29 October 2012

The idea and the idol - The Hellenic character

Somebody, I don't know who, has claimed that all individuals, taken as individuals, are comic and hence untragic - from which it would follow that the Greeks simply could not suffer individuals on the tragic stage. In fact, this is what they seem to have felt; and the Platonic distinction and evaluation of the "idea" and the "idol," the mere image, is very deeply rooted in the Hellenic character.

The Birth of Tragedy
Friedrich Nietzsche

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