In opposition to mere disintegration without tragedy, Lukács claims that tragedy arises only in one particular kind of historical situation. In each society, the ruling class legitimizes its own dominance with reference to certain valuations (Wertungen). However, if that class then begins to experience these very same valuations as problematic or sterile, this signifies the beginning of its downfall (GW 15: 47). In such situations, the formal element of drama and tragedy, which involves the paradoxical relation between highly universalized form and highly individualized content, mirrors the paradoxical relation between form and life that individuals experience in their own relation to society.