Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the revised edition
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Chapter 1 Luck and ethics
- Part I Tragedy: fragility and ambition
- Part II Plato: goodness without fragility?
- Part III Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life
- Notes
- Bibliography
- General index
- Index of passages
Part I - Tragedy: fragility and ambition
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the revised edition
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Chapter 1 Luck and ethics
- Part I Tragedy: fragility and ambition
- Part II Plato: goodness without fragility?
- Part III Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life
- Notes
- Bibliography
- General index
- Index of passages
Summary
They do not understand that it is by being at variance with itself that it coheres with itself: a backward-stretching harmony, as of a bow or a lyre…One must realize that conflict is common to all, and justice is strife, and all things come to pass according to strife and necessity.
Heraclitus, DK b51, 80Here we come up against a remarkable and characteristic phenomenon in philosophical investigation: the difficulty – I might say – is not that of finding the solution but rather that of recognizing as the solution something that looks as if it were only a preliminary to it. ‘We have already said everything. – Not anything that follows from this, no, this itself is the solution!’
This is connected, I believe, with our wrongly expecting an explanation, whereas the solution of the difficulty is a description, if we give it the right place in our considerations. If we dwell upon it, and do not try to get beyond it.
The difficulty here is: to stop.
Wittgenstein, Zettel 314- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Fragility of GoodnessLuck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, pp. 23 - 24Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001