphant evil. And the tragedy affirms immortality, reveals good and wonderful principles in a person, which triumph, win, despite the death of the hero.

Tragedy is a sorrowful song about irreplaceable loss, a joyful hymn to human immortality. It is this deep nature of the tragic that manifests itself when the feeling of sorrow is resolved by joy ("I am happy"), death - by immortality.

2. GENERAL PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECTS OF THE TRAGIC

A person leaves life irrevocably. Death is the transformation of the living into non-living. However, the deceased remains to live: culture preserves everything that has passed, it is the extragenetic memory of mankind. H. Heine said that under each tombstone is the history of a whole world that cannot leave without a trace.

Comprehension of the death of unique individuality as an irreparable collapse of the whole world, tragedy, at the same time, affirms the strength, the infinity of the universe, despite the departure from it of a finite being. And in this very finite being, tragedy finds immortal features that make the personality akin to the universe, the finite to the infinite. Tragedy is a philosophical art that poses and solves the highest metaphysical problems of life and death, realizes the meaning of being, analyzes the global problems of its stability, eternity, infinity, despite the constant change.

In tragedy, as Hegel believed, death is not only destruction. It also means preserving in a transformed form that which in this form must perish. Suppressed by the instinct of self-preservation, Hegel opposes the idea of ​​liberation from the "slave consciousness", the ability to sacrifice his life for the sake of higher goals. The ability to comprehend the idea of ​​endless development for Hegel is the most important characteristic of human consciousness.

K. Marxuzhe in his early works criticizes the idea of ​​individual immortality of Plutarch, putting forward in contrast to it the idea of ​​social immortality of man. For Marx, people who are afraid that after their death the fruits of their deeds will not reach them, but humanity are untenable. The products of human activity are the best continuation of human life, while hopes for individual immortality are illusory.

There are two extreme positions on the comprehension of tragic situations in the world art culture: existentialist and Buddhist.

Existentialism turned death into the central problem of philosophy and art. German philosopher K. Jaspers emphasizes that knowledge about a person is tragic knowledge. In his book On the Tragic, he notes that the tragic begins where a person takes all his possibilities to extremes, knowing that he will perish. It is like the self-realization of an individual at the cost of his own life. “Therefore, in tragic knowledge, it is essential what a person suffers from and because of what he perishes, what he takes on himself, in the face of what reality and in what form he betrays his being”. Jaspers proceeds from the fact that the tragic hero carries both his own happiness and his own death in himself.

A tragic hero is a bearer of something beyond the framework of individual existence, a bearer of power, principle, character, demon. Tragedy shows a person in his greatness, free from good and evil, writes Jaspers, substantiating this position with a reference to Plato's idea that neither good nor evil flows from a small character, and a great nature is capable of both great evil and great good.

Tragedy exists where forces collide, each of which considers itself true. On this basis, Jaspers believes that truth is not one, that it is split, and tragedy reveals this.

Thus, the existentialists absolutize the self-worth of the individual and emphasize the alienation from society, which leads their concept to a paradox: disastrousness ceases to be a social problem. A person who is left alone with the universe, does not feel humanity around him, embraces the terrible inevitable finiteness of being. She is rejected from people and in fact turns out to be absurd, and her life is devoid of meaning and value.

For Buddhism, a person, dying, turns into another being, he equates death with life (a person, dying, continues to live, therefore death does not change anything). In both cases, virtually any tragedy is removed.

The disastrous nature acquires a tragic sound only where a person, possessing self-worth, lives in the name of people, their interests become the content of his life. In this case, on the one hand, there is a unique individuality and value of the individual, and on the other hand, the dying hero finds a continuation in the life of society. Therefore, the death of such a hero is tragic and gives rise to a feeling of irrevocable loss of human individuality (and hence grief), and at the same time arises - the idea of ​​continuing the life of a personality in humanity (and hence the motive of joy).

The source of the tragic are specific social contradictions - collisions between a socially necessary, urgent demand and the temporary practical impossibility of its implementation. The inevitable lack of knowledge, ignorance, often becomes the source of the greatest tragedies. The tragic is the sphere of comprehension of the world-historical contradictions, the search for a way out for humanity. This category reflects not just the misfortune of a person caused by private malfunctions, but the disasters of mankind, some fundamental imperfections of life that affect the fate of the individual.

3. TRAGIC IN ART

Each era brings its own features to the tragic and emphasizes certain aspects of its nature.

For example, an open course of action is inherent in Greek tragedy. The Greeks managed to preserve the amusement of their tragedies, although both the characters and the audience were often informed about the will of the gods or the chorus predicted the further course of events. The audience was well aware of the plots of ancient myths, on the basis of which tragedies were mainly created. The amusement of Greek tragedy was firmly based on the tax of action. The meaning of the tragedy was the character of the hero's behavior. The fatalities of the tragic hero are notoriously known. And this is the naivety, freshness and beauty of ancient Greek art. This course of action played a great artistic role, enhancing the spectator's tragic emotion.

The heroic tragedy is not able to prevent the inevitable, but he fights, acts, and only through his freedom, through his actions, what is to happen is realized. Such, for example, is Oedipus in the tragedy of Sophocles "Oedipus the King". By his own will, consciously and freely, he searches for the causes of the misfortunes that have fallen on the heads of the inhabitants of Thebes. And when it turns out that the "investigation" threatens to turn against the main "investigator" and that the culprit of the misfortune of Thebes is Oedipus himself, who killed his father by the will of fate and married his mother, he does not stop the "investigation", but brings it to the end. Such is Antigone, the heroine of another tragedy of Sophocles. Unlike her sister Ismene, Antigone does not obey the order of Creon, who, on pain of death, forbids the burial of her brother, who fought against Thebes. The law of tribal relations, which is expressed in the need to bury the body of a brother, whatever the cost, acts equally in relation to both sisters, but Antigone becomes a tragic hero because she fulfills this need in her free actions.

Greek tragedy is heroic.

A celantic tragedy is catharsis. The feelings depicted in the tragedy purify the viewer's feelings.

In the Middle Ages, the tragic appears not as heroic, but as martyr. Its goal is consolation. In medieval theater, the passive beginning was emphasized in the actor's interpretation of the image of Christ. Sometimes the actor so strongly "got used" in the image of the crucified that he himself was not far from death.

Medieval tragedy is alien to the concept of catarsis . This is not a tragedy of purification, an atragedy of consolation. It is characterized by logic: you feel bad, but they (heroes, more accurately, martyrs of tragedy) are better than you, and they are worse than you, so take comfort in your sufferings by the fact that there are sufferings that are bitter, and people have more pains, even less than you, deserving of it. The consolation of the earth (you are not the only one who suffers) is enhanced by the consolation of the otherworldly (there you will not suffer, and you will be rewarded as you deserve).

If the most unusual things happen in a shrewd tragedy, then in medieval tragedy the supernaturalness of what is happening occupies an important place.

At the turn of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the majestic figure of Dante rises. UDante has no doubt about the need for the eternal torment of Francesca and Paolo, who, by their love, violated the moral foundations of their century and the monolith of the existing world order, shook, transgressed the prohibitions of earth and sky. And at the same time, the "Divine Comedy" lacks supernaturalism, magic. For Dantei his readers, the geography of hell is absolutely real and the hellish whirlwind that carries the lovers is real. Here is the same naturalness of the supernatural, the reality of the unreal, which was inherent in ancient tragedy. And it is this return of canticism on a new basis that makes Dante one of the first exponents of the ideas of the Renaissance.

Medieval man explained the world by God. The man of modern times strove to show that the world is the cause of himself. In philosophy, this was expressed in the classical thesis of Spinoza about nature as the cause of itself. In art, this principle was embodied and expressed by Shakespeare half a century earlier. For him, the whole world, including the sphere of human passions and tragedies, does not need any otherworldly explanation, it is based on himself.

Romeo and Juliet carry the circumstances of their lives. From the characters themselves, action is born. The fatal words: "His name is Romeo: he is the son of Montague, the son of your enemy" - did not change Juliet's relationship to her beloved. The only measure and driving force behind her actions is herself, her character, her love for Romeo.

The era of the Renaissance in its own way solved the problems of love and honor, life and death, personality and society, for the first time revealing the social nature of the tragic conflict. The tragedy in this period opened the state of the world, confirmed the activity of man and the freedom of his will. At the same time, the tragedy of an unregulated personality arose. The only regulation for a person was the first and last commandment of the Telem monastery: "Do what you want" (Rabelais. "Gargartua and Pantagruel"). However, freed from medieval religious morality, a person sometimes lost all morality, conscience, and honor. Shakespeare's heroes (Othello, Hamlet) are relaxed and not limited in their actions. And the actions of the forces of evil (Iago, Claudius) are just as free and not regulated by anything else.

The hopes of the humanists that the individual, having got rid of medieval restrictions, rationally and in the name of good, would dispose of their freedom were illusory. The utopia of an unregulated personality actually turned into its absolute regulation. In France in the 17th century. this regulation manifested itself: in the sphere of politics - in the absolutist state, in the sphere of science and philosophy - the teaching of Descartes about the method that introduces human thought into the channel of strict rules, in the sphere of art - in classicism. The tragedy of utopian absolute freedom is replaced by the tragedy of real absolute normative conditioning of personality.

In art-romanticism (G. Heine, F. Schiller, J. Byron, F. Chopin) the state of the world is expressed through the state of mind. Disappointment in the results of the Great French Revolution and the resulting disbelief in social progress give rise to world sorrow, characteristic of romanticism. Romanticism realizes that the general beginning may not have a divine, but a diabolical nature and is capable of carrying evil. In the tragedies of Byron ("Cain"), the inevitability of evil and the eternity of the struggle are affirmed. The embodiment of such a universal evil is Lucifer. Cain cannot come to terms with any restrictions on the freedom and power of the human spirit. But it is sinister, and the hero cannot remove him from life even at the cost of his own death. However, for the romantic consciousness, the struggle is not meaningless: the tragic hero, through his struggle, creates oases of life in the desert, where evil reigns.

The art of critical realism revealed the tragic discord between personality and society. One of the greatest tragic works of the 19th century. - "Boris Godunov" by Alexander Pushkin. Godunov wants to use power for the good of the people. But on the way to power, he does evil - he kills the innocent Tsarevich Dimitri. And between Boris and the people lay the abyss of alienation, and then anger. Pushkin shows that you cannot fight for the people without the people. Human destiny is the destiny of the people; the deeds of the individual are for the first time compared with the good of the people. This issue is the birth of a new era.

