Op 4 oktober 2011 hield de Engelse filosoof Simon Critchley, op uitnodiging van het Soeterbeeck Programma, in de Aula van de Radboud Universiteit de jaarlijkse Radboud Lecture: Tragedy’s Philosophy – Philosophy’s Tragedy. Over tragedie als instrument om de wereld te begrijpen.
 
TRAGEDY’S PHILOSOPHY – PHILOSOPHY’S TRAGEDY
The past decade or so has witnessed the surprising rise of the genre of popular philosophy. While there is much to applaud in this development, it conceals the risk that philosophy is understood as an expertise and the philosopher as some kind of expert life-coach for the literate who will tell one how to live. It is against this tendency that I want to turn to the subtle dialectic of thought and action that we find in ancient Greek tragedy. In my view, tragedy gives us a richer sense of the complexity of human motivation, and the sheer intractability of moral and political problems than can be found in the reassuring truisms of pop philosophy. In play after play of three great tragedians (Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides), we find human beings somehow compelled to follow a path of suffering that allows them to raise questions which admit of no easy answer: what shall I do? What will happen to me? How can I choose the right path of action?  Hele lezing