Talk:Hamartia

"hamartia" is the same word that is used in the new testament for "sin"
Check out the first page of the gospel of Matthew.


 * Which translation? The Singing Badger 00:00, 8 August 2006 (UTC)


 * "Hamartia" in the Greek text of Matthew is, yes, usually rendered as "sin." Giorgio Agamben has a discussion of this in his essay "Comedy," in the volume _The End of the Poem_.


 * I agree. I added "sin" as well as several other options for translating άμαρτία into English.  Arguments for which is most appropriate should be included within the article, but I think it's important for the reader to know the options. --In Defense of the Artist 20:00, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Heavy breathing
Shouldn't there be a heavy breathing mark on άμαρτία, to give it the h? Right now, it would transliterate as amartia.--Prosfilaes 21:12, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Additions by User:Hraysmithj
Hraysmithj's additions strongly suggest original research. Please review, wikify and restore to the article:

Some have understood “hamartia” this way: “Traditionally, [hamartia] has been interpreted as referring to a 'tragic flaw' in the character of the protagonist (the tragic hero). More often than not, the tragic flaw is hubris. . . Regardless of what Aristotle actually meant, the term "tragic flaw" and the ideas behind it are firmly ensconced within traditional literary criticism.”

We should be very careful about perpetuating an egregious mistake by valuing “traditional literary criticism” over common sense and accuracy. Though “hamartia” is too frequently found since the Renaissance translated as “tragic flaw,” the better rendering, as many a classicist has told me, is “error or missing the mark.” Aristotle uses hamartia once and only once in the entirety of The Poetics. When discussing tragic agent, Aristotle is speaking of the nature of an agent as something neither totally good nor totally bad but somewhere in between. A tragic agent brings about change because of an act, a hamartia, an error brought about by missing the mark.

Take a serious look at where you actually are when you accept the notion of a “tragic flaw.” Consider Oedipus and his supposed “flaw,” pride. If only he had not been so head-strong, if only he had listen to his wife/mother when advised to go no further, and so forth, Oedipus could avoided “downfall.” Unfortunately, this view ignores basic facts of the story. What are the acts which have brought misfortune to Thebes? Murder and incest–Oedpius the agent of both. No action that Oedipus might conceivably take in Sophocles dramatic poem could erase these fundamental facts. Oedipus hamartia is not pride, nor hastiness, nor any other trait that might be summoned out of aether to damn him. His hamartia is his ignorance–he didn’t know who he was. Aristotle’s notion of hamartia here echoes the Greek notion that the good person never knowingly does wrong. Traits, what most mistakenly see as “flaws,” are just traits, examples of what Aristotle meant when he spoke of ethos–the habitual acts of agents which allow us to use short descriptors such as honest, dishonest, good, bad. We conclude a person is hasty, for instance, because we have seen that person perform hasty acts before. Such traits don’t make a person good or bad but do help make probable actions performed in the present since those actions have antecedents in the past. It is as wrongheaded to see Oedipus’ traits as causes of his misfortune as it would be to blame his brown hair, if that were his hair color, or the melatonin content of his skin. Hamartia describes an act performed in ignorance not a trait of an agent. Hamartia has to do with deeds not with character.

Another point to remember is that Aristotle, who based upon his familiarity with hundreds more dramatic poems than we possess, does not use words such as protagonist or antagonist nor does he limit hamartia to any single person. To the Greeks, the protagonist was the actor, the performer, who had the most lines in a performance whether those lines belonged to a single personage he represented or to multiple personages he was charged with representing in a single poem. Antagonist is a much, much later term, coined to be a companion to a misapplication of protagonist. Such later critical terms have no foundation in nor use to describe Greek tragic poetry. Though antagonist has solid appropriateness in later contexts, we mislead ourselves and others when we try to use it in a context that cannot sustain it.

If you wish to explore further the dangers of “flaw” hunting in Greek tragic poetry, see how much the notion helps in understanding other works such as Sophocles’ Philoctetes or Euripides’ Iphigenia At Taurus. -- Ghirla -трёп-  11:38, 2 October 2006 (UTC)


 * This is an interesting point and relates a bit to the point I wanted to bring up, which is why I turned to the discussion page. I note that the English language essay here as well as that on tragedy is at odds with the German and Polish articles. They say that the tragic flaw is "wina niezawiniona" to quote the Polish example, or a guilt which is not a guilt, because the tragic hero is the victim of circumstance. He cannot do anything to prevent his ultimate downfall other than make it more or less ignoble. It is all "force majeure". The definition taught to me at University of tragedy was that tragedy rests on three legs, you need a character who is a leader among men but with a character flaw (such as hubris), then second he needs to make a free decision, which, being affected by his character flaw, is faulty, and third, it leads to his downfall. In comedy you get the first two elements, flawed characters and faulty decisions, but they all turn out right in the end so the third leg is different. It seems to me that this is correct, since if you do not have a free-will decision that is affected by the charcter flaw, you do not have something of literary interest. Literature is not about force majeure, with humans as helpless victims, but is about examining the human condition and the human character. There is no literary value in producing something where people are mere playthings of the gods. Yes there is force majeure, but this exists only to bring in that conflict which will test the character of the individual, the tragic hero.