The same feature is inherent in the opera and musical tragedy images of M. P. Mussorgsky. His operas "Boris Godunov" and "Khovanshchina" brilliantly embody Pushkin's formula of tragedy about the fusion of human and national destinies. For the first time, a people appeared on the opera stage, animated by a single idea of ​​the struggle against slavery, violence and arbitrariness. An in-depth characterization of the people set off the tragedy of the conscience of Tsar Boris. For all his good intentions, Boris remains alien to the people and secretly fears the people, who sees it as the cause of their troubles. Mussorgsky deeply developed specific musical means of conveying tragic life content: musical - dramatic contrasts, bright thematicism, mournful intonations, dark tonality and dark timbres of orchestration.

The development of the theme of rock in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony was of great importance for the development of the philosophical principle in tragic musical compositions. This theme was further developed in Tchaikovsky's Fourth, Sixth and especially Fifth Symphonies. The tragic in Tchaikovsky's symphonies expresses the contradiction between human aspirations and obstacles in life, between the infinity of creative impulses and the finiteness of a person's being.

In critical realism of the 19th century. (Dickens, Balzac, Stendhal, Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and others) the non-tragic character becomes the hero of tragic situations. In life, tragedy has become an "ordinary story", and its hero is an alienated person. And therefore, tragedy as a genre disappears in art, but as an element it penetrates into all kinds and genres of art, capturing the intolerance of the discord between man and society.

In order for tragedy to cease to be a constant companion of social life, society must become human, come into harmony with personality. The desire of a person to overcome discord with the world, the search for the lost meaning of life is the concept of the tragic and the pathos of developing this theme in critical realism of the XX century. (E. Hemingway, W. Faulkner, L. Frank, G. Böll, F. Fellini, M. Antonioni, J. Gershwin and others).

Tragic art reveals the social meaning of human life and shows that human immortality is realized in the immortality of the people. An important theme of the tragedy is “man and history”. The world-historical context of a person's actions turns him into a conscious or unwitting participant in the historical process. This makes the hero responsible for the choice of the path, for the correct solution of the issues of life and understanding of its meaning. The character of the tragic hero is verified by the very course of history, by its laws. The theme of the responsibility of the individual to history is deeply disclosed in "The Quiet Don" by M. A. Sholokhov. The character of his hero is contradictory: he either becomes shallower, then deepens with inner torment, then he is tempered by severe trials. His fate is tragic.

The musician type of tragic symphony was developed by D. D. Shostakovich. If in the symphonies of P. I. Tchaikovsky fate always invades the life of the individual from the outside as a powerful, inhuman, hostile force, then in Shostakovich such a confrontation arises only once - when the composer reveals a catastrophic invasion of evil that interrupts the calm flow of life (the theme of the passage in the first part of the Seventh Symphony).

4. TRAGIC IN LIFE

The manifestations of the tragic in life are diverse: from the death of a child or the death of a person full of creative energy to the defeat of the national liberation movement; from the tragedy of an individual person - to the tragedy of an entire people. The tragic can also be concluded in the struggle of man with the forces of nature. But the main source of this category is the struggle between good break, death and immortality, where death affirms life values, reveals the meaning of human existence, where a philosophical understanding of the world takes place.

The First World War, for example, went down in history as one of the bloodiest and most brutal wars. Never (until 1914) did the opposing sides deploy such huge armies for mutual destruction. All the achievements of science and technology were aimed at exterminating people. During the war, 10 million people were killed, 20 million were wounded. In addition, significant human losses were incurred by the civilian population, who perished not only as a result of the fighting, but also from hunger and disease that raged in the war.

Then, in January 1933, the fascist National Socialist Labor Party, a party of revenge and war, came to power in Germany. By the summer of 1941. Germany and Italy occupied 12 European countries and extended their dominance to a large part of Europe. In the occupied countries, they established a fascist occupation regime, which they called the "new order": abolished democratic freedoms, disbanded political parties and trade unions, banned strikes and demonstrations. Industry worked on the orders of the invaders, agriculture supplied them with raw materials and foodstuffs, labor force was used in the construction of military facilities. All this led to the Second World War, as a result of which fascism was completely defeated. In contrast to the First World War, in the Second World War the civilian population was responsible for the majority of human losses. In the USSR alone, the death toll amounted to at least 27 million people. In Germany, 12 million were destroyed in concentration camps. Human. The victims of war and repression in Western European countries were 5 million. Human. To these 60 million lost lives in Europe must be added the many millions who died in the Pacific and other theaters of World War II.

The people did not have time to recover from one world tragedy, as on August 6, 1945, an American plane dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The atomic explosion caused terrible disasters: 90% of the buildings burned down, the rest turned into ruins. Of the 306 thousand inhabitants of Hiroshima, more than 90 thousand people died at once. Tens of thousands of people later died from wounds, burns and radioactive exposure. With the explosion of the first atomic bomb, mankind received its disposal an inexhaustible source of energy and at the same time a terrible weapon capable of destroying all living things.

No sooner had humanity entered the 20th century than a new wave of tragic events swept the entire planet. These are the intensification of terrorist acts, natural disasters, and environmental problems. Economic activity in a number of states today is developed so powerfully that it affects the ecological situation not only within a single country, but also far beyond its borders.

Typical examples:

The UK exports 2/3 of its industrial emissions.

75-90% of acid rain in the Scandinavian countries is of border origin.

Acid rain in Great Britain suffers 2/3 of the forest massifs, and in the countries of continental Europe - about half of their area.

The United States lacks the oxygen that is naturally reproduced in their territory.

The largest rivers, lakes, seas of Europe and North America are intensively polluted by industrial waste from enterprises of various countries that use their water resources.

From 1950 to 1984, the production of mineral fertilizers increased from 13.5 million tons to 121 million tons per year. Their use gave 1/3 of the increase in agricultural production.

At the same time, the use of chemical fertilizers, as well as various chemical plant protection products, has sharply increased in recent decades and has become one of the most important causes of global environmental pollution. Carried by water and air over vast distances, they are included in the geochemical circulation of substances throughout the Earth, often causing significant damage to nature, and to man himself. The rapidly developing process of the withdrawal of environmentally harmful enterprises into underdeveloped countries has become very characteristic of our time.

The era of extensive use of the potential of the biosphere is ending before our eyes. This is confirmed by the following factors:

Today there is very little undeveloped land left for agriculture.

The area of ​​deserts is systematically increasing. From 1975 to 2000, it increased by 20%.

The decline in the planet's forest cover is of great concern. From 1950 to 2000, the area of ​​forests will decrease by almost 10%, and in fact forests are the lungs of the entire Earth.

The exploitation of water basins, including the World Ocean, is carried out on such a scale that nature does not have time to reproduce what man takes.

At present, as a result of intensive human activity, climate change is taking place.

Compared to the beginning of the last century, the content of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by 30%, and 10% of this increase was due to the last 30 years. An increase in its concentration leads to the so-called greenhouse effect, as a result of which the climate of the entire planet is warming, which, in turn, will cause processes:

Melting ice;

Rise of the world ocean level by one meter;

Flooding of many coastal areas;

Change in moisture exchange on the Earth's surface;

Reduction in rainfall;

Change in wind direction.

It is clear that such changes will pose huge problems for people associated with the management of the economy, the reproduction of the necessary living conditions.

Today, as rightly one of the first marks of V.I. Vernadsky, humanity has gained such power in transforming the surrounding world that it begins to significantly influence the evolution of the biosphere as a whole.

Human economic activity in our time already entails climate change, it affects the chemical composition of the water and air basins of the Earth on the flora and fauna of the planet, on its entire appearance. And this is a tragedy for all mankind as a whole.

CONCLUSION

Tragedy is a harsh word full of hopelessness. It carries the cold gleam of death, it breathes with an icy breath. But the consciousness of death makes a person more acutely experience all the charm and bitterness, all the joy and complexity of being. And when death is near, then in this "borderline" situation all the colors of the world are clear, its aesthetic wealth, its sensual charm, the greatness of the familiar, truth and falsity, good and evil, the meaning of human existence emerge more clearly.

Tragedy is always an optimistic tragedy, in which even death serves life.

So the tragic reveals:

1. death or severe suffering of the person;

2. irreplaceability for people of its loss;

3. immortal socially valuable principles, embedded in a unique individuality, and its continuation in the life of mankind;

4. higher problems of being, the social meaning of human life;

5. activity of a tragic nature in relation to circumstances;

6. philosophically meaningful state of the world;

7. historically, temporarily insoluble contradictions;

8. tragic, embodied in art, has a cleansing effect on people.

The central problem of a tragic work is the expansion of human capabilities, the breaking of those boundaries that have historically formed, but have become narrow for the most daring and active people, inspired by lofty ideals. The tragic hero paves the way to the future, explodes the established boundaries, he is always at the forefront of the struggle of mankind, the greatest difficulties fall on his shoulders. Tragedy reveals the social meaning of life. The essence and purpose of human existence: the development of the individual should go not at the expense, but in the name of the whole society, in the name of mankind. On the other hand, the whole society should develop in man and through man, and not in spite of him and not at his expense. This is the highest aesthetic ideal, this is the path to a humanistic solution to the problem of man and humanity, offered by the world history of tragic art.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. BorevYu. Aesthetics. - M., 2002

2. Bychkov V.V. Aesthetics. - M., 2004

3.Divnenko O.V. Aesthetics. - M., 1995

4. Nikitich L.A. Aesthetics. - M., 2003

Tragic in art

Each epoch brings its own features to the tragic and most vividly emphasizes certain aspects of its nature.

A tragic hero is a bearer of something beyond the framework of individual existence, a bearer of power, principle, character, a certain demonic force. The heroes of ancient tragedy are often given knowledge of the future. Divinations, predictions, prophetic dreams, prophetic words of gods and oracles - all this organically enters the world of tragedy. The Greeks managed to keep their tragedies entertaining, although both the characters and the audience were often informed about the will of the gods or the choir predicted the further course of events. And the audience themselves were well aware of the plots of ancient myths, on the basis of which, for the most part, tragedies were created. The amusement of Greek tragedy was firmly based not so much on unexpected plot twists as on the logic of action. The whole point of the tragedy was not in the necessary and fatal outcome, but in the character of the hero's behavior. What is important here is what is happening, and especially how it is happening. The springs of the plot and the result of the action are exposed.

