An extravagance is something that your spirit thinks is a necessity.
Bernard WilliamsRead
Tragedy is formed 'round ideas it does not expound, and to understand its history is, in some part, to understand those ideas and their place in the society that produced it.
Interpretation
Tragedy reflects deeper ideas about society and understanding them is crucial to grasping the tragedy's significance.
In this quote, Bernard Williams emphasizes that tragedy is not merely a narrative of sorrow or misfortune, but rather intricately linked to the ideas and beliefs of the society from which it arises. Understanding the historical context and the underlying concepts surrounding a tragic event allows for a deeper appreciation of its significance and implications within the larger social framework.
In practice
This quote can be used in a lecture on the significance of tragedy in literature.
An extravagance is something that your spirit thinks is a necessity.
There was never a night or a problem that could defeat sunrise or hope.
Contemporary moral philosophy has found an original way of being boring, which is by not discussing moral issues at all.
The majority of philosophers are totally humorless. That's part of their trouble.
People have been predicting the death of philosophy since the 17th century. When I was a student, people were saying, 'We're in the last days of philosophy.' Then we were told in the '60s it would be replaced by sociology, then by literary criticism.
Virtually the only subject in which one could ever get a scholarship to Oxford or Cambridge was classics. So I went to Oxford to study classics and, unlike Cambridge, it had a philosophy component, and I became completely transported by it.
Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them like the Ark of the Covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment.
It is only by questioning what people take for granted, what people hold to be true, that we can break through the hypnosis of social conditioning.
We are all as much extraordinary phenomena of nature as trees, clouds, the patterns in running water, the flickering of fire, the arrangement of the stars and the form of a galaxy.
Revenge, lust, ambition, pride, and self-will are too often exalted as the gods of man's idolatry; while holiness, peace, contentment, and humility are viewed as unworthy of a serious thought.
The world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds with the same notes, in vibrations which escape our ears. As for those that we perceive, they carry sounds to us, occasionally a chord, never a melody.
Let everyone see the blood,' he said. 'Don't clean it up. That's the only way people remember.'... I could see the blood inside my head. It was with me forever, whether or not I wanted to forget.
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