ABSTRACT
In 'Tragedy and the Common Man', Arthur Miller drew the distinction between tragedy and pathos by invoking the difference between being an agent and being a mere sufferer of external circumstances. According to Miller, the distinctive element in tragedy, what captures our interest and 'shakes us', is our 'underlying fear of being displaced, the disaster inherent in being torn away from our chosen image of what and who we are in the world. Tragedy is experienced in the discontinuity between our second-order desires expressing who we think we are and want to be and the first-order desires that we are forced to admit actually have driven our actions. The distinction between those two orders of desire also explains the human experience of free will or agency. People, they claim, have no interest in morality itself and no motivation to pursue it if morality inhibits pursuit of their own self-interest. Socrates's reply is that this is a wrong-headed approach to ethics.
