Hegel was a German philosopher most famous for his dialectical approach to history, this approach was also applied to tragedy. Hegel’s theory provides the first fully fledged thesis on tragedy, upon which grounds it becomes Tragedy. Hegel’s notion of Tragedy fits in with his notion of the Zeitgeist looking to find ways to work itself into the material world as a manifestation of metaphysical values of the age. The journey and incarnation is one of conflict with resolution, it has a clear narrative arch, a battle that ends with harmony and balance. In “Hegel’s Theory of Tragedy” A. C. Bradley discusses the idea of a tragic collision in Hegel’s model of Tragedy, articulating the idea that Hegel’s model of tragedy all necessitates a logical conclusion to emerge from the chaos.
In “The Phenomenology of Spirit” Hegels puts forward an idea for a more complicated philosophy for tragedy. He proposes the Greek tragedy and that which follow Shakespeare might share a common underlying principle and drive but develop along different paths. He sees tragedy as the conflict of forces. In Greek tragedy this conflict is seen in characters and in Shakespeare between a subject and the external world, between an individual personality and his passions which fight against the ideologies of the external world and system he lives within.
“The heroes of ancient classical tragedy encounter situations in which, if they firmly decide in favor of the one ethical pathos that alone suits their finished character, they must necessarily come into conflict with the equally [gleichberechtigt] justified ethical power that confronts them. Modern characters, on the other hand, stand in a wealth of more accidental circumstances, within which one could act this way or that, so that the conflict which is, though occasioned by external preconditions, still essentially grounded in the character. (Hegel, ed. Glockner, vol XIV pp567–8).
The notion of a shifting form of tragedy fits in with Hegels view of History, with the idea of the progress of the spirit through time and space. The idea of conflict in Tragedy of a variety of types is clearly accurate, and Hegel’s analyze of the shifts seem accurate. His account is problematic in that it presumes a need for resolution. It feels as if this analysis is constructed in order to fit in with his wider methodologies and philosophy.
The notion that Tragedy requires resolution seems limiting and fraught with danger. Should conflict need to end with something logical and comprehensible? Should Tragedy have to have a neat, moralistic resolution? Such a belief is one reason why Tait’s rewriting of King Lear was so popular, with the death of Lear and Cordelia removed. Yet this ending, and Hegel’s view of such an ending is to reduce Tragedy down to a formulaic structure. It also raises the dangerous possibility of Tragedy to be utalised as some form of social political tool, indoctrinating the masses with a view of vice and virtue, suggesting that the good will prosper. Simple answers should not be given and Tragedy should not look to provide a model for some form of ideology or a philosophy which we should follow. Instead it should look to present to us the conflicts that exist in the human condition. These conflicts will vary, from those between characters, those between an individual and his conscious or some wider external system. Hegel was correct to point out the conflict is central to Tragedy but wrong to suggest that resolution is either inherent or necessary.