 * It can also be argued that in this way tragedies were also intended by those philosophers who first wrote them (remember that Sophocles was first and foremost a philosopher and was concerned with ethics and morality)to be a way of warning to the leaders of the time to be aware of the faults arising from hubris. After all, they didn't have a free press then where they could write leader articles criticising the leaders' faults and would have had short lives had they done so, but this didn't come from nowhere. I think we need to use a bit of common sense in interpreting what hamartia meant to Aristotle, and again if we see it referring to sin in Koine a few hundred years later, you can say that this association probably didn't come from nowhere either.


 * Uncle Davey (Talk) 23:21, 21 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Ghirla is wrong on several counts. Most interesting that Aristotle only uses hamartia once in Poetics.  If you count different forms of the word, he actually uses the word four times (1453a, 1454b, and twice in 1460b).  If he would have referenced the two uses in 1460, they would have supported his thesis.  In these cases Aristotle talks about a poet committing technên hamartêma of an artist portraying “a horse advancing both its right legs.” (1460b)  Technên is easy enough to translate as technical, and a "technical flaw" causing an artist to depict a horse advancing wrong doesn’t make any sense.  In this case Aristotle must mean a "technical failure" in depicting a horse advancing.  There's no Ancient Greek sources that I know of that uses hamartia as a flaw. --In Defense of the Artist 06:18, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

In Defense of the Artist is correct. In 4th-century Greek, ἁμαρτία and ἁμάρτημα mean "factual error", plain and simple, with no moral connotations. This article as it stands has numerous ἁμαρτίαι of its own; notably the sentence, "The "tragic hero" attempts to do the "right thing" in a situation where the right thing cannot be done." Every claim in this sentence is utterly false. As it stands, this is not an article about Aristotle's interpretation of 5th-century tragedies, but about misunderstandings of Aristotle that are characteristic of modern English literature scholars.

Randall Flagg?
What's his tragic flaw? A belief in his own infallibility?

Did some editing and made a controversial addition
I thought an earlier attribution of Oedipus' hamartia solely to his killing his father was too narrow -- the incest part is also relevant.

Also, despite the misgivings of some (which I share, btw), I thought addressing the "tragic flaw" issue was important, as it is likely the preconception held by most who will visit this page. My high school English teacher pulled the same stunt on me (thanks, Mrs. Silber!). Also, while I used to hold a hardline position on hamartia-as-error, the sources I found plus reflection upon tragedies such as Agamemnon, Hippolytus and Antigone have led me to the conclusion that there is often a moral component to a tragic hero's hamartia. Ifnkovhg 00:32, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Removed a sentence
"Many critics worldwide consider Wikipedia to exist in a perpetual state of hamartia, given its inherent lack of credibility and veracity." -- rather self-indulgent and irrelevant isn't it? not to mention inaccurate

I agree, Thank you. F.S. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.185.191.1 (talk) 17:25, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Medical definition should be a separate article
The medical definition just confuses things here. It should be broken out into a separate article. --173.76.64.227 (talk) 19:43, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

interpretation of the word, modern understanding and original research
Earlier editors have pointed out the "tragic flaw" issues, and I agree with them, that missing the mark is not a moral flaw. And I LIKE the way the section on that is written, opinion-wise: I agree with the conclusions. BUT, most of that section is unreferenced. It borders on synthesis and OR - yes, these are procedural issues I have with the info, but I feel they must be cited - right now, they draw conclusions as if the article is advancing a thesis, not reporting someone else's conclusions.--Vidkun (talk) 23:09, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Hamartia cannot be sharply defined?
The article contains what seems to me an oddly categorical or doctrinaire statement: "However, hamartia cannot be sharply defined or have an exact meaning assigned to it." I would have expected something to the effect that the word Hamartia has been used in differing ways at various times and in various places. As it stands, it seems as if the article propounds a rule about its topic, rather than offering a description.

