[1] See, primarily, Aesthetik, iii. 479-581, and especially 525-581. There is much in Aesthetik, i. 219-306, and a good deal in ii. 1-243, that bears on the subject. See also the section on Greek religion in Religionsphilosophie, ii. 96-156, especially 131-6, 152-6; and the references to the death of Socrates in Geschichte der Philosophie, ii. 81 ff., especially 102-5. The works so far cited all consist of posthumous redactions of lecture-notes. Among works published by Hegel himself, the early essay on ‘Naturrecht’ (Werke, i. 386 ff.), and Phaenomenologie d. Geistes, 320-348, 527-542, deal with or bear on Greek tragedy. See also Rechtsphilosophie, 196, note. There is a note on Wallenstein in Werke, xvii. 411-4. These references are to the second edition of the works cited, where there are two editions.
[2] His theory of tragedy is connected with his view of the function of negation in the universe. No statement therefore which ignores his metaphysics and his philosophy of religion can be more than a fragmentary account of that theory.
[3] I say ‘might,’ because Hegel himself in the Phaenomenologie uses those very terms ‘divine’ and ‘human law’ in reference to the Antigone.
[4] See Note at end of lecture.
[5] This interpretation of Hegel’s ‘abstract’ is more or less conjectural and doubtful.
[6] Hegel’s meaning does not fully appear in the sentences here condensed. The ‘blessedness’ comes from the sense of greatness or beauty in the characters.
[7] Hegel himself expressly guards against this misconception.
[8] The same point may be put thus, in view of that dangerous word ‘personality.’ Our interest in Macbeth may be called interest in a personality; but it is not an interest in some bare form of self-consciousness, nor yet in a person in the legal sense, but in a personality full of matter. This matter is not an ethical or universal end, but it must in a sense be universal—human nature in a particular form—or it would not excite the horror, sympathy, and admiration it does excite. Nor, again, could it excite these feelings if it were not composed largely of qualities on which we set a high value.
[9] In relation to both sides in the conflict (though it may not need to negate life in both). For the ultimate agent in the catastrophe is emphatically not the finite power of one side. It is beyond both, and, at any rate in relation to them, boundless.
