Abstract

This dissertation will argue three points. That Plato's quarrel is not with poetry in general but rather tragic poetry. That the Christian Bible is a comic narrative and hostile towards tragic narrative as essentially a species of idolatry. That much of modern and contemporary philosophical, ethical, and theological reflection has embraced tragedy to its own detriment. In doing so it will describe and distinguish the Philosophical Comedy of the Platonic dialogues; their initial quarrelling partner of Greek Tragedy; the Biblical Comedy of the canonical Christian scripture; the Modern Comedies of the early moderns; and the Tragic Philosophy of much modern and contemporary thought from Hegel and Nietzsche through MacIntyre and Nussbaum. With these distinctions I will argue that both Christian theology and a philosophical quest after truth rather than making and power, require the narrative form of comedy; and that the current hankering after tragic narrative is fueled by a mistaken conflation of foundationalist modern comedy with the very different biblical and philosophical comedy; and that tragic philosophy must inevitably succumb to the corrosive effects of modern comedy and its attendant nihilism. Along the way I will explore the discussion of playful and serious writing in Plato's Phaedrus, Republic and Symposium; Aristotle's account of tragedy in the Poetics; contemporary readings of the Christian Bible as narrative; Aquinas' account of a typological reading of the Bible; Dante and Machiavelli's use of comedy; and the prominent place given to discussions of comedy and tragedy in Hegel and his critic Kierkegaard. The relevance of this discussion will then be tested in criticisms of the recent work of MacIntyre, Nussbaum, and Hauerwas in ethics, and Lindbeck in theology