Dereifying Tragic Existence: A Heideggerian Reading of Greek Tragedy and its Reformulation by Arthur Miller

Abstract

Elsherif Abstract: Heidegger turns to Greek tragedy in the course of his investigation of the pre-Socratic concept of being. His reading offers an understanding of being prior to the platonic and Aristotelian metaphysical determinations of being and beings. Most, importantly, it registers a monumental change from the pre-Socratic to the Platonic and Aristotelian concepts. Heidegger regards the whole history of the West as a result of this change in the understanding of being. This article seeks to situate Sophocles‟ Oedipus Tyrannos in the history of being in order to witness the change from the pre-Socratic to the later Greek concept of being. It, then, reads Arthur Miller‟s reformulation of Greek tragedy in the twentieth century, in an attempt to reveal the result of the metaphysical and technical determinations of being. In All my Sons , a revelation of the limits of the technical determination may be visible. A new concept starts to unconceal itself.