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Like some of the patients described by Robert fay Lifton, protagonists in Greek tragedy rage against death. They do so for much the same reason that Lifton's patients do: they are unable to construct a meaningful connection between life and death. Like our own, ancient Greek culture was weak in images of transcendence, and what images there were, such as family continuity, were vulnerable. Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides evidently knew or sensed this, so that a number of the tragedies may be read as statements of this problem. Several tragedies may be read as solutions. These solutions are especially relevant today, as they stake out a middle ground between philosophies of transcendence, and
Dr. Alford is Professor of Government, University of Maryland, University Park.
a humanism that would deny the sacred otherness of death. This essay turns to the tragedies in order to demonstrate how they illuminate the problem of death and the continuity of life, particularly as it is formulated by Lifton in The Broken Connection and The Nazi Doctors.