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13 pages, 284 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Tragedy, Tragic Irony, and War: A Dialectical Approach

by Timo Airaksinen

Humanities 2023, 12(4), 54; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040054 - 21 Jun 2023

Viewed by 3225

Tragic irony may mean the dramatic irony in scripted tragedy (tragic play). The audience can predict the regrettable outcome on the stage before the main characters do. I focus on non-scripted events and their tragic aspects. Colloquially, disaster and tragedy are synonyms, but this is misleading. Tragedy means a disaster in special circumstances, which I suggest we can read ironically. This is to say, as I argue, tragedy is necessarily ironic. I read Richard Rorty on irony and Hegel on tragic irony and cunning of reason. My aim is to redescribe real-life conflicts by using the dialectical understanding of irony and tragedy. Following Rorty and Hegel, I apply their theories of identity to real tragedies. The validation of the theory of literary criticism is a practical matter. My key illustrations come from modern wars; wars are and cause disasters, and thus I expect we can discover cases of tragic irony in factual and counterfactual contexts. Sometimes, the losses and suffering would have been meaningless regardless of the war’s outcome. The winner suffers, but it would have been better not to win. The losers suffer, but it would not have been better had they won. A total defeat would have been better than a conditional one. These redescriptions show the ironic differences between disaster and tragedy in non-scripted contexts—and all these cases are controversial. Full article

(This article belongs to the Section Philosophy and Classics in the Humanities)

9 pages, 1072 KiB

Open AccessEditorial

The Plastics Sunset and the Bio-Plastics Sunrise

by Raffaele Porta

Coatings 2019, 9(8), 526; https://doi.org/10.3390/coatings9080526 - 19 Aug 2019

Cited by 50 | Viewed by 7647

Abstract

Plastics has been an integral part of our lives for the last century as the main material for various useful commodity items. Irony of fate, the same specific properties that make plastics ideal to create such a wide range of products are also responsible for the present dramatic environmental pollution. What suggestions do the technological innovations currently suggest to solve this worldwide problem? Among the others, one is to replace the traditional plastics with alternative materials derived from non-oil polymers capable of being degraded in months and not in years or centuries. But the research in this field is relatively new and undoubtedly there are still developments that need to be made. Thus, we must be aware that the plastic age is at sunset and the bio-plastics sun is just rising on the horizon. Full article

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