Tragedy has always been an important topic in philosophy, ever since Aristotle first wrote about the subject in his "Poetics". This text is a collection of essays by leading philosophers on the encounter between philosophy and tragedy in the work of Hegel, Holderlin, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Benjamin. The present volume asks the fundamental question of why it is that after Hegel, philosophy seems to have been preoccupied with the tragic and explores the dynamics of the relationship between tragic form and philosophical enquiry. The essays demonstrate how the model of tragedy affords the most extreme and thorough presentation of conflicts which are at the heart of continental philosophy, such as the topics of freedom, necessity, identity and historicity and reveal why tragedy is so essential to modern philosophical thinking.