“Tragic Optimism”:
       The phrase “tragic optimism,” has gained currency of late. Is it just trendy pop psych or does it point to something really important and lasting?
As a Google NGram shows, the phrase came into use in the early twentieth century but only gained significant circulation after the Second World War, perhaps largely through the works of the Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl, who used it to refer to  the “ability to maintain hope and find meaning in life despite its pain, loss, and suffering.”  This cast of mind, Frankl believed, produces resilience, and resilience helps a person survive even the worst of things.   Don’t try to tell a Holocaust survivor that the phrase is just pop psych.
After September 11th the term helped focus attention on the question why some people who had lost loved ones or had in other ways been damaged by the attacks showed more resilience than others.  Those who recovered best, it seems, didn’t deny the loss and misery they had experienced but found in it, somehow, something that made life worth hanging on to.  Anecdotes from survivors have now been backed up by empirical studies as Emily Esfahani Smith has pointed out in guest essays in the New York Times.
       “Optimism” may not be the right word, but  the contrast to despondent pessimism is crucial. The Covid-19 pandemic has again shown how important resilience is, and the crucial fact that it derives not from denial of loss and suffering – just the opposite: it comes about when one accepts the reality of suffering and loss and hangs on despite it all.
       Individuals vary greatly in tragic optimism.  Some people seem to have it full measure from the start; for others a good shrink can help develop this capacity. 
But what about whole cultures? Do they too vary in this respect?  Are some more resilient than others? If so, why and how?  Are there cultural practices that help members of a society achieve tragic optimism?
I’ll be thinking about these questions and welcome the thoughts and suggestions of readers of this blog. You can reach me at:
Wrconnor1@gmail.com
Note: Viktor Frankl’s approach may be gleaned from his essay "The Case for Tragic Optimism." a postscript to his book Man’s Search for Meaning (1984).  Recently the  phrase has been used to good advantage in Emily Esfahani Smith’s work, especially “On Coronavirus Lockdown?  Look for Meaning not Happiness“ in the New York Times for April 7, 2020.  
May 6, 2021

​ Thanks for checking this blog about ancient Greek and trying to think about it intenseky. I try to post every week, as long as I think I have something worth arguing about. If you’d like to receive an email when a new post goes up, or want to comment, write me at
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Bob Connor

Do I hear champagne corks popping in the ivied halls where Dan-el Padilla and others who doubt whether Classics deserves to survive hang out? These Classics Abolitionists have much to celebrate, having argued that Classics as a department, major or field should be abolished. Now Howard University is doing just that. Let the champagne flow.

This is no minor victory. Howard is the flagship among historically black colleges and universities. Since it is, I believe, the only HBCU with a Classics department, that entire sector of American higher education will now be liberated from a discipline that has sometimes been embraced by the far-right, racists and old fogies enamored of Western Civilization.

There’s more to celebrate: While untenured faculty in the department will now once again be able to experience the excitement of the academic job market, tenured faculty members will likely complete their careers as refugees in benevolent departments elsewhere at Howard.  These refugees should be, if the Abolitionists are correct, the leaven in the loaf, part of a new, more nourishing environment as classics are infused throughout the university. 
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Do not be misled by the rumors that the abolition of Classics is just the first step towards phasing down (or out) other humanistic fields in favor of a more vocational education. Lots of mostly white institutions have done that in recent years; why shouldn’t a historically black one do so, too?

In the midst of all this good news, well-known public intellectual Cornel West and his associate Jeremy Tate crash the party and publish an op-ed in the Washington Post calling Howard’s decision “a spiritual catastrophe.”  As if that hyperbole weren’t devastating enough, they cite two figures who claim to have benefitted from their study of the classics - Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr. Thank heavens they didn’t bring along with them the whole cast in the award winning book African American Writers and Classical Tradition by James Tatum and William Cook. It includes Phillis Wheatley, Ralph Ellison and Rita Dove. And, oh yes, Toni Morrison once told me about the important role classics played in her undergraduate education, so she might have been invoked, too.
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Pay no attention to these names. Empirical evidence will soon be at hand. Howard’s decision provides a perfect opportunity to test the theories of the Classical Abolitionists. If they are right, some of Howard’s departments of literature, history, philosophy, will provide a supportive environment for classical studies, encourage their best students to include the classical world in their course selections, and over time appoint additional scholars studying aspects of the Greco-Roman world. Students’ education will be enriched. If the Abolitionists are wrong, education at Howard will be impoverished, and as a university it will be Howard’s end.

PS I’ll come back to the phrase “spiritual catastrophe” in another post.  Stay tuned.

April 22, 2021