The hero of the ancient tragedy acts in the mainstream of necessity. He is unable to prevent the inevitable, but he fights, and it is through his activity that the plot is realized. It is not necessity that attracts the ancient hero to the denouement, but by his actions he himself realizes his tragic fate. Such is Oedipus in the tragedy of Sophocles "Oedipus the King". At his will, consciously and freely, he searches for the causes of the disasters that have fallen on the heads of the inhabitants of Thebes. And the "investigation" turns against the main "investigator": it turns out that the culprit of the misfortunes of Thebes is Oedipus himself, who killed his father and married his mother. However, even coming close to this truth, Oedipus does not stop the "investigation", but brings it to the end. The hero of the ancient tragedy acts freely even when he understands the inevitability of his death. He is not a doomed being, but a hero, acting independently in accordance with the will of the gods, in accordance with necessity.

Greek tragedy heroic... In Aeschylus, Prometheus performs a feat in the name of selfless service to man and pays for the transfer of fire to people. The choir sings, exalting the heroic principle in Prometheus:

You dared with your heart, you will never yield to cruel troubles *.

* (Greek tragedy. M., 1956, p. 61.)

In the Middle Ages, the tragic acts not as heroic, but as martyrdom... Here tragedy reveals the supernatural, its purpose is consolation. Unlike Prometheus, the tragedy of Christ is illuminated by a martyr's light. In medieval Christian tragedy, the martyr's, passive principle was emphasized in every possible way *. Its central characters are martyrs **. This is not a tragedy of purification, but a tragedy of consolation, the concept of catharsis is alien to it. And it is no coincidence that the tale of Tristan and Isolde ends with an appeal to all who are unhappy in their passion: "May they find here consolation in impermanence and injustice, in vexation and adversity, in all the sufferings of love."

* (See: Reader on the history of Western European theater. M., 1953, t. 1, p. 109.)

** (See: G.E. Lessing, Selected Works. M., 1953, p. 517 - 518.)

For the medieval tragedy of consolation, logic is characteristic: you will be comforted, because there are more bitter sufferings, and the torment is heavier in people, even less than you deserve it. This is the will of God. In the subtext of the tragedy, there was a promise: then, in the next world. The consolation of the earth (you are not the only one who suffers) is multiplied by the consolation of the otherworldly (there you will not suffer and you will be rewarded as you deserve).

If in ancient tragedy the most unusual things happen quite naturally, then in medieval tragedy the supernatural, the miraculousness of what is happening, occupies an important place.

At the turn of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the majestic figure of Dante rises. On his interpretation of the tragic lie the deep shadows of the Middle Ages, and at the same time, the solar reflections of the hopes of the new time shine. Dante still has a strong medieval motive of martyrdom: Francesca and Paolo are doomed to eternal torment, who with their love violated the moral foundations of their century, shook the monolith of the existing world order, transgressed the prohibitions of earth and sky. And at the same time, the "Divine Comedy" lacks the second pillar of the aesthetic system of medieval tragedy - the supernatural, the magic. Here is the same naturalness of the supernatural, the reality of the unreal (the geography of hell and the hellish whirlwind carrying lovers are real), which was inherent in ancient tragedy. And it is this return to antiquity on a new basis that makes Dante one of the first exponents of the ideas of the Renaissance.

The tragic sympathy of Dante Francesca and Paolo is much more frank than that of the unnamed author of the tale of Tristan and Isolde - his heroes. For the latter, this sympathy is contradictory, it is often either replaced by moral condemnation, or is explained by reasons of a magical nature (sympathy for people who have drunk a magic potion). Dante, on the other hand, directly, openly, proceeding from the motives of his heart, sympathizes with Paolo and Francesca, although he considers their doom to eternal torment as immutable. The touching and martyrdom (and not heroic) character of their tragedy is beautifully conveyed in the following lines:

The spirit spoke, tormented by a terrible oppression, Another wept, and the torment of their hearts covered My brow with mortal sweat; And I fell like a dead man falls *.

* (Dante Alighieri. The Divine Comedy. Hell. M., 1961, p. 48.)

Medieval man gave the world a divine explanation. A man of modern times is looking for the cause of the world and its tragedies in this world itself. In philosophy, this was expressed in the classical thesis of Spinoza about nature as causa sui (reason for itself). Even earlier, this principle was reflected in art. The world, including the sphere of human relations, passions and tragedies, does not need any otherworldly explanation, it is not based on evil fate, not God, not magic or evil spells. To show the world as it is, to explain everything by internal reasons, to deduce everything from its own material nature - this is the motto of modern realism, which is most fully embodied in the tragedies of Shakespeare.

Romeo and Juliet carry the circumstances of their lives. Their actions are generated by their characters. The fatal words: "His name is Romeo: he is the son of Montague, the son of your enemy" - did not change Juliet's relationship to her beloved. It is not constrained by any external regulatory principles. The only measure and driving force behind her actions is herself, her love for Romeo.

Renaissance art exposed the social nature of tragic conflict. Revealing the state of the world, the tragedy confirmed the activity of man and the freedom of his will. It would seem that the essence of Hamlet's tragedy lies in the events that happened to him. But similar misfortunes befell Laertes. Why are they not perceived as a tragedy? Laertes is passive, while Hamlet himself deliberately meets unfavorable circumstances. He chooses to fight the "sea of ​​troubles". It is this choice that is discussed in the famous monologue:

To be or not to be, that is the question. Is it worthy To humble ourselves under the blows of fate, Or must we resist And in a mortal battle with a whole sea of ​​troubles To end them? Die. Forget *.

* (Shakespeare W. Hamlet. M., 1964, p. 111.)

B. Shaw owns a humorous aphorism: the smart adapt to the world, the fools try to adapt the world to themselves, therefore they change the world and make history fools. Actually, this aphorism in a paradoxical form expresses the Hegelian concept of tragic guilt. A prudent person, acting according to common sense, is guided only by the established prejudices of his time. The tragic hero acts in accordance with the need to fulfill himself, regardless of any circumstances. He acts freely, choosing the direction and goals of his actions. The reason for his death lies in his activity, his own character. The tragic denouement is inherent in the personality itself. External circumstances can only come into conflict with the character traits of the tragic hero and manifest them, but the reason for his actions is in himself. Consequently, he carries his own death within himself. According to Hegel, it is tragic guilt.

NG Chernyshevsky rightly said that to see someone to blame in a dying person is a strained and cruel thought, and stressed that the blame for the hero's death lies with unfavorable social circumstances that need to be changed. However, one cannot ignore the rational kernel of Hegel's concept of tragic guilt: the character of the tragic hero is active; he resists threatening circumstances, seeks to resolve the most complex issues of life by action.

Hegel spoke of the ability of tragedy to explore the state of the world. In "Hamlet", for example, it is defined as follows: "the connection of times has fallen apart," "the whole world is a prison, and Denmark is the worst of the dungeons," "a century dislocated from the joints." Theoretically, the image of the global flood has a deep meaning. There are eras when history is overflowing. Then, for a long time and slowly, it enters the channel and continues its now unhurried, now stormy current for centuries. Happy is the poet who, in the turbulent age of history overflowing the shores, touched his contemporaries with a pen: he will inevitably touch history; in his work, one way or another, at least some of the essential aspects of the deep historical process will be reflected. In such an era, great art becomes a mirror of history. Shakespeare's tradition - a reflection of the state of the world, global problems - is the principle of modern tragedy.

In ancient tragedy, necessity was realized through the free action of the hero. The Middle Ages transformed necessity into the arbitrariness of God. The Renaissance revolted against necessity and against the arbitrariness of God and affirmed the freedom of the individual, which inevitably turned into its arbitrariness. The Renaissance failed to develop all the forces of society, not in spite of the individual, but through her and all the forces of the individual - for the good of society, and not for its evil. The impending era of bourgeois individualism touched the great hopes of humanists for the creation of a harmonious, universal man with its chilling breath. The tragedy of the collapse of these hopes was felt by such the most perspicacious and profound artists as Rabelais, Cervantes, Shakespeare.

The Renaissance era gave birth to the tragedy of the unregulated personality. The only regulation for a person at that time was the first and last commandment of the Telem monastery: "Do what you want" (Rabelais. "Gargantua and Pantagruel"). However, freed from the fetters of medieval religious morality, a person sometimes lost all morality, conscience, and honor. The approaching bourgeois epoch showed its readiness to transform the Rabelaisian thesis "do what you want" - into the Hobbesian slogan "war of all against all." Shakespeare's heroes (Othello, Hamlet) are relaxed and not limited in their actions. And the actions of the forces of evil (Iago, Claudius) are just as free and not regulated by anything.

The hopes of the humanists that a person, having got rid of medieval restrictions, would not use his freedom for evil turned out to be illusory. And then the utopia of an unregulated personality actually turned into its absolute regulation. In France, XVII century. this regulation manifested itself: in the sphere of politics - in the absolutist state, in the sphere of science and philosophy - in the teachings of Descartes about the method that introduces human thought into the channel of strict rules, in the sphere of art - in classicism. The tragedy of utopian absolute freedom is replaced by the tragedy of the real absolute normative conditioning of the individual. The universal principle in the image of a person's duty towards the state acts as restrictions on her behavior, and these restrictions come into conflict with a person's free will, with his passions, desires, and aspirations. This conflict becomes central to the tragedies of Corneille and Racine.

In the art of romanticism (G. Heine, F. Schiller, J. Byron, F. Chopin) the state of the world is expressed through the state of mind. Disappointment in the results of the bourgeois revolution and the resulting disbelief in social progress give rise to world sorrow characteristic of romanticism. Romanticism realizes that the universal principle may not have a divine, but a diabolical nature and is capable of carrying evil. In the tragedies of Byron ("Cain"), the inevitability of evil and the eternity of the struggle with it are affirmed. The embodiment of such a universal evil is Lucifer. Cain cannot come to terms with any restrictions on the freedom and power of the human spirit. The meaning of his life is in rebellion, in active opposition to eternal evil, in the desire to forcibly change his position in the world. Evil is omnipotent, and the hero cannot eliminate it from life even at the cost of his own death. However, for the romantic consciousness, the struggle is not meaningless: the tragic hero does not allow the establishment of the undivided domination of evil on earth. Through his struggle, he creates oases of life in the wilderness, where evil reigns.

The art of critical realism revealed the tragic discord between personality and society. One of the greatest tragic works of the 19th century. - "Boris Godunov" by Alexander Pushkin. Godunov wants to use power for the good of the people. But, striving to fulfill his intentions, he does evil - he kills the innocent Tsarevich Dimitri. And between the actions of Boris and the aspirations of the people lay an abyss of alienation, and then anger. Pushkin shows that one cannot fight for a people without a people. The powerful, active character of Boris is reminiscent of the heroes of Shakespeare in many of its features. However, profound differences are also felt: in Shakespeare, personality is in the center, in Pushkin's tragedy, human destiny is the fate of the people; the deeds of the individual are for the first time compared with the good of the people. Such problems are the product of a new era. The people act as the protagonist of the tragedy and the supreme judge of the heroes' actions.