Since I know nothing about Hamartia aside from what I have just read here, I will not make any change to the article; but I submit my concern to the community in hopes that someone who is in a better position to make an edit will consider it. Dratman (talk) 22:49, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Merge this in to the Aristotle's page
i am new... don't rage pls... this is my 2nd post.... i strongly suggest that this page being merged into Aristotle's page not being separated because this hamartia, anagnorisis, peripeteia is a big chunk that is missing in the Aristotle's page... please review Aristotle's page and pro wiki users and admins... decide what to do... i don't even know how to cite stuff here soo... i clearly do not hold the right to tell you guys what to do or not... but in my POV this page being merged in to Aristotle's page would be more simpler... since i am fresh from the internet... thnx for reading this... and if i violated any rules by accident feel free to edit me... i have no probs :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hsrmrp (talk • contribs) 15:25, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

A series of edits
Hello, all. I am about to start a series of edits over the course of the next several weeks as part of a grad school project. The course assignment banner is at the top of the page. I respect the work that has been done on this article up to now, and hope to help hone it. I ask for patience from the Wiki world if the article looks disjointed at times during the process.

The first edit is the lead section. Here is how it used to read:

Hamartia (Ancient Greek: ἁμαρτία) is a word most famously used in Poetics,[1] where it is usually translated as a mistake or error in judgment.[2][3][4] In modern discussions of tragedy, hamartia has often been described as a hero's "tragic flaw."[5] The word hamartia is rooted in the notion of missing the mark (hamartanein) and covers a broad spectrum that includes ignorant, mistaken, or accidental wrongdoing,[6] as well as deliberate iniquity, error, or sin.[7] The term is better understood more broadly as a description of the element (vice, virtue, misfortune, etc.) in a tragedy or tragic character that makes it tragic. [8]

This form of drawing emotion from the audience is a staple of the Greek tragedies. In Greek tragedy, stories that contain a character with a hamartia often follow a similar blueprint. The hamartia, as stated, is seen as an error in judgment or unwitting mistake is applied to the actions of the hero. For example, the hero might attempt to achieve a certain objective X; by making an error in judgment, however, the hero instead achieves the opposite of X, with disastrous consequences.

However, hamartia cannot be sharply defined or have an exact meaning assigned to it. Consequently, a number of alternate interpretations have been associated with it, such as in the New Testament where hamartia is the Greek word translated "sin".[9] Bible translators may reach this conclusion, according to T. C. W. Stinton, because another common interpretation of hamartia can be seen as a “moral deficit” or a “moral error” (Stinton 221). R. D. Dawe disagrees with Stinton’s view when he points out in some cases hamartia can even mean not sinning (Dawe 91). In order for this to constitute a hamartia, the main character would choose not to carry out an action because she or he believes it would be a sin; but this failure to act would in turn lead to a worse outcome for the character.

Contents [hide] 1 History of hamartia in Aristotelian interpretation 2 Major examples of hamartia in Greek literature 3 "Tragic flaw" 4 Criticisms 5 See also 6 Notes 7 References — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mcraab123 (talk • contribs) 23:59, 26 October 2014 (UTC)  Mcraab123 (talk) 14:02, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Reinstated argument under Criticism section
Hello, Spannerjam.Thanks for your edits! I noticed you changed the meaning of one of the arguments. It misrepresented the views in the cited article, so I reinstated the deleted text. My language could be cleaned up - I hope you can continue to help with that - but take care that edits don't alter the information from the source. Mcraab123 (talk) 20:54, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Critical arguments on divine intervention
The closing sentence is, "What his study asserts is separate from hamartia, in a view that conflicts with Dawe's and Bremer's, is the concept of divine retribution." This can't be parsed syntactically in English. What is the view that conflicts with Dawe's and Bremer's, and what "... is the concept of divine retribution"? Philgoetz (talk) 01:20, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

The section "Examples of hamartia in literature" is flawed
The section assumes interpretations and applications of the word hamartia without supporting the content with sources. The interpretations of hamartia and of the plays in the section are not right. The section ignores or contradicts what is said earlier in the article. I suggest that the section be deleted. Examples can be incorporated in the text, as they already are. And if a list of examples is needed it could be added later with more care taken -- and with references. Clockchime (talk) 13:07, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Done. Clockchime (talk) 18:40, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

Why is the theology section placed in the middle of the tragedy section?
Hi, wouldn't it make more editorial sense to keep these topics separate, e.g. by placing the theology at the end? T 84.208.65.62 (talk) 01:22, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi, moved it; pls chk if it works. T 84.208.65.62 (talk) 00:48, 30 December 2023 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.208.65.62 (talk) 00:46, 30 December 2023 (UTC)