Miriam Leonard Inaugural Lecture - Tragedy and Modernity

This lecture explores why Greek tragedy has played such a crucial role in the development of philosophy since the late eighteenth century. Focusing on the works of Hegel, Nietzsche and Freud, the lecture investigates how the return to antiquity was essential in formulating what we know today as the modern condition. From Hegel’s Antigone to Freud’s Oedipus, the predicament of the tragic protagonist was seen to encapsulate the metaphysical, aesthetic and psychological tensions of modernity.