Alexandros Gkosevits (UCL) - 2015-16 Students
a.gkosevits.12@ucl.ac.uk

Tragic Thinking: Tragedy and the concept of the tragic in post-Kantian German philosophy

My research focuses on the reception of tragedy and the emergence of the philosophy of the tragic in post-Kantian German philosophy. The central argument of my thesis is that the various theories of tragedy cannot be properly understood in isolation from the theoretical and conceptual framework they derive from, nor without understanding them as interrelated and belonging to a common dialogue between antiquity and modernity – a dialogue which responds to a specific crisis of meaning in the aftermath of the French Revolution. By highlighting the cardinal importance of tragedy in post-Kantian German philosophy, I wish to argue that its implications go far beyond a mere aesthetic phenomenon and are actually embedded in the self-understanding of modernity, providing a meditation on history and catastrophe.