Tragic Transcendence vs. Pathos
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#01
Only a Joke Can Save Us: A Theory of Comedy · Todd McGowan · p.83
Tragedy and Pathos > From Tragedy to Pathos
Theoretical move: The passage argues that Freud's post-1920 discovery of the death drive and desire-beyond-pleasure rehabilitates tragedy against psychoanalysis's own tendency to reduce tragic heroes to pathetic victims, and that Lacan's Ethics of Psychoanalysis (Seminar VII) crystallizes this move by grounding ethical transcendence in adherence to desire rather than in duty or the superego—thereby opening a theoretical space for both tragedy and comedy in modernity.
Psychoanalysis, as we see it practiced here, plays a crucial role in the transformation from a tragic epoch to a pathetic one… Desire beyond pleasure represents psychoanalysis's full reintroduction of transcendence.