The same feature is inherent in the opera and musical tragic images of M. P. Mussorgsky. His operas "Boris Godunov" and "Khovanshchina" brilliantly embody Pushkin's formula of tragedy about the fusion of human and national destinies. For the first time, a people appeared on the opera stage, inspired by a single idea of ​​the struggle against evil, slavery, violence and arbitrariness. An in-depth characterization of the people set off the tragedy of Tsar Boris's conscience. For all his good intentions, Boris remains alien to the people and secretly fears the people, who precisely in them sees the cause of their suffering and misery. Mussorgsky deeply developed specific musical means of conveying tragic life content: musical and dramatic contrasts, bright thematicism, mournful intonations, gloomy tonality and dark timbres of orchestration (bassoons in low register in Boris's monologue "The Soul Grieves ...") *.

* (See: G. Khubov Mussorgsky. M., 1969.)

PI Tchaikovsky addressed the theme of tragic love in his symphonic works (Francesca da Rimini, Romeo and Juliet). The development of the theme of rock in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony was of great importance for the development of the philosophical principle in tragic musical works. This theme was further developed in Tchaikovsky's Fourth, Sixth and especially Fifth Symphonies. In "Francesca da Rimini" rock breaks the happiness and despair sounds in the music with increasing intensity. The motive of despair also appears in the Fourth Symphony, but here the hero finds support in the power of the eternal life of the people. Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony reveals the awakening of the hero's spiritual powers. The tense tragedy ends in the finale with the theme of the painful sadness of parting with life. Tchaikovsky's Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Symphonies express the contradictions between human aspirations and obstacles in life, between the life and death of an individual.

In critical realism of the 19th century. (Dickens, Balzac, Stendhal, Gogol, etc.) the non-tragic character becomes the hero of tragic situations. In life, tragedy has become an "ordinary story", and its hero - an alienated, "private and partial" (Hegel) person. And therefore in art, tragedy as a genre disappears, but as an element it penetrates into all kinds and genres of art, capturing the intolerance of the discord between man and society.

In order for tragedy to cease to be a constant companion of social life, society must become humane, come into harmony with the personality. The desire of a person to overcome discord with the world, the search for the lost meaning of life - such is the concept of the tragic and the pathos of the development of this topic in critical realism of the 20th century. (E. Hemingway, W. Faulkner, L. Frank, G. Boehl, F. Fellini, M. Atonioni, J. Gershwin and others).

In the art of socialist realism, the tragic reveals the social meaning of human life and shows that the immortality of the hero is realized in the immortality of the people. The topic "man and history" is becoming important. K. Marx, outlining FT Fischer's Aesthetics, drew attention to the idea that the real theme of tragedy is revolution. It is precisely the revolutionary collision that should become the central point of modern tragedy. The motives and grounds for the actions of the heroes of the revolutionary tragedy are not in their personal whims, but in the historical movement that raises them to struggle on its crest.

In Soviet art, revolution is revealed not as a background of events, but as the essence of an era, as a state of peace, while the tragic acts as the highest manifestation of the heroic ("The death of a squadron" by A. Korneichuk, "The Defeat" by A. Fadeev, "Optimistic tragedy" by Vs. Vishnevsky, painting by K. Petrov-Vodkin "The death of the commissar"). The activity of the character of the tragic hero rises to the level of offensiveness in Soviet art. Facing the formidable state of the world, his struggle and even death, the hero makes a breakthrough to a higher, more perfect state. The hero's personal responsibility for his free, active action, reflected in the Hegelian category of tragic guilt, in the interpretation of socialist realism rose to historical responsibility.

The theme of the responsibility of the individual to history is deeply disclosed in the "Quiet Don" by M. Sholokhov. The world-historical sounding of events, the acceleration of the pace of the forward movement of society lead to the fact that each person is involved in this movement, becomes a conscious or unwitting participant in the historical process. This makes the hero responsible for the choice of the path, for the correct solution of the issues of life, understanding its meaning. Accidents are inevitable. However, the character of the tragic hero is not verified by a random situation, but by the very course of history, its laws. The character of Sholokhov's hero is contradictory: he is now shallow, then deepened by inner torment, then tempered by difficult trials. But at the same time, this is why his fate is tragic, and why it breaks his life, because it is a powerful character. The hurricane sinks to the ground and leaves a thin and weak birch forest unharmed, and a mighty oak, adamantly resisting the storm, is uprooted.

In music, a new type of tragic symphony was developed by D. D. Shostakovich. If in the symphonies of P. I. Tchaikovsky fate invades the life of an individual from the outside as a powerful, inhuman, hostile force, then in Shostakovich such a confrontation arises only once - when the composer reveals a catastrophic invasion of evil that interrupts the calm flow of human life (the theme of the invasion in the first part of the Seventh symphony). In the Fifth Symphony, where the composer artistically explores the problem of the formation of personality, evil is revealed as the wrong side of the human. The finale of the symphony cheerfully resolves the tragic tension of the first movements. For Shostakovich, genuine tragedy has nothing to do with pessimism: the content of modern tragedy "must be permeated with a positive idea, like, for example, the life-affirming pathos of Shakespeare's tragedies."

* (Cit. Quoted from: L. Mazel, Symphonies by D. D. Shostakovich. M., 1960, p. 39.)

In the Fourteenth Symphony Shostakovich tackles the eternal themes of love, life, death. Both music and poetry are full of deep philosophy and tragedy. The symphony ends with Rilke's verses:

Death is omnipotent. She is on guard and at the hour of happiness. In the moment of higher life, she suffers in us, waits for us and longs for us - and cries in us.

Using the image of death as a contrast, the composer seeks to emphasize once again that life is beautiful. He wanted the audience to leave the hall after the performance of the symphony with just such a thought.

Each era brings its own features to the tragic and emphasizes certain aspects of its nature.

For example, an open course of action is inherent in Greek tragedy. The Greeks managed to keep their tragedies entertaining, although the characters and spectators were often informed about the will of the gods or the choir predicted the further course of events. The audience was well aware of the plots of ancient myths, on the basis of which tragedies were mainly created. The amusement of Greek tragedy was firmly based on the logic of action. The meaning of the tragedy was the character of the hero's behavior. The death and misfortunes of the tragic hero are well known. And this is the naivety, freshness and beauty of ancient Greek art. This course of action played a great artistic role, enhancing the spectator's tragic emotion.

The hero of the ancient tragedy is unable to prevent the inevitable, but he fights, acts, and only through his freedom, through his actions, what should happen is realized. Such, for example, is Oedipus in the tragedy of Sophocles "Oedipus the King". At his own will, consciously and freely, he searches for the causes of the misfortunes that have fallen on the heads of the inhabitants of Thebes. And when it turns out that the "investigation" threatens to turn against the main "investigator" and that the culprit of the misfortune of Thebes is Oedipus himself, who killed his father by the will of fate and married his mother, he does not stop the "investigation", but brings it to the end. Such is Antigone, the heroine of another tragedy of Sophocles. Unlike her sister Ismene, Antigone does not obey the orders of Creon, who, on pain of death, forbids the bury of her brother, who fought against Thebes. The law of tribal relations, which is expressed in the need to bury the body of a brother, whatever the cost, acts equally in relation to both sisters, but Antigone becomes a tragic hero because she fulfills this need in her free actions.

The Greek tragedy is heroic.

The purpose of the ancient tragedy is catharsis. The feelings depicted in the tragedy purify the viewer's feelings.

In the Middle Ages, the tragic appears not as heroic, but as martyr. Its purpose is consolation. In medieval theater, the passive beginning was emphasized in the actor's interpretation of the image of Christ. Sometimes the actor "got used to" the image of the crucified so much that he himself was not far from death.

Medieval tragedy is alien concept catharsis . This is not a tragedy of purification, but a tragedy of consolation. It is characterized by logic: you feel bad, but they (the heroes, or rather, the martyrs of the tragedy) are better than you, and they are worse off than you, so take comfort in your sufferings by the fact that there are sufferings that are bitter, and people have worse torments, even less, than you deserving it. The consolation of the earth (you are not the only one who suffers) is enhanced by the consolation of the otherworldly (there you will not suffer, and you will be rewarded as you deserve).

If in ancient tragedy the most unusual things happen quite naturally, then in medieval tragedy the supernaturalness of what is happening occupies an important place.

At the turn of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the majestic figure of Dante rises. Dante has no doubt about the need for the eternal torment of Francesca and Paolo, who, with their love, violated the moral foundations of their century and the monolith of the existing world order, shook, transgressed the prohibitions of earth and sky. And at the same time, the "Divine Comedy" lacks supernaturalism, magic. For Dante and his readers, the geography of hell is absolutely real and the hellish whirlwind that carries the lovers is real. Here is the same naturalness of the supernatural, the reality of the unreal, which was inherent in ancient tragedy. And it is this return to antiquity on a new basis that makes Dante one of the first exponents of the ideas of the Renaissance.

Medieval man explained the world by God. The modern man strove to show that the world is the cause of himself. In philosophy, this was expressed in the classical thesis of Spinoza about nature as the cause of itself. In art, this principle was embodied and expressed by Shakespeare half a century earlier. For him, the whole world, including the sphere of human passions and tragedies, does not need any otherworldly explanation, he himself is at its core.

Romeo and Juliet carry the circumstances of their lives. From the characters themselves, action is born. The fatal words: "His name is Romeo: he is the son of Montague, the son of your enemy" - did not change Juliet's relationship to her beloved. The only measure and driving force behind her actions is herself, her character, her love for Romeo.

The Renaissance epoch in its own way solved the problems of love and honor, life and death, personality and society, revealing for the first time the social nature of the tragic conflict. The tragedy during this period opened the state of the world, confirmed the activity of man and the freedom of his will. At the same time, the tragedy of the unregulated personality arose. The only regulation for a person was the first and last commandment of the Telem monastery: "Do what you want" (Rabelais. "Gargartua and Pantagruel"). However, freed from medieval religious morality, a person sometimes lost all morality, conscience, and honor. Shakespeare's heroes (Othello, Hamlet) are relaxed and not limited in their actions. And the actions of the forces of evil (Iago, Claudius) are just as free and not regulated by anything.

The hopes of humanists that the individual, having got rid of medieval restrictions, rationally and in the name of good, will dispose of their freedom turned out to be illusory. The utopia of an unregulated personality has actually turned into its absolute regulation. In France, XVII century. this regulation manifested itself: in the sphere of politics - in the absolutist state, in the sphere of science and philosophy - in the teachings of Descartes about the method that introduces human thought into the channel of strict rules, in the sphere of art - in classicism. The tragedy of utopian absolute freedom is replaced by the tragedy of the real absolute normative conditioning of the individual.

