What is our reaction to ancient tragedy? [...] Napoleon told Goethe that what fate was for the ancient world was politics for the modern one, and Benjamin Constant stated that the significance of the supernatural in ancient tragedy could only be transferred to modern theater in political terms.

Ancient tragedy refuses to present human beings ideally harmonized with their world, and there is no room for a world that, if sufficiently understood, could teach us how to harmonize with it.

There is a gap between what the tragic hero is [...] and the ways in which this world acts upon him. In some cases, this gap can be perceived in terms of conflict between different human purposes. In other cases, we cannot fully perceive it, and it remains unexamined.

This can equally apply to social reality and to a world that contains supernatural realities. The interaction of the hero [...] with forces, structures, or situations that can destroy him may maintain its significance without the presence of gods or oracles.

BERNARD WILLIAMS, Shame and Necessity (1993)