[...] In the world envisaged by Judaism and Christianity, there are no free-standing arbitrary events. All events are part of the plan of a just, good, providential deity; every crucifixion must be topped by a resurrection. Every disaster or calamity must be seen either as leading to a greater good or else as just and adequate punishment fully merited by the sufferer. This moral adequacy of the world asserted by Christianity is precisely what tragedy denies. Tragedy says there are disasters which are not fully merited, that there is ultimate injustice in the world. So one might say that the final optimism of the prevailing religion traditions of the West, their will to see meaning in the world, prevented a rebirth of tragedy under Christian auspices--as, in Nietzsche's argument, reason, the fundamentally optimistic spirit of Socrates, killed tragedy in ancient Greece. The liberal skeptical era of metatheater only inherits this will to make sense from Judaism and Christianity. Despite the exhaustion of religious sentiments, the will to make sense and find meaning prevails, although contracted to the idea of an action as the projection of one's idea of oneself.

inimical to the pessimistic vision of tragedy