In the art of romanticism (G. Heine, F. Schiller, J. Byron, F. Chopin) the state of the world is expressed through the state of mind. Disappointment in the results of the Great French Revolution and the disbelief in social progress caused by it give rise to world sorrow characteristic of romanticism. Romanticism realizes that the universal principle may not have a divine, but a diabolical nature and is capable of carrying evil. In the tragedies of Byron ("Cain"), the inevitability of evil and the eternity of the struggle against it are affirmed. The embodiment of such a universal evil is Lucifer. Cain cannot come to terms with any restrictions on the freedom and power of the human spirit. But evil is omnipotent, and the hero cannot eliminate it from life even at the cost of his own death. However, for the romantic consciousness, the struggle is not meaningless: the tragic hero, through his struggle, creates oases of life in the desert, where evil reigns.

The art of critical realism revealed the tragic discord between personality and society. One of the greatest tragic works of the 19th century. - "Boris Godunov" by A. Pushkin. Godunov wants to use power for the benefit of the people. But on the way to power, he does evil - he kills the innocent prince Dimitri. And between Boris and the people lay an abyss of alienation, and then anger. Pushkin shows that you cannot fight for a people without a people. Human destiny is the people's destiny; the deeds of the individual are for the first time compared with the good of the people. Such problems are the product of a new era.

The same feature is inherent in the opera and musical tragic images of M. P. Mussorgsky. His operas Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina brilliantly embody Pushkin's formula of tragedy about the fusion of human and national destinies. For the first time, a people appeared on the opera stage, inspired by a single idea of ​​the struggle against slavery, violence and arbitrariness. An in-depth characterization of the people set off the tragedy of Tsar Boris's conscience. For all his good intentions, Boris remains alien to the people and secretly fears the people, who precisely in them sees the cause of their misfortunes. Mussorgsky deeply developed specific musical means of conveying tragic life content: musical and dramatic contrasts, bright thematicism, mournful intonations, dark tonality and dark timbres of orchestration.

The development of the theme of rock in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony was of great importance for the development of the philosophical principle in tragic musical works. This theme was further developed in Tchaikovsky's Fourth, Sixth and especially Fifth Symphonies. The tragic in Tchaikovsky's symphonies expresses the contradiction between human aspirations and life obstacles, between the infinity of creative impulses and the finiteness of the personality's being.

In critical realism of the 19th century. (Dickens, Balzac, Stendhal, Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and others) the non-tragic character becomes the hero of tragic situations. In life, tragedy has become an "ordinary story", and its hero is an alienated person. And therefore in art, tragedy as a genre disappears, but as an element it penetrates into all kinds and genres of art, capturing the intolerance of the discord between man and society.

In order for tragedy to cease to be a constant companion of social life, society must become humane, come into harmony with the personality. The desire of a person to overcome discord with the world, the search for the lost meaning of life - such is the concept of the tragic and the pathos of the development of this topic in critical realism of the 20th century. (E. Hemingway, W. Faulkner, L. Frank, G. Böll, F. Fellini, M. Antonioni, J. Gershwin and others).

Tragic art reveals the social meaning of human life and shows that human immortality is realized in the immortality of the people. An important topic of the tragedy is “man and history”. The world-historical context of a person's actions turns him into a conscious or involuntary participant in the historical process. This makes the hero responsible for the choice of the path, for the correct solution of the issues of life and understanding of its meaning. The character of the tragic hero is verified by the very course of history, by its laws. The theme of the responsibility of the individual to history is deeply disclosed in "The Quiet Don" by M. A. Sholokhov. The character of his hero is contradictory: he is now shallow, then deepened by inner torment, then tempered by difficult trials. His fate is tragic.

In music, a new type of tragic symphony was developed by D. D. Shostakovich. If in Tchaikovsky's symphonies rock always invades the life of a person from the outside as a powerful, inhuman, hostile force, Shostakovich has such a confrontation only once - when the composer reveals a catastrophic invasion of evil that interrupts the calm flow of life (the theme of the invasion in the first part of Seventh symphony).

