Taming the Tragic – Agency and Catastrophe

In this article, some points of contact between tragedy and technology are presented. The main point of contact is the way in which both treat human action and issues related to knowledge, ignorance, responsibility, and tragic error. To define tragedy in general terms, some attention will be devoted to the works of Aristotle. From there, a comparison with our current predicaments can be drawn. We will argue two points. The first is that the tragic spirit that animates representation in Greek tragedies currently arises in various eras under new determinations that have a bearing on human agency. In our era, various events, such as disasters, calamities and catastrophes, attest to the role of technology in structuring, thwarting, and curtailing actions. At first glance, the return of the tragic spirit would seem obvious, owing to errors and the unintended effects of widespread technological use and innovation. The second point draws on the work of various authors in philosophy of technology to argue that it is difficult, if not impossible today for an event to be recognized or represented as tragic. In particular, the Promethean Gap between our faculties of production and our faculties of representation and feeling signifies that we are unable to grasp the effects of our everyday technologically mediated actions. Additionally, the spirit that animates the accelerated adoption of technology shifts responsibility away from human beings and towards a lack of knowledge and optimal planning of technical systems. In the original sense, an event is never acknowledged as tragic since it is never something definite, but a step towards a perfected future state of affairs.