TRAGIŠKASIS HEROJUS IR LIETUVIŠKOJI JO ATMAINA (NEOLITINĖ A. MACEINOS APOLOGIJA SU PALEOLITINE TRAGIŠKOJO GESTO PROLOGIJA)
A TRAGIC HERO AND ITS LITHUANIAN VARIETY (A. MACEINA’S NEOLITHIC APOLOGY WITH PALEOLITHIC PROLOGUE OF TRAGIC GESTURE)

Summary/Abstract: The paper deals with the origin of tragedy and with historical types of the tragic hero. Tragedy is treated not as a genre of literature but rather as an existential posture of a mortal vis-à-vis the Universality and its marginal expression and the only way of presence, i.e. Language. Similarly, tragedy is defined as a revolt of an individual against the Universality in any possible ways of its manifestation. It is asserted that the tragic gesture, in its most authentic manifestation and to some extent a unique form, emerged only in several Greek poleis and partly in the Republic of Rome. Greeks gave the world the purest examples of tragic revolt and the archetype of a tragic hero – a free and autonomous individual. Socrates can be Pericles, Alexander, and Cesar. Christianity and the so-called Modernity replace the metaphysical paradigm of the autonomous individual with that of a ‘person’ as a machine of Language and, consequently, as a representative of the Universality, thus destroying the very possibility of tragic gesture. It is futile to have any discussion about tragedy in the circumstances of religious and technological despotism. Though neither the anti-Greek West nor the despotic East can boast of a tragic hero, they still escalate the jargon of ideological gesture to replace the existential circumstances of the tragic hero with linguistic simulacres. In the focus of the second part of the article is Antanas Maceina as a figure of religious philosopher in the context of the tragic gesture. It is concluded that Antanas Maceina, despite some aspects of his life and thinking relatable to his philosophical posture, could be most treated only as a melodramatic figure. Like in the rest of Western Europe, in Lithuania culture is bounded by religious despotism and consequently does not possess a tragic hero of its own.

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