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CONTENT
Introduction …………………………………………………………………………… ..3
1. Tragedy is an irreparable loss and the assertion of immortality ……………… ..4
2. General philosophical aspects of the tragic ………………. …………………… ... 5
3. Tragic in art ……………………………………………………… .7
4. Tragic in life …………………………………………………………… ..12
Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………… .16
References ………………………………………………………………… 18
INTRODUCTION
Evaluating phenomena aesthetically, a person determines the degree of his dominance over the world. This measure depends on the level and nature of the development of society, its production. The latter reveals one or another meaning for a person of natural - natural properties of objects, determines their aesthetic properties. This explains that the aesthetic manifests itself in different forms: beautiful, ugly, sublime, base, tragic, comic, etc.
The expansion of human social practice entails an expansion of the range of aesthetic properties and aesthetically evaluated phenomena.
There is no era in the history of mankind that was not saturated with tragic events. Man is mortal, and every person living a conscious life cannot, in one way or another, not comprehend his attitude to death and immortality. Finally, great art, in its philosophical reflections on the world, always internally gravitates towards a tragic theme. Throughout the history of world art passes as one of the general themes of the tragic. In other words, the history of society, and the history of art, and the life of the individual come into contact with the problem of the tragic in one way or another. All this determines its importance for aesthetics.
1. TRAGEDY - INCREDIBLE LOSS AND STATEMENT OF IMMORTALITY
The 20th century is a century of the greatest social upheavals, crises, and violent changes that create the most complicated and tense situations in one or another point of the world. Therefore, a theoretical analysis of the problem of what is tragic for us is introspection and understanding of the world in which we live.
In the art of different nations, tragic death turns into resurrection, and sorrow turns into joy. For example, ancient Indian aesthetics expressed this pattern through the concept of "samsara", which means the cycle of life and death, the reincarnation of a deceased person into another living being, depending on the nature of his life. The reincarnation of souls among the ancient Indians was associated with the idea of ​​aesthetic improvement, an ascent to the more beautiful. The Vedas, the oldest monument of Indian literature, affirmed the beauty of the afterlife and the joy of leaving it.
Since ancient times, human consciousness could not come to terms with non-existence. As soon as people began to think about death, they affirmed immortality, and in non-existence people gave place to evil and accompanied it there with laughter.
Paradoxically, it is not tragedy that speaks of death, but satire. Satire proves the mortality of living and even triumphant evil. And the tragedy affirms immortality, reveals good and wonderful principles in a person, which triumph, win, despite the death of the hero.
Tragedy is a mournful song about an irreparable loss, a joyful hymn to human immortality. It is this deep nature of the tragic that manifests itself when the feeling of sorrow is resolved by joy ("I am happy"), death - by immortality.
2. GENERAL PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECTS OF THE TRAGIC
A person leaves life irrevocably. Death is the transformation of the living into non-living. However, the dead remains to live in the living: culture preserves everything that has passed, it is the extragenetic memory of mankind. H. Heine said that under each tombstone is the history of the whole world, which cannot disappear without a trace.
Comprehending the death of a unique individuality as an irreparable collapse of the whole world, tragedy at the same time affirms the strength, the infinity of the universe, despite the departure of a finite being from it. And in this finite being itself, tragedy finds immortal features that make the personality akin to the universe, the finite to the infinite. Tragedy is a philosophical art that poses and solves the highest metaphysical problems of life and death, realizes the meaning of being, analyzes the global problems of its stability, eternity, infinity, despite the constant change.
In tragedy, as Hegel believed, death is not only destruction. It also means preserving in a transformed form that which should perish in this form. Suppressed by the instinct of self-preservation, Hegel opposes the idea of ​​liberation from the "slave consciousness", the ability to sacrifice his life for the sake of higher goals. The ability to comprehend the idea of ​​endless development for Hegel is the most important characteristic of human consciousness.
K. Marx already in his early works criticizes the idea of ​​individual immortality of Plutarch, putting forward in contrast to it the idea of ​​social immortality of man. For Marx, people who are afraid that after their death the fruits of their deeds will not go to them, but to humanity are untenable. The products of human activity are the best continuation of human life, while hopes for individual immortality are illusory.
In comprehending tragic situations in world art culture, two extreme positions have emerged: existentialist and Buddhist.
Existentialism has made death a central problem in philosophy and art. German philosopher K. Jaspers emphasizes that knowledge about a person is tragic knowledge. In his book On the Tragic, he notes that the tragic begins where a person takes all his capabilities to the extreme, knowing that he will perish. It is, as it were, the self-realization of an individual at the cost of his own life. “Therefore, in tragic knowledge, it is essential what a person suffers from and because of what he perishes, what he takes upon himself, in the face of what reality and in what form he betrays his being”. Jaspers proceeds from the fact that the tragic hero carries both his own happiness and his own death in himself.
A tragic hero is a bearer of something beyond the framework of individual existence, a bearer of power, principle, character, demon. Tragedy shows a person in his greatness, free from good and evil, writes Jaspers, substantiating this position with reference to Plato's idea that neither good nor evil flows from a small character, and a great nature is capable of both great evil and great good.
Tragedy exists where forces collide, each of which considers itself to be true. On this basis, Jaspers believes that truth is not one, that it is split, and tragedy reveals this.
Thus, existentialists absolutize the self-worth of the individual and emphasize its alienation from society, which leads their concept to a paradox: the death of an individual ceases to be a social problem. A person who is left alone with the universe, does not feel humanity around him, seizes the horror of the inevitable finiteness of life. She is rejected from people and in fact turns out to be absurd, and her life is devoid of meaning and value.
For Buddhism, a person, dying, turns into another being, he equates death with life (a person, dying, continues to live, therefore death does not change anything). In both cases, virtually any tragedy is removed.
The death of an individual acquires a tragic sound only where a person, possessing an intrinsic value, lives in the name of people, their interests become the content of his life. In this case, on the one hand, there is a unique individual originality and value of the individual, and on the other, the dying hero finds continuation in the life of society. Therefore, the death of such a hero is tragic and gives rise to a feeling of irrevocable loss of human individuality (and hence grief), and at the same time arises - the idea of ​​continuing the life of a personality in humanity (and hence the motive of joy).
The source of the tragic is specific social contradictions - collisions between a socially necessary, urgent demand and the temporary practical impossibility of its implementation. The inevitable lack of knowledge and ignorance often become the source of the greatest tragedies. The tragic is the sphere of comprehending world-historical contradictions, the search for a way out for humanity. This category reflects not just the misfortune of a person caused by private malfunctions, but the disasters of mankind, some fundamental imperfections of life that affect the fate of the individual.
3. TRAGIC IN ART
Each era brings its own features to the tragic and emphasizes certain aspects of its nature.
For example, an open course of action is inherent in Greek tragedy. The Greeks managed to keep their tragedies entertaining, although the characters and spectators were often informed about the will of the gods or the choir predicted the further course of events. The audience was well aware of the plots of ancient myths, on the basis of which tragedies were mainly created. The amusement of Greek tragedy was firmly based on the logic of action. The meaning of the tragedy was the character of the hero's behavior. The death and misfortunes of the tragic hero are well known. And this is the naivety, freshness and beauty of ancient Greek art. This course of action played a great artistic role, enhancing the spectator's tragic emotion.
The hero of the ancient tragedy is unable to prevent the inevitable, but he fights, acts, and only through his freedom, through his actions, what should happen is realized. Such, for example, is Oedipus in the tragedy of Sophocles "Oedipus the King". At his own will, consciously and freely, he searches for the causes of the misfortunes that have fallen on the heads of the inhabitants of Thebes. And when it turns out that the "investigation" threatens to turn against the main "investigator" and that the culprit of the misfortune of Thebes is Oedipus himself, who killed his father by the will of fate and married his mother, he does not stop the "investigation", but brings it to the end. Such is Antigone, the heroine of another tragedy of Sophocles. Unlike her sister Ismene, Antigone does not obey the orders of Creon, who, on pain of death, forbids the bury of her brother, who fought against Thebes. The law of tribal relations, which is expressed in the need to bury the body of a brother, whatever the cost, acts equally in relation to both sisters, but Antigone becomes a tragic hero because she fulfills this need in her free actions.
The Greek tragedy is heroic.
The purpose of the ancient tragedy is catharsis. The feelings depicted in the tragedy purify the viewer's feelings.
In the Middle Ages, the tragic appears not as heroic, but as martyr. Its purpose is consolation. In medieval theater, the passive beginning was emphasized in the actor's interpretation of the image of Christ. Sometimes the actor "got used to" the image of the crucified so much that he himself was not far from death.
Medieval tragedy is alien concept catharsis . This is not a tragedy of purification, but a tragedy of consolation. It is characterized by logic: you feel bad, but they (the heroes, or rather, the martyrs of the tragedy) are better than you, and they are worse off than you, so take comfort in your sufferings by the fact that there are sufferings that are bitter, and people have worse torments, even less, than you deserving it. The consolation of the earth (you are not the only one who suffers) is enhanced by the consolation of the otherworldly (there you will not suffer, and you will be rewarded as you deserve).
If in ancient tragedy the most unusual things happen quite naturally, then in medieval tragedy the supernaturalness of what is happening occupies an important place.
At the turn of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the majestic figure of Dante rises. Dante has no doubt about the need for the eternal torment of Francesca and Paolo, who, with their love, violated the moral foundations of their century and the monolith of the existing world order, shook, transgressed the prohibitions of earth and sky. And at the same time, the "Divine Comedy" lacks supernaturalism, magic. For Dante and his readers, the geography of hell is absolutely real and the hellish whirlwind that carries the lovers is real. Here is the same naturalness of the supernatural, the reality of the unreal, which was inherent in ancient tragedy. And it is this return to antiquity on a new basis that makes Dante one of the first exponents of the ideas of the Renaissance.
Medieval man explained the world by God. The modern man strove to show that the world is the cause of himself. In philosophy, this was expressed in the classical thesis of Spinoza about nature as the cause of itself. In art, this principle was embodied and expressed by Shakespeare half a century earlier. For him, the whole world, including the sphere of human passions and tragedies, does not need any otherworldly explanation, he himself is at its core.
Romeo and Juliet carry the circumstances of their lives. From the characters themselves, action is born. The fatal words: "His name is Romeo: he is the son of Montague, the son of your enemy" - did not change Juliet's relationship to her beloved. The only measure and driving force behind her actions is herself, her character, her love for Romeo.
The Renaissance epoch in its own way solved the problems of love and honor, life and death, personality and society, revealing for the first time the social nature of the tragic conflict. The tragedy during this period opened the state of the world, confirmed the activity of man and the freedom of his will. At the same time, the tragedy of the unregulated personality arose. The only regulation for a person was the first and last commandment of the Telem monastery: "Do what you want" (Rabelais. "Gargartua and Pantagruel"). However, freed from medieval religious morality, a person sometimes lost all morality, conscience, and honor. Shakespeare's heroes (Othello, Hamlet) are relaxed and not limited in their actions. And the actions of the forces of evil (Iago, Claudius) are just as free and not regulated by anything.
The hopes of humanists that the individual, having got rid of medieval restrictions, rationally and in the name of good, will dispose of their freedom turned out to be illusory. The utopia of an unregulated personality has actually turned into its absolute regulation. In France, XVII century. this regulation manifested itself: in the sphere of politics - in the absolutist state, in the sphere of science and philosophy - in the teachings of Descartes about the method that introduces human thought into the channel of strict rules, in the sphere of art - in classicism. The tragedy of utopian absolute freedom is replaced by the tragedy of the real absolute normative conditioning of the individual.
In the art of romanticism (G. Heine, F. Schiller, J. Byron, F. Chopin) the state of the world is expressed through the state of mind. Disappointment in the results of the Great French Revolution and the disbelief in social progress caused by it give rise to world sorrow characteristic of romanticism. Romanticism realizes that the universal principle may not have a divine, but a diabolical nature and is capable of carrying evil. In the tragedies of Byron ("Cain"), the inevitability of evil and the eternity of the struggle against it are affirmed. The embodiment of such a universal evil is Lucifer. Cain cannot come to terms with any restrictions on the freedom and power of the human spirit. But evil is omnipotent, and the hero cannot eliminate it from life even at the cost of his own death. However, for the romantic consciousness, the struggle is not meaningless: the tragic hero, through his struggle, creates oases of life in the desert, where evil reigns.
The art of critical realism revealed the tragic discord between personality and society. One of the greatest tragic works of the 19th century. - "Boris Godunov" by Alexander Pushkin. Godunov wants to use power for the benefit of the people. But on the way to power, he commits evil - he kills the innocent prince Dimitri. And between Boris and the people lay an abyss of alienation, and then anger. Pushkin shows that you cannot fight for a people without a people. Human destiny is the destiny of the people; the deeds of the individual are for the first time compared with the good of the people. Such problems are the product of a new era.
The same feature is inherent in the opera and musical tragic images of M. P. Mussorgsky. His operas Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina brilliantly embody Pushkin's formula of tragedy about the fusion of human and national destinies. For the first time, a people appeared on the opera stage, inspired by a single idea of ​​the struggle against slavery, violence and arbitrariness. An in-depth characterization of the people set off the tragedy of Tsar Boris's conscience. For all his good intentions, Boris remains alien to the people and secretly fears the people, who precisely in them sees the cause of their misfortunes. Mussorgsky deeply developed specific musical means of conveying tragic life content: musical and dramatic contrasts, bright thematicism, mournful intonations, dark tonality and dark timbres of orchestration.
The development of the theme of rock in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony was of great importance for the development of the philosophical principle in tragic musical works. This theme was further developed in Tchaikovsky's Fourth, Sixth and especially Fifth Symphonies. The tragic in Tchaikovsky's symphonies expresses the contradiction between human aspirations and life obstacles, between the infinity of creative impulses and the finiteness of the personality's being.
In critical realism of the 19th century. (Dickens, Balzac, Stendhal, Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and others) the non-tragic character becomes the hero of tragic situations. In life, tragedy has become an "ordinary story", and its hero is an alienated person. And therefore in art, tragedy as a genre disappears, but as an element it penetrates into all kinds and genres of art, capturing the intolerance of the discord between man and society.
In order for tragedy to cease to be a constant companion of social life, society must become humane, come into harmony with the personality. The desire of a person to overcome discord with the world, the search for the lost meaning of life - such is the concept of the tragic and the pathos of the development of this topic in critical realism of the 20th century. (E. Hemingway, W. Faulkner, L. Frank, G. Böll, F. Fellini, M. Antonioni, J. Gershwin and others).
Tragic art reveals the social meaning of human life and shows that human immortality is realized in the immortality of the people. An important topic of the tragedy is “man and history”. The world-historical context of a person's actions turns him into a conscious or involuntary participant in the historical process. This makes the hero responsible for the choice of the path, for the correct solution of the issues of life and understanding of its meaning. The character of the tragic hero is verified by the very course of history, by its laws. The theme of the responsibility of the individual to history is deeply disclosed in "The Quiet Don" by M. A. Sholokhov. The character of his hero is contradictory: he is now shallow, then deepened by inner torment, then tempered by difficult trials. His fate is tragic.
In music, a new type of tragic symphony was developed by D. D. Shostakovich. If in Tchaikovsky's symphonies rock always invades the life of a person from the outside as a powerful, inhuman, hostile force, Shostakovich has such a confrontation only once - when the composer reveals a catastrophic invasion of evil that interrupts the calm flow of life (the theme of the invasion in the first part of Seventh symphony).
4. TRAGIC IN LIFE
The manifestations of the tragic in life are diverse: from the death of a child or the death of a person full of creative energy to the defeat of the national liberation movement; from the tragedy of an individual person to the tragedy of an entire nation. The tragic can also be concluded in the struggle of man with the forces of nature. But the main source of this category is the struggle between good and evil, death and immortality, where death affirms life values, reveals the meaning of human existence, where a philosophical understanding of the world takes place.
The First World War, for example, went down in history as one of the bloodiest and most brutal wars. Never (until 1914) did the opposing sides deploy such huge armies for mutual destruction. All the achievements of science and technology were aimed at exterminating people. During the war years, 10 million people were killed, 20 million people were wounded. In addition, significant human losses were suffered by the civilian population, who died not only as a result of hostilities, but also from hunger and disease that raged during the war. The war also entailed colossal material losses, gave rise to a massive revolutionary and democratic movement, the participants of which demanded a radical renewal of life.
Then, in January 1933, the fascist National Socialist Workers' Party, a party of revenge and war, came to power in Germany. By the summer of 1941 Germany and Italy had occupied 12 European countries and extended their rule to a significant part of Europe. In the occupied countries, they established a fascist occupation regime, which they called the "new order": they abolished democratic freedoms, disbanded political parties and trade unions, and banned strikes and demonstrations. Industry worked on the orders of the invaders, agriculture supplied them with raw materials and food, labor was used in the construction of military facilities. All this led to the Second World War, as a result of which fascism suffered a complete defeat. But unlike the First World War, in the Second World War, the majority of human losses fell on the civilian population. In the USSR alone, at least 27 million people died. In Germany, 12 million people were killed in concentration camps. 5 million people became victims of war and repression in Western European countries. To these 60 million lost lives in Europe must be added the many millions who died in the Pacific and other theaters of World War II.
No sooner had the people recovered from one world tragedy, as on August 6, 1945, an American plane dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The atomic explosion caused terrible disasters: 90% of the buildings burned down, the rest turned into ruins. Of the 306 thousand inhabitants of Hiroshima, more than 90 thousand people died immediately. Tens of thousands of people later died from wounds, burns and radiation exposure. With the explosion of the first atomic bomb, mankind received at its disposal an inexhaustible source of energy and at the same time a terrible weapon capable of destroying all living things.
No sooner had humanity entered the 20th century than a new wave of tragic events swept the entire planet. This is the intensification of terrorist acts, natural disasters, and environmental problems. Economic activity in a number of states today is so strongly developed that it affects the ecological situation not only within a single country, but also far beyond its borders.
Typical examples:
- Great Britain exports 2/3 of its industrial emissions.
- 75-90% of acid rain in the Scandinavian countries is of foreign origin.
- Acid rain in the UK suffers 2/3 of forests, and in the countries of continental Europe - about half of their area.
- The United States lacks the oxygen that is naturally reproduced on their territory.
- The largest rivers, lakes, seas of Europe and North America are intensively polluted by industrial waste from enterprises of various countries that use their water resources.
- From 1950 to 1984, the production of mineral fertilizers increased from 13.5 million tons to 121 million tons per year. Their use gave 1/3 of the increase in agricultural production.
At the same time, the use of chemical fertilizers, as well as various chemical plant protection products, has sharply increased in recent decades and has become one of the most important causes of global environmental pollution. Carried by water and air over huge distances, they are included in the geochemical circulation of substances throughout the Earth, often causing significant damage to nature, and to man himself. The rapidly developing process of bringing environmentally harmful enterprises to underdeveloped countries has become very characteristic of our time.
The era of extensive use of the potential of the biosphere is ending before our eyes. This is confirmed by the following factors:
- Today there is a negligible amount of undeveloped land left for farming.
- The area of ​​deserts is systematically increasing. From 1975 to 2000, it increased by 20%.
“The decline in the world's forest cover is of great concern. From 1950 to 2000, the area of ​​forests will decrease by almost 10%, and in fact forests are the lungs of the entire Earth.
- The exploitation of water basins, including the World Ocean, is carried out on such a scale that nature does not have time to reproduce what a person takes.
Climate change is currently taking place as a result of intense human activity.
Compared to the beginning of the last century, the content of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by 30%, and 10% of this increase was given by the last 30 years. An increase in its concentration leads to the so-called greenhouse effect, as a result of which the climate of the entire planet is warming, which, in turn, will cause irreversible processes:
- melting ice;
- raising the level of the world ocean by one meter;
- flooding of many coastal areas;
- change in moisture exchange on the Earth's surface;
- reduction in the amount of precipitation;
- change in wind direction.
It is clear that such changes will pose huge problems for people associated with the management of the economy, the reproduction of the necessary conditions for their life.
Today, as rightly one of the first marks of V.I. Vernadsky, humanity has gained such power in transforming the surrounding world that it begins to significantly influence the evolution of the biosphere as a whole.
Human economic activity in our time already entails climate change, it affects the chemical composition of the water and air basins of the Earth on the flora and fauna of the planet, on its entire appearance. And this is a tragedy for all mankind as a whole.
CONCLUSION
Tragedy is a harsh word full of hopelessness. It carries the cold reflection of death, it breathes with an icy breath. But the consciousness of death makes a person more acutely experience all the charm and bitterness, all the joy and complexity of being. And when death is near, then in this "borderline" situation all the colors of the world, its aesthetic wealth, its sensual charm, the greatness of the familiar, are more clearly visible, truth and falsity, good and evil, the very meaning of human existence.
Tragedy is always an optimistic tragedy in her even death serves life.
So the tragic reveals:
1. death or severe suffering of the person;
2. irreplaceability for people of its loss;
3. immortal socially valuable principles, embedded in a unique individuality, and its continuation in the life of mankind;
4. higher problems of being, the social meaning of human life;
5. activity of a tragic nature in relation to circumstances;
6. philosophically meaningful state of the world;
7. historically, temporarily insoluble contradictions;
8. tragic, embodied in art, has a cleansing effect on people.
The central problem of a tragic work is the expansion of human capabilities, the breaking of those boundaries that have historically formed, but have become narrow for the most courageous and active people, inspired by lofty ideals. The tragic hero paves the way for the future, explodes the established boundaries, he is always at the forefront of the struggle of mankind, the greatest difficulties fall on his shoulders. Tragedy reveals the social meaning of life. The essence and purpose of human existence: the development of the individual should go not at the expense, but in the name of the whole society, in the name of humanity. On the other hand, the entire society should develop in and through a person, and not in spite of him or at his expense. This is the highest aesthetic ideal, this is the path to a humanistic solution to the problem of man and humanity, offered by the world history of tragic art.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Borev Yu. Aesthetics. - M., 2002
2. Bychkov V.V. Aesthetics. - M., 2004
3. Divnenko O. V. Aesthetics. - M., 1995
4. Nikitich L.A. Aesthetics. - M., 2003

Abstract on the topic Tragic, its manifestation in art and in life free download

Section: Ethics
Job type: essay

Introduction …………………………………………………………………………… ..3

1. Tragedy is an irreparable loss and the assertion of immortality ……………… ..4

2. General philosophical aspects of the tragic ………………. …………………… ... 5

3. Tragic in art ………………………………………………………… .7

4. Tragic in life …………………………………………………………… ..12

Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………… .16

References ………………………………………………………………… 18

INTRODUCTION

Evaluating phenomena aesthetically, a person determines the degree of his dominance over the world. This measure depends on the level and nature of the development of society, its production. The latter reveals one or another meaning for a person of natural - natural properties of objects, determines their aesthetic properties. This explains that the aesthetic manifests itself in different forms: beautiful, ugly, sublime, base, tragic, comic, etc.

The expansion of human social practice entails an expansion of the range of aesthetic properties and aesthetically evaluated phenomena.

There is no era in the history of mankind that was not saturated with tragic events. Man is mortal, and every person living a conscious life cannot, in one way or another, not comprehend his attitude to death and immortality. Finally, great art, in its philosophical reflections on the world, always internally gravitates towards a tragic theme. Throughout the history of world art passes as one of the general themes of the tragic. In other words, the history of society, and the history of art, and the life of the individual come into contact with the problem of the tragic in one way or another. All this determines its importance for aesthetics.

1. TRAGEDY - INCREDIBLE LOSS AND STATEMENT OF IMMORTALITY

The 20th century is a century of the greatest social upheavals, crises, and violent changes that create the most complicated and tense situations in one or another point of the world. Therefore, a theoretical analysis of the problem of what is tragic for us is introspection and understanding of the world in which we live.

In the art of different nations, tragic death turns into resurrection, and sorrow turns into joy. For example, ancient Indian aesthetics expressed this pattern through the concept of "samsara", which means the cycle of life and death, the reincarnation of a deceased person into another living being, depending on the nature of his life. The reincarnation of souls among the ancient Indians was associated with the idea of ​​aesthetic improvement, an ascent to the more beautiful. The Vedas, the oldest monument of Indian literature, affirmed the beauty of the afterlife and the joy of leaving it.

Since ancient times, human consciousness could not come to terms with non-existence. As soon as people began to think about death, they affirmed immortality, and in non-existence people gave place to evil and accompanied it there with laughter.

Paradoxically, it is not tragedy that speaks of death, but satire. Satire proves the mortality of living and even triumphant evil. And the tragedy affirms immortality, reveals good and wonderful principles in a person, which triumph, win, despite the death of the hero.

Tragedy is a mournful song about an irreparable loss, a joyful hymn to human immortality. It is this deep nature of the tragic that manifests itself when the feeling of sorrow is resolved by joy ("I am happy"), death - by immortality.

2. GENERAL PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECTS OF THE TRAGIC

A person leaves life irrevocably. Death is the transformation of the living into non-living. However, the dead remains to live in the living: culture preserves everything that has passed, it is the extragenetic memory of mankind. H. Heine said that under each tombstone is the history of the whole world, which cannot disappear without a trace.

Comprehending the death of a unique individuality as an irreparable collapse of the whole world, tragedy at the same time affirms the strength, the infinity of the universe, despite the departure of a finite being from it. And in this finite being itself, tragedy finds immortal features that make the personality akin to the universe, the finite to the infinite. Tragedy is a philosophical art that poses and solves the highest metaphysical problems of life and death, realizes the meaning of being, analyzes the global problems of its stability, eternity, infinity, despite the constant change.

In tragedy, as Hegel believed, death is not only destruction. It also means preserving in a transformed form that which should perish in this form. Suppressed by the instinct of self-preservation, Hegel opposes the idea of ​​liberation from the "slave consciousness", the ability to sacrifice his life for the sake of higher goals. The ability to comprehend the idea of ​​endless development for Hegel is the most important characteristic of human consciousness.

K. Marx already in his early works criticizes the idea of ​​individual immortality of Plutarch, putting forward in contrast to it the idea of ​​social immortality of man. For Marx, people who are afraid that after their death the fruits of their deeds will not go to them, but to humanity are untenable. The products of human activity are the best continuation of human life, while hopes for individual immortality are illusory.

In comprehending tragic situations in world art culture, two extreme positions have emerged: existentialist and Buddhist.

Existentialism has made death a central problem in philosophy and art. German philosopher K. Jaspers emphasizes that knowledge about a person is tragic knowledge. In his book On the Tragic, he notes that the tragic begins where a person takes all his capabilities to the extreme, knowing that he will perish. It is, as it were, the self-realization of an individual at the cost of his own life. “Therefore, in tragic knowledge, it is essential what a person suffers from and because of what he perishes, what he takes upon himself, in the face of what reality and in what form he betrays his being”. Jaspers proceeds from the fact that the tragic hero carries both his own happiness and his own death in himself.

A tragic hero is a bearer of something beyond the framework of individual existence, a bearer of power, principle, character, demon. Tragedy shows a person in his greatness, free from good and evil, writes Jaspers, substantiating this position with reference to Plato's idea that neither good nor evil flows from a small character, and a great nature is capable of both great evil and great good.

Tragedy exists where forces collide, each of which considers itself to be true. On this basis, Jaspers believes that truth is not one, that it is split, and tragedy reveals this.

