ABSTRACT
Humans struggle to integrate split-off, divine, wild, “supernatural” forces and limits that lie beyond the order of politics, words and reason. This struggle takes a dramatic course in a crisis, when the polis is in transition and in need of re-inventing its identity. The tragic poet is the modern prophet needed for the politics of the democratic polis. Euripides’ theatrical poetic metaphors encompass the prehistoric mythical and religious acts, which lie beyond meaning. They are used in inscribing oaths and laws of community alliances that are integral in politics. In Euripides’ tragedy Theseus becomes a tragic hero who personally undertakes the necessity to undergo a process that would change him during its course, so as to enable himself to recognise the links of pity and friendship. He becomes the tragic subject of the city he founded. His mythic origin is a model of bravery, that we identify with and take courage to stand up to dictators of cruelty, fanaticism, racism and misogynism. In politics only omnipotence is impossible. Politics in a democratic polis transforms the impossible impasses into a transitional space of paradoxes. It is the art of limit setting. It ought to be governed by the sense of tragic.
