BMCR 2009.05.56: Stannish on Greenspan, The Passion of Infinity: Kierkegaard, Aristotle and the Rebirth of Tragedy. Kierkegaard Studies. Monograph Series, 19

Daniel Greenspan, The Passion of Infinity: Kierkegaard, Aristotle and
the Rebirth of Tragedy. Kierkegaard Studies. Monograph Series, 19.
Berlin/New York:  Walter de Gruyter, 2008.  Pp. x, 336.  ISBN
9783110203967.  $141.00.

Reviewed by Steven M. Stannish, State University of New York College at
Potsdam ([email protected])
Word count:  1068 words
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Table of Contents (http://lccn.loc.gov/2008026010)

In 1872 Friedrich Nietzsche published his first and only major work in
classical philology, Die Geburt der Tragoedie aus dem Geiste der
Musik.[[1]] Although Ulrich Wilamowitz-Moellendorff savaged the
book,[[2]] it became, to quote Walter Kaufmann, "one of the most
suggestive and influential studies of tragedy ever written."[[3]]
Nietzsche's ideas on the Apollonian and Dionysian impulses, as well as
on the baleful influence of Euripides and Socrates, still merit
consideration today. At the same time, his portrayal of Richard Wagner
as a new Aeschylus remains an instructive example of misguided
hero-worship.

Daniel Greenspan's monograph The Passion of Infinity: Kierkegaard,
Aristotle and the Rebirth of Tragedy, a revision of his Ph.D.
dissertation at Villanova University,[[4]] covers much of the same
ground as Nietzsche's seminal work. The book is an inquiry into the
nature and fate of the Attic theatre. Rather than focusing on Socrates
and Wagner, however, Greenspan asks whether the relationship between
Aristotle and Kierkegaard is as close as some scholars believe. The
philosophers' views on tragedy are Greenspan's litmus test, and he
finds them to be very much at odds on the subject.

Greenspan's touchstone is Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus. Here, in the
wake of unintentional patricide and incest, the mortal and the divine
meet in tragic conflict to produce a "third wisdom": the awful light of
Phoebus' sun exposes the complete inadequacy of human securities (pp.
28-37). Greenspan explains that the blind prophet Teiresias and the
self-blinded king Oedipus embody the new awareness, which has
uncertainty at its core (pp. 14, 28, 37).

Greenspan observes that Oedipus presents a problem for rationalistic
philosophers like Aristotle (pp. 114-115). He is not lawless, insane,
or vicious -- "a mere ritual purification" would serve to absolve him
of his crimes (p. 23) -- but, nonetheless, he experiences a dreadful
fall. In one of the murkier sections of the book, Greenspan argues that
Aristotle viewed Oedipus' tragedy as an aesthetic revelation of reason
in a seemingly irrational disaster (p. 89). He envisioned a soul with
two parts: a personal psuche^ tied to the body, and an impersonal nous
wedded to reason. When the latter carried the day, eudaimonia, "well
being," was the result (pp. 128ff.). Hence, where Nietzsche saw
Euripides and Socrates as the killers of tragedy, Greenspan suggests
that Aristotle not only participated in the murder, but also helped
hide the body (cf. pp. 70-71).

Next, Greenspan turns to the Golden Age of Denmark and Kierkegaard's
philosophy. While classical Greeks may have feared a sudden eruption of
the divine into mortal life, Kierkegaard believed that modern Europeans
suffered from a subjective autonomy manifest in feelings of total guilt
(pp. 146, 148, 188, 190). For him, reason and society were obstacles,
for they offered false justification and ineffective protection. Only a
shattering encounter with the omnipresent yet unthinkable Christian God
could redeem humanity (pp. 152ff.). Greenspan thus maintains that
Kierkegaard's notion of tragedy shaded towards the Sophoclean (p. 172).
Indeed, the Dane rejected the Delphic maxim of me^den agan and the
corresponding Aristotelian view of the accomplished life as the
ultimate telos. Rather, he stressed the role of the passions in human
rebirth. In Greenspan's words, "Greece needed a Saint Paul, apparently,
and then a Kierkegaard, to finish the job tragedy had started" (p.
234).

To flesh out this position, Greenspan examines Kierkegaard's archetypal
Biblical figures as well as his various personae. Among the former,
Abraham looms large. Unlike Agamemnon, whose sacrifice of his daughter,
Iphigenia, has a clear end, the patriarch's charge to kill his son,
Isaac, is completely absurd (p. 197). Also exemplary is Job's continued
devotion to God in the face of staggering loss (p. 241). Kierkegaard
emphasizes both men's surrender to the Divine, and their consequent
experience of grace and mercy (p. 287). Thus, in his hands, "philosophy
ends in a 'repetition' of the tragedy it originally suppressed" (p.
285).

As may be judged from the preceding remarks, The Passion of Infinity is
as much about nineteenth-century philosophy as it is about classical
drama. In fact, Greenspan's desire to compare ancient and modern
thought may engender a flaw in his otherwise excellent study: a partial
vision of Attic tragedy. Could not the Oedipus Tyrannus, among other
plays, be experienced as a demonstration of the utter futility of
immoderate striving? What is one to make of the ominous counsel in
Oedipus at Colonus that the best thing for man is to have never been
born, and the second best is to die quickly (1410-1413)?[[5]] Here,
there is no "third wisdom," no redemption, only the endless round of
dike^, hubris, and nemesis. In such a cosmos, is not the Delphic
injunction of "nothing in excess" entirely appropriate? So the chorus
in Oedipus at Colonus proclaims: "Whoever it is that seeks to have// a
greater share of life,// letting moderation slip out of his thoughts,//
I count him a fool, a persistent fool" (1394-1396, cf. 646-647).

In the same vein, we may wonder whether Abraham's fate is truly tragic.
God does order the patriarch to sacrifice his child, but the old man
does not display the arrogance of an Oedipus or bewail his fate like an
Antigone. Even more importantly, he never suffers the trauma of divine
wrath. At the last moment, an angel prevents the killing, blesses
Abraham for his obedience, and repeats God's promise of offspring "as
numerous as the stars of heaven and the sand on the seashore" (Genesis
22:17, cf. 17:1-8). Is this story really the consummation of Sophocles'
tragic art? Does Abraham, the anti-type of Agamemnon, actually reflect
the outlook that produced Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis?

To go on in this fashion would be easy, but also unfair, for The
Passion of Infinity is largely concerned with the link between
Aristotle and Kierkegaard. Greenspan does an admirable job of
demonstrating that, while the Dane may have used his predecessor's
categories, he rejected his rationalistic philosophy. Suffice it to say
that the author may have been better served by a less definitive
reading of Attic drama. Today, only a small fraction of the tragedies
of the fifth century survive. We may attempt to understand the messages
of the extant plays, but should not trace them back to an overarching
moral that dovetails with modern Existentialism. From a Greek
perspective, Kierkegaard may have radically misunderstood tragedy as
Judeo-Christian romance. He may have been no more a modern Sophocles
than Wagner was a new Aeschylus.


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Notes:


1.  Leipzig: E. W. Fritzsch, 1872.

2.   Zukunftsphilologie! (Berlin: Gebrueder Borntraeger, 1872);
Zukunftsphilologie: Zweites Stueck (Berlin: Gebrueder Borntraeger,
1873).

3.  Introduction to The Birth of Tragedy (New York: Vintage, 1967), 3.

4.  "Kierkegaard and the Rebirth of Tragedy: Philosophy, Poetry and the
Problem of the Irrational" (2006).

5.  Sophocles I: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone, trans.
D. Grene (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955).