An Ethic of the Tragic
In this text, which relies heavily on the Greek myths and on notions developed by followers of Nietzsche and Freud who have written extensively about the « obscure face » of humans, the author examines some of the procedures through which ethic is created, at a fundamental level, via a metamorphosis of negativity into « constitutive negativity ». The text is built on the assumption that there exists a clear demarcation between a primary universal ethic, which is grounded in the depth of the human, and the ethnoethics which are particular socio-historic constructions. The author shows that the systems of moralities are formed, in all societies, in confronting (and outpassing) the « dark side » of the human, and that these systems are marked, for that reason, by traces left by this primordial anchorage. The tragic invades the ethic in an inescapable way.