Thus, existentialists absolutize the self-worth of the individual and emphasize its alienation from society, which leads their concept to a paradox: the death of an individual ceases to be a social problem. A person who is left alone with the universe, does not feel humanity around him, seizes the horror of the inevitable finiteness of life. She is rejected from people and in fact turns out to be absurd, and her life is devoid of meaning and value.

For Buddhism, a person, dying, turns into another being, he equates death with life (a person, dying, continues to live, therefore death does not change anything). In both cases, virtually any tragedy is removed.

The death of an individual acquires a tragic sound only where a person, possessing an intrinsic value, lives in the name of people, their interests become the content of his life. In this case, on the one hand, there is a unique individual originality and value of the individual, and on the other, the dying hero finds continuation in the life of society. Therefore, the death of such a hero is tragic and gives rise to a feeling of irrevocable loss of human individuality (and hence grief), and at the same time arises - the idea of ​​continuing the life of a personality in humanity (and hence the motive of joy).

The source of the tragic is specific social contradictions - collisions between a socially necessary, urgent demand and the temporary practical impossibility of its implementation. The inevitable lack of knowledge and ignorance often become the source of the greatest tragedies. The tragic is the sphere of comprehending world-historical contradictions, the search for a way out for humanity. This category reflects not just the misfortune of a person caused by private malfunctions, but the disasters of mankind, some fundamental imperfections of life that affect the fate of the individual.

3. TRAGIC IN ART

Each era brings its own features to the tragic and emphasizes certain aspects of its nature.

For example, an open course of action is inherent in Greek tragedy. The Greeks managed to keep their tragedies entertaining, although the characters and spectators were often informed about the will of the gods or the choir predicted the further course of events. The audience was well aware of the plots of ancient myths, on the basis of which tragedies were mainly created. The amusement of Greek tragedy was firmly based on the logic of action. The meaning of the tragedy was the character of the hero's behavior. The death and misfortunes of the tragic hero are well known. And this is the naivety, freshness and beauty of ancient Greek art. This course of action played a great artistic role, enhancing the spectator's tragic emotion.

The hero of the ancient tragedy is unable to prevent the inevitable, but he fights, acts, and only through his freedom, through his actions, what should happen is realized. Such, for example, is Oedipus in the tragedy of Sophocles "Oedipus the King". At his own will, consciously and freely, he searches for the causes of the misfortunes that have fallen on the heads of the inhabitants of Thebes. And when it turns out that the "investigation" threatens to turn against the main "investigator" and that the culprit of the misfortune of Thebes is Oedipus himself, who killed his father by the will of fate and married his mother, he does not stop the "investigation", but brings it to the end. Such is Antigone, the heroine of another tragedy of Sophocles. Unlike her sister Ismene, Antigone does not obey the orders of Creon, who, on pain of death, forbids the bury of her brother, who fought against Thebes. The law of tribal relations, which is expressed in the need to bury the body of a brother, whatever the cost, acts equally in relation to both sisters, but Antigone becomes a tragic hero because she fulfills this need in her free actions.

The Greek tragedy is heroic.

The purpose of the ancient tragedy is catharsis. The feelings depicted in the tragedy purify the viewer's feelings.

In the Middle Ages, the tragic appears not as heroic, but as martyr. Its purpose is consolation. In medieval theater, the passive beginning was emphasized in the actor's interpretation of the image of Christ. Sometimes the actor "got used to" the image of the crucified so much that he himself was not far from death.

Medieval tragedy is foreign to the concept of catharsis. This is not a tragedy of purification, but a tragedy of consolation. It is characterized by logic: you feel bad, but they (the heroes, or rather, the martyrs of the tragedy) are better than you, and they are worse off than you, so take comfort in your sufferings by the fact that there are sufferings that are bitter, and people have worse torments, even less, than you deserving it. The consolation of the earth (you are not the only one who suffers) is enhanced by the consolation of the otherworldly (there you will not suffer, and you will be rewarded as you deserve).

If in ancient tragedy the most unusual things happen quite naturally, then in medieval tragedy the supernaturalness of what is happening occupies an important place.

At the turn of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the majestic figure of Dante rises. Dante has no doubt about the need for the eternal torment of Francesca and Paolo, who, with their love, violated the moral foundations of their century and the monolith of the existing world order, shook, transgressed the prohibitions of earth and sky. And at the same time, the "Divine Comedy" lacks supernaturalism, magic. For Dante and his readers, the geography of hell is absolutely real and the hellish whirlwind that carries the lovers is real. Here is the same naturalness of the supernatural, the reality of the unreal, which was inherent in ancient tragedy. And it is this return to antiquity on a new basis that makes Dante one of the first exponents of the ideas of the Renaissance.

Medieval man explained the world by God. The modern man strove to show that the world is the cause of himself. In philosophy, this was expressed in the classical thesis of Spinoza about nature as the cause of itself. In art, this principle was embodied and expressed by Shakespeare half a century earlier. For him, the whole world, including the sphere of human passions and tragedies, does not need any otherworldly explanation, he himself is at its core.

Romeo and Juliet carry the circumstances of their lives. From the characters themselves, action is born. The fatal words: "His name is Romeo: he is the son of Montague, the son of your enemy" - did not change Juliet's relationship to her beloved. The only measure and driving force behind her actions is herself, her character, her love for Romeo.

The Renaissance era in its own way solved the problems of love and honor, life and death, personality and society, revealing for the first time the social nature of the tragic conflict. The tragedy during this period opened the state of the world, confirmed the activity of man and the freedom of his will. At the same time, the tragedy of the unregulated personality arose. The only regulation for man was the first and last commandment of the Telem monastery: "Do what you want" (Rabelais. "Gargartua and Pantagruel"). However, freed from medieval religious morality, a person sometimes lost all morality, conscience, and honor. Shakespeare's heroes (Othello, Hamlet) are relaxed and not limited in their actions. And the actions of the forces of evil (Iago, Claudius) are just as free and not regulated by anything.

The hopes of humanists that the individual, having got rid of medieval restrictions, rationally and in the name of good, will dispose of their freedom turned out to be illusory. The utopia of an unregulated personality has actually turned into its absolute regulation. In France, XVII century. this regulation manifested itself: in the sphere of politics - in the absolutist state, in the sphere of science and philosophy - in the teachings of Descartes about the method that introduces human thought into the channel of strict rules, in the sphere of art - in classicism. The tragedy of utopian absolute freedom is replaced by the tragedy of the real absolute normative conditioning of the individual.

In the art of romanticism (G. Heine, F. Schiller, J. Byron, F. Chopin) the state of the world is expressed through the state of mind. Disappointment in the results of the Great French Revolution and the disbelief in social progress caused by it give rise to world sorrow characteristic of romanticism. Romanticism realizes that the universal principle may not have a divine, but a diabolical nature and is capable of carrying evil. In the tragedies of Byron ("Cain"), the inevitability of evil and the eternity of the struggle against it are affirmed. The embodiment of such a universal evil is Lucifer. Cain cannot come to terms with any restrictions on the freedom and power of the human spirit. But evil is omnipotent, and the hero cannot eliminate it from life even at the cost of his own death. However, for the romantic consciousness, the struggle is not meaningless: the tragic hero, through his struggle, creates oases of life in the desert, where evil reigns.

The art of critical realism revealed the tragic discord between personality and society. One of the greatest tragic works of the 19th century. - "Boris Godunov" by Alexander Pushkin. Godunov wants to use power for the benefit of the people. But on the way to power, he commits evil - he kills the innocent prince Dimitri. And between Boris and the people lay an abyss of alienation, and then anger. Pushkin shows that you cannot fight for a people without a people. Human destiny is the destiny of the people; the deeds of the individual are for the first time compared with the good of the people. Such problems are the product of a new era.

The same feature is inherent in the opera and musical tragic images of M. P. Mussorgsky. His operas Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina brilliantly embody Pushkin's formula of tragedy about the fusion of human and national destinies. For the first time, a people appeared on the opera stage, inspired by a single idea of ​​the struggle against slavery, violence and arbitrariness. An in-depth characterization of the people set off the tragedy of Tsar Boris's conscience. For all his good intentions, Boris remains alien to the people and secretly fears the people, who precisely in them sees the cause of their misfortunes. Mussorgsky deeply developed specific musical means of conveying tragic life content: musical and dramatic contrasts, bright thematicism, mournful intonations, dark tonality and dark timbres of orchestration.

Job type: essay

Levandovsky, A.A., Shchetinov, Yu.A. Russian history. XX - early XXI century. - 2003. - p.21-24
Orlov, A.S., Georgiev, V.A., Polunov, A.Yu., Tereshchenko, Yu.Ya. Fundamentals of the course of the history of Russia. - 1997 .-- p.373-377, 396-404
Chudakova, N.V., Gromov, A.V. I get to know the world. History. - 1998 .-- p. 430-431
The Romanovs. Dynasty in novels. Nicholas II. - 1995 .-- p. 5-7
Mosolov, A.A. At the court of the last Russian emperor. - 1993 .-- p.109

Tragedy of personality, family, people in A.A. Akhmatova's poem Requiem

Job type: composition

1937 year. A terrible page in our history. I remember the names: O. Mandelstam, V. Shalamov, A. Solzhenitsyn ... Dozens, thousands of names. And behind them are crippled destinies, hopeless grief, fear, despair, oblivion. But human memory is strangely arranged. She keeps the most intimate, dear. And terrible ...
\ "White Clothes \" V. Dudintsev, \ "Children of the Arbat \" A. Rybakov, \ "By the Right of Memory \" A. Tvardovsky, \ "The Problem of Bread \" V. Podmogilny, \ "The Gulag Archipelago \" A. Solzhenitsyn - these and others p We angered God, sinned:
Lord of his own regicide
We named.
A. Pushkin, \ "Boris Godunov \"
Pushkin conceived \ "Boris Godunov \" as a historical and political tragedy. The drama \ "Boris Godunov \" opposed the romantic tradition. As a political tragedy, it was addressed to contemporary issues: the role of the people in history and the nature of tyrannical power.
If in \ "Eugene Onegin \" a slender composition is

The people in the tragedy of A.S. Pushkin Boris Godunov

Job type: composition

The tragedy \ "Boris Godunov \" was written by Pushkin in 1825. Pushkin was always worried about the reasons for the collapse of the revolutionary and national liberation movements (in Spain, Italy, Greece). His attention was drawn to such historical figures as Stepan Razin and Emelyan Pugachev. In 1824, Pushkin was greatly interested in the events of the late 16th - early 17th centuries, when the Russian state was ruled by Boris Godunov, and later by False Dmitry. Studying this material, Pushkin decided to write about