Tragedy and Enlightenment

Tragedy and Enlightenment: Athenian Political Thought and the Dilemmas of Modernity by Christopher Rocco offers a bold rethinking of the relationship between classical antiquity and contemporary political theory. Rocco argues that the dramas and dialogues of ancient Athens—Sophocles’ *Oedipus Tyrannos*, Plato’s *Gorgias* and *Republic*, and Aeschylus’ *Oresteia*—provide indispensable resources for grappling with the dilemmas of democracy, truth, and power in the age of postmodernity. Rather than treating Greek texts as historical artifacts or idealized models, Rocco reads them as interlocutors in debates over Enlightenment, modernity, and its discontents. He shows how tragedy and philosophy alike disclose both the emancipatory aspirations and the normalizing dangers of reason, consensus, and democratic culture, revealing how concepts of freedom, justice, and political identity are always contested, fragile, and incomplete.

At the heart of the book is a methodological and theoretical intervention. Rocco situates his readings between the poles of Habermasian critical theory, which defends Enlightenment rationality, and Foucauldian genealogy, which destabilizes it. By bringing Athenian tragedy’s agonistic sensibility into dialogue with postmodern concerns, Rocco illuminates an alternative approach: one that resists both nostalgia for stable foundations and resignation to endless disruption. In this way, Tragedy and Enlightenment contributes not only to the study of classical political thought but also to pressing debates over democracy, identity, and cultural hegemony in contemporary theory. With its innovative juxtapositions of ancient and modern, philosophy and drama, reason and contest, the book demonstrates how reappropriating the Athenian past can deepen our understanding of the paradoxes and possibilities of political life